The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade | Page 2

Secondly, because
sea-faring people, when they retire from a marine life, usually settle in
some town or village upon the coast.

Of this tour I shall not give the reader any very particular account. I
shall mention only those things which are most worthy of his notice in
it. At Poole in Dorsetshire I laid the foundation of a committee, to act
in harmony with that of London for the promotion of the cause. Moses
Neave, of the respectable society of the Quakers, was the chairman;
Thomas Bell, the secretary, and Ellis. B. Metford and the reverend Mr.
Davis and others the committee. This was the third committee, which
had been instituted in the country for this purpose. That at Bristol,
under Mr. Joseph Harford as chairman, and Mr. Lunell as secretary,
had been the first. And that at Manchester, under Mr. Thomas Walker
as chairman, and Mr. Samuel Jackson as secretary, had been the
second.
As Poole was a great place for carrying on the trade to Newfoundland, I
determined to examine the assertion of the Earl of Sandwich in the
House of Lords, when he said, in the debate on Sir William Dolben's
bill, that the Slave-trade was not more fatal to seamen than the
Newfoundland and some others. This assertion I knew at the time to be
erroneous, as far as my own researches had been concerned: for out of
twenty-four vessels, which had sailed out of the port of Bristol in that
employ, only two sailors were upon the dead list. In sixty vessels from
Poole, I found but four lost. At Dartmouth, where I went afterwards on
purpose, I found almost a similar result. On conversing however with
Governor Holdsworth, I learnt that the year 1786 had been more fatal
than any other in this trade. I learnt that in consequent of extraordinary
storms and hurricanes, no less than five sailors had died and twenty-one
had been drowned in eighty-three vessels from that port. Upon this
statement I determined to look into the muster-rolls of the trade there
for two or three years together. I began by accident with the year 1769,
and I went on to the end of 1772. About eighty vessels on an average
had sailed thence in each of these years. Taking the loss in these years,
and compounding it with that in the fatal year, three sailors had been
lost, but taking it in these four years by themselves, only two had been
lost, in twenty-four vessels so employed. On a comparison with the
Slave-trade, the result would be, that two vessels to Africa would
destroy more seamen than eighty-three sailing to Newfoundland. There
was this difference also to be noted, that the loss in the one trade was

generally by the weather or by accident, but in the other by cruel
treatment or disease; and that they, who went out in a declining state of
health in the one, came home generally recovered, whereas they, who
went out robust in the other, came home in a shattered condition.
At Plymouth I laid the foundation of another committee. The late
William Cookworthy, the late John Prideaux, and James Fox, all of the
society of the Quakers, and Mr. George Leach, Samuel Northcote, and
John Saunders, had a principal share in forming it. Sir William Ellford
was chosen chairman.
From Plymouth I journeyed on to Falmouth, and from thence to Exeter,
where having meetings with the late Mr. Samuel Milford, the late Mr.
George Manning, the reverend James Manning, Thomas Sparkes, and
others, a desire became manifest among them of establishing a
committee there. This was afterwards effected; and Mr. Milford, who,
at a general meeting of the inhabitants of Exeter, on the tenth of June,
on this great subject, had been called by those present to the chair, was
appointed the chairman of it.
With respect to evidence, which was the great object of this tour, I
found myself often very unpleasantly situated in collecting it. I heard of
many persons capable of giving it to our advantage, to whom I could
get no introduction. I had to go after these many miles out of my
established route. Not knowing me, they received me coldly, and even
suspiciously; while I fell in with others, who, considering themselves,
on account of their concerns and connexions, as our opponents, treated
me in an uncivil manner.
But the difficulties and disappointments in other respects, which I
experienced in this tour, even where I had an introduction, and where
the parties were not interested in the continuance of the Slave-trade,
were greater than people in general would have imagined. One would
have thought, considering the great enthusiasm of the nation on this
important subject, that they, who could have given satisfactory
information upon it, would have