Slaver Captain by John Newton
John Newton is now best remembered as an Anglican clergyman and the author of the hymn Amazing Grace. For the first thirty years of his life, however, he was engrossed in the slave trade. His father planned for him to take up a position as slave master on a West Indies plantation but he was instead pressed into the Royal Navy where, after attempting to desert, he was captured and flogged round the fleet. After this humiliation he was placed in service on a slave ship bound for Sierra Leone, but there, having upset his captain and crew, he found himself the servant of the merchant's wife, an African Duchess called Princess Peye, who abused him along with her slaves. As he wrote himself, he was 'an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves of West Africa.' In 1748 he was rescued and returned home and it was on this voyage that he experienced his spiritual conversion. Though avoiding profanity, women, gambling and drinking he continued in the slave trade, taking up a position on a ship bound for the West Indies and then making three further voyages as a captain of slave ships. In 1755, after suffering a severe stroke, he turned away from seafaring and pursued a path to the priesthood, becoming the curate at Olney in 1764. His Authentic Narrative, as it was called, is a remarkable, no-holds-barred account of the African slave trade, as well as an account of his struggle between religion and the flesh.
John Newton, born in 1725, went to sea at age eleven with his father to train to become a slave master on a Jamaican sugar plantation. In 1788 he finally denounced the appalling conditions of the slave ships and died in 1807.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781848320796 |
| ISBN 10 | 1848320795 |
| Title | Slaver Captain |
| Author | John Newton |
| Series | Seafarers' Voices Ser |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Pen & Sword Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2010-10-21 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |