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On boarding the Pegase, on the second day, I discovered a very respectable person in the gunner of that ship. His name was George Millar. He had been on board the Canterbury slaveship at the dreadful massacre at Calabar. He was the only disinterested evidence living, of whom I had yet heard. He expressed his willingness to give, his testimony, if his presence should be thought necessary in London.
In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slaveship while being conveyed from Africa to America.
But he hoped the committee would attend to the latter part of the assertion of Captain Smith. Yes: this trade, while it injured the constitutions of our sailors, debased their morals. Of this, indeed, there was a barbarous illustration in the evidence. A slaveship had struck on some shoals, called the Morant Keys, a few leagues from the east end of Jamaica.
Men have sought it vainly, have striven and fought, suffered and died for it, have endured plague, battle, shipwreck, famine, have died screaming 'neath Indian tortures, languished in Spanish dungeon and slaveship, and all for sake of Bartlemy's Treasure. And of all that ever sought it, but one man hath ever seen this treasure, and I am that man, Martin.
Alongside us was a Durham boat like ours, but longer. It was packed worse than our own, men, women, and children huddled as close as captives on a slaveship, and like ourselves worn out with fatigue and facing the thunderstorm that we heard coming without covering of any kind.
At two this afternoon I have returned to it, with the thermometer at boiling heat, and four hundred and fifty people stowed together like negroes in the John Newton's slaveship. I have accordingly left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs, and repaired to the smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables covered with green baize and writing materials.
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