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Updated: June 22, 2025
The greatest number of seamen, at almost all times, who were there, were from the slave-vessels. These, too, were usually there on account of disease, whereas those from other ships were usually there on account of accidents. The health of some of the former was so far destroyed, that they were never wholly to be restored.
A seaman belonging to the Eden was drowned through carelessness, in upsetting a small boat on leaving the Horatio. The Victoria sailed this evening, under the command of Lieutenant Robinson, to blockade several slave-vessels that were daily expected to sail from the Old Calabar river. Monday, 7. The armourer of the Eden died this afternoon.
The result of this employment showed me the importance of it: for, when I considered how partial the inhabitants of this country were to their fellow-citizens, the seamen belonging to it, and in what estimation the members of the legislature held them, by enforcing the Navigation Act, which they considered to be the bulwark of the nation, and by giving bounties to certain trades, that these might become so many nurseries for the marine, I thought it of great importance, to be able to prove, as I was then capable of doing, that more persons would be found dead in three slave-vessels from Bristol, in a given time, than in all the other vessels put together, numerous as they were, belonging to the same port.
English philanthropy cuts a very suspicious figure, when, not content with neglecting the welfare of those whom she undertakes to protect, she thus attempts to made them subservient to national aggrandizement. The fate of the rescued slaves is scarcely better than that of the crews of the captured slave-vessels.
But this hostile disposition was increased by another circumstance, which I am now to mention. I had been so shocked at the treatment of the seamen belonging to the slave-vessels at Bristol, that I determined, on my arrival at Liverpool, to institute an inquiry concerning it there also.
The Duke's pilot, when we were off the town, requested to leave us for a short time; he said, he "must go tell Duke news, and come back directly." At three, we sent the small canoe, with two Kroomen, up the river, to ascertain the situation of the slave-vessels, and soon got under weigh to follow them; but the wind dying off towards sunset, we were obliged to anchor again.
He was the same person who, before the formation of our committee, had procured me copies of several of the muster-rolls of the slave-vessels belonging to that port, so that, though we were not personally known, yet we were not strangers to each other. Isaac Hadwen, a respectable member of the same society, was the person whom I saw next.
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