The Slave Ship Read Online Free

should stay so long among people of the above charetar, when we have so many opertuniteys of going of[f] the coast home.” He worried that if he went home, tongues would wag and he would be called “the Mallato [mulatto] just come from Guinea.” So he opted instead for what he himself saw as an idle, indolent life at the edge of empire, subordinating others to the ruthless rule of the “uneversal god of mankind.” The choice resulted in failure, as Owen well understood and his miserable journal makes clear. He died of a fever in 1759, penniless and alone. He had long been “much inclin’d to melloncholy.”

Captain William Snelgrave
    Captain William Snelgrave was gathering a cargo of Africans on the “Slave Coast” of Benin to transport to Antigua when, to his surprise, he was invited by the king of Ardra (also called Allada) to visit. This presented a dilemma. On the one hand, Snelgrave dared not refuse if he wanted to curry favor for future supplies of slaves. But, on the other hand, he considered the king and his people to be “fierce brutish Cannibals.” The captain resolved the dilemma by deciding to visit and to take with him a guard of ten sailors “well armed with Musquets and Pistols, which those savage People I knew were much afraid of.” 10
    Canoed by escorts a quarter mile upriver, Snelgrave found on his arrival the king “sitting on a Stool, under some shady Trees,” with about fifty courtiers and a large troop of warriors nearby. The latter were armed with bows and arrows, swords, and barbed lances. The armed sailors took a guarded position “opposite to them, at the distance of about twenty paces” as Snelgrave presented gifts to a delighted king.
    Snelgrave soon noticed “a little Negroe-Child tied by the Leg to a Stake driven in the Ground.” Two African priests stood nearby. The child was “a fine Boy about 18 Months old,” but he was in distress, his body covered with flies and vermin. Agitated, the slave captain asked the king, “What is the reason of the Child’s being tied in that manner?” The king replied that “it was to be sacrificed that night to his God Egbo, for his prosperity.” Upset by the answer, Snelgrave quickly ordered one of his sailors “to take the Child from the Ground, in order to preserve him.” As he did so, one of the king’s guards ran at the sailor, brandishing his lance, whereupon Snelgrave stood up and drew a pistol, halting the man in his tracks and sending the king into a fright and the entire gathering into a tumult.
    When order was restored, Snelgrave complained to the king about the threatening action of the guard. The king replied that Snelgrave himself “had not done well” in ordering the sailor to seize the child, “it being his Property.” The captain excused himself by explaining that his religion “expressly forbids so horrid a Thing, as the putting of a poor innocent Child to death.” He added the golden rule: “the grand Law of human Nature was, To do to others as we desir’d to be done unto.” The conflict was ultimately resolved not through theology but the cash nexus, as Snelgrave offered to buy the child. He offered “a bunch of sky coloured beads, worth about half a Crown Sterling.” The king accepted the offer. Snelgrave was surprised that the price was so cheap, as traders such as the king were usually “very ready, on any extraordinary occasion, to make their Advantage of us.”
    The rest of the meeting consisted of eating and drinking the European food and liquor Snelgrave had brought for the king. African palm wine was also on offer, but Snelgrave refused to drink it, as the wisdom among slave-ship captains was that it could be “artfully poison[ed].” The sailors had no such worries and drank avidly. Upon parting, the king declared himself “well pleased” with the visit, which meant that more slaves would be forthcoming. As the Europeans canoed back to the ship, Snelgrave turned to a member of his crew and