Anti-slaver's diary reveals misery of 'freed' Africans

July 12, 2006

The Times July 12, 2006 Anti-slaver's diary reveals misery of 'freed' AfricansBy Steve Bird and Eva Wolchover A HARROWING account of Britain’s attempts to halt the slave trade has been found. A journal written by a young naval officer depicts the horrific conditions endured by British sailors

policing the African seas and the “liberated” Africans, crammed into sweltering holding fortresses. In the battered 125-page diary, Lieutenant Gilbert Elliott, 22, wrote that the plight of the newly captured negroes became worse after the slave trade was abolished. The sailor, the son of the Dean of Bristol, was with the blockade set up by the Government to police the illegal trade routes on the “slave coast”, from Angola to Ivory Coast. He was serving on HMS Sampson, one of five Royal Navy ships in the area, when he wrote his diary in 1851, only 44 years after Britain banned the slave trade. In passages highly critical of the laws, Lieutenant Elliott said that attempts to end the trade across the

Atlantic to America, Cuba and Brazil had been badly thought out. He wrote: “I should very much like to freight a ship with Philanthropists and send them out to sea — to shew them what their philanthropy has caused their countrymen to suffer — what dreadful misery it has brought on those poor unfortunate savages whose condition they pretend to better.” He describes how liberated Africans were herded into barracoons — sweltering, prison-like coastal forts — to await transportation when Royal Navy patrols had left. He recalls seeing “thousands of poor wretches huddled together where no sea breeze can blow on them” and records that it would be better to allow the trade to resume because the blockade was ineffective. Lieutenant Elliott concludes: “I find that the Blacks are generally better off as slaves . . . I am one of those who believe that while there is a demand there will be a supply, and that nothing will stop the trade unless we ruin the

slave owners.” Cataloguing the plight of those freed by the Navy, and his fellow seamen, he said that all suffered ill-health, poor diet, exhaustion in intense heat and had a lack of religious beliefs. So severe were the conditions that Lieutenant Elliott endured hallucinations. He records: “I thought in the middle of the storm last night I heard a voice — a melancholy wail — such as some wandering spirit might have uttered as he was hurried past a ship and knew there dwelt things such as he had been before he was condemned to roam all over the world.” He also condemns missionaries as “narrow-minded men”, adding: “In the case of savages, we often find them taken from a pure and holy life to practise deceit and hypocrisy.” The diary ends on October 23 when he learns that he has received no mail. Hating those who have, he adds: “Even if some of them have been plunged into deep sorrow, you feel that it would be almost better than the bitter, bitter

disappointment you have suffered.” Lieutenant Elliott died within weeks of that entry, having been put in charge of a captured Spanish ship that sank with all hands. The journal, saved from his last ship, was sent to his parents. It was discovered in the attic of a descendant in Wiltshire and is expected to fetch up to £7,000 at Sotheby’s today.Peter H

The all-new Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider.