by Simon Schama
Then, as always, there was Granville Sharp, who was in no doubt at all, provided slaveholding of any kind was strictly forbidden, that Sierra Leone could indeed be made into “The Province of Freedom.” Frankpledge in the tropics was in the offing! In letters to his American friends Benjamin Franklin and John Jay he excitedly urged those appointed with the work of drawing up a constitution to consider it seriously as the most perfect institution of God-pleasing liberty. Sharp knew that Franklin was now president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and had heard to his inexpressible pleasure that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had outlawed slavery in its own constitution and that a vigorous campaign was under way for stopping the trade. From the Reverend Samuel Hopkins in Rhode Island, once the very harbour of iniquity, he learned that some of the recently freed blacks in New England had already expressed a desire to re-establish themselves in liberty in their native Africa,37 and wished that Britain, its honour and dignity already wounded by the misguided war, would redeem itself with an act of comparable public virtue. Had not the American disaster taught his country that henceforth the only rock on which an enduring British Empire could possibly be built was that of Christian liberty? Properly established, Sierra Leone might indeed be the foundation stone of this new, virtuously reborn empire. How auspicious it would be, moreover, for black Britons, many of them liberated slaves, to reinstitute the purest form of British liberty: the unique marriage of Saxon Frankpledge and Israelitish commonwealth that would define self-government for free Christians.
As early as 1783, in the midst of the agitation about the Zong atrocity, Sharp had envisioned such a place in Africa: an idyllic liberty village amidst the banyans and acacias, where a church, school and hospital would rise on the greensward, and rows of tidy white cottages would have their own modest allotments on which to grow fruit and vegetables. Domestic animals would safely graze. Taxation would be in units of public labour—uncontentious because citizens committed to the common weal would abide religiously by their ward and watch duties, uncomplainingly taking their shifts, when the village bell tolled, to work on the construction and maintenance of canals, bridges, forts, roads and, of course, sewers. At four in the afternoon, after eight hours of work, there would be a refreshing siesta. The courts would be punctilious, regular and humane. Conscientiously voting for their tithingmen and hundredors, their assemblies empowered to enact any legislation consistent with the Common Law of England, blacks would teach complacent and corrupted whites what responsible, free government truly was. Now, three years after sketching his great design, Sharp saw a chance for this vision to be realized.38
God seemed to be sending him opportunities to demonstrate the importance of the project. For in July 1786 Sharp was tipped off about another black abduction, of one Harry de Mane; his informant was Ottobah Cugoano, a Ghanaian Fante now known by his baptized name of “John Stewart” and a close friend of Olaudah Equiano. When the captain, at the helm of the ship bearing de Mane off and on the verge of sailing, was confronted with a writ of Habeas Corpus the man was released. Brought to London to see his benefactor, he told Sharp that, barring some miracle, he would have jumped into the sea “choosing rather to die than to be carried into slavery.”39 The Province of Freedom was, for Sharp, exactly the place where the likes of Harry de Mane could make a new life. Buoyant with optimism about its prospects, Sharp donated twenty-five guineas for the “Present” to be given to the King of the Temne in exchange for land, and spent £800 of his own, redeeming pawned goods for the blacks, paying off arrears of debt to get them out of jail and otherwise helping lame cases to get to the docks.
So Granville Sharp was persuaded, the committee was persuaded and the government was persuaded. But, as Jonas Hanway found out in early June, the London blacks themselves were not universally enchanted by the idea of a return to Africa. Henry Smeathman, the salesman-in-chief of the idea, was mysteriously ailing—perhaps another visitation from the putrid fever—and unable to do much to silence their worries. So it was left to Hanway, who himself was far from well, to go to the Yorkshire Stingo during a hand-out of the allowance and talk up the project among the blacks. Inside the tavern, surrounded by rows of pipes and pewter tankards filled with the strong, red, muddy beer that gave the place its name, he listened to their anxieties. They all amounted to one serious apprehension: could they really hang on to their freedom in a part of Africa so dominated by slavers, both black and white? This was the place, after all, where many of them or their parents had been seized as small children and herded to the coastal forts. Some said that, all things considered, if they had to leave Old England they would rather go to Nova Scotia; others preferred the West Indies or even, in a few cases, America. On being given to understand that continuing to receive their allowance was conditional on agreeing to be resettled, at least thirty refused further largesse.
Hanway heard them out. Then, in the manner of his most earnest advice to footmen and seamen, treated the blacks to an uplifting address that was half rebuke, half exhortation. After being liberated by His Majesty’s grace and goodness, how could they possibly doubt the “pure and benevolent Intentions of Government” or the “Charity and Benevolence of the good People of Britain” who had given freely that they might be fed and clothed? As for himself, he was merely “an old man on the Confines of Eternity, who had no worldly interest to serve,” so if he was colluding in this ensnarement that they feared, “he must be the worst of all the wicked on Earth to deceive them.” No, as far as he could see, the Grain Coast was much the better prospect for them than bleak and barren Nova Scotia.40
Hanway’s eloquence—reprised at the White Raven down the Mile End Road later in the month—seems to have briefly calmed the blacks’ fears. By the third week of October, with a deadline looming after which the allowances would be discontinued, over six hundred had signed an “Agreement” indicating their willingness to be “happily settled on the…Grain Coast of Africa” in a place “to be called the Land of Freedom under the protection of and by the encouragement and support of the British Government.” In return for continued support, they promised to embark promptly when required, and to “assist in navigating and doing such work as we are severally capable of doing.” They would have provisions and clothing not just for the voyage but enough to last for four months after their arrival.
Even for the six-hundred-odd who had signed the “Agreement,” there was some understandable nervousness about what exactly the “protection” was to which they were submitting. Was it actually instituted for their defence or for their confinement? The rumour that there was to be some sort of fort in Sierra Leone and the preparations under way for the “first fleet” of ships transporting convicts to Botany Bay in Australia only fed this anxiety. Perhaps remembering their insecurity after they had left their American masters, and the importance they knew the British attached to official pieces of paper, they could not think of emigrating, they said, without an “Instrument of Liberty.” This would be a document bearing the stamp of a high official of government, guaranteeing that they could not be re-enslaved and that they might invoke should they need the government’s help against slavers. The “Instrument” would be their covenant on the tropical shore.
The London blacks may have been “poor,” but they were neither naive nor mute. In order to organize the emigration better, Hanway had divided the blacks receiving assistance into companies of twelve to twenty-four, appointing a “corporal” or “chief” for each, often someone who could read if not write. Surprisingly quickly, men like the freeborn Philadelphian Richard Weaver, whose claim for compensation had been denied by the commission, John Cambridge, a net-maker and domestic servant from New Jersey, and John Lemmon, a Bengali “lascar” hairdresser, became spokesmen for the whole community. As de facto delegates, the corporals went to meetings of the committee and, when they felt strongly, let the chairman and his colleagues know in no uncertain terms the mood of their people. When, after the deat
h of Henry Smeathman on the 1st of July 1786, the committee had belated second thoughts about the whole business of slave-ridden Africa, and revived the alternative destinations of the Bahamas and New Brunswick, the corporals let it be known that the minds of the blacks were resolved on Sierra Leone! Someone from that country living in London had told them that the native people of the river region were exceptionally “fond of the English and would [therefore] receive them joyfully.”41
Remarkably, and unhelpfully, the parties involved in the project had, then, completely reversed positions. As long as “Mr Termite” had been alive, no one on the committee, not even Hanway, could bring himself to contradict Smeathman’s sunny optimism about the Sierra Leone plan. After his death, Hanway, who had pushed the plan in the taverns (and who was himself to die in early September), launched a vitriolic attack on Smeathman, accusing him not just of incompetence but of corrupt self-interest. Gloomy predictions were made about the likely belligerence of the slave traders, black and white, in Africa. But it was too late. The earlier pro-African Hanway had done his job all too well. Although sixty-seven of the potential emigrants thought New Brunswick, apparently rich in timber, fish and game, might indeed be an alternative, they were overruled by the majority. In a petition to the committee, fifteen of the corporals spoke glowingly of “Mr Smeathman’s humane plan” and insisted on having Smeathman’s clerk, Joseph Irwin, appointed in his place as superintendent, since Irwin had “conducted this business from the beginning with humanity and justice.”42
Whatever its misgivings, the committee gave in. The Province of Freedom would be where Smeathman had mapped it. But now there were other things the blacks wanted: mobile forges, constables’ truncheons, tea, sugar, “portable soup” for the sick, stationery and, most importantly, the document that would certify their freedom, printed on parchment and signed and stamped by an official of the Admiralty. (In the event this was George Marsh, the Clerk of the Acts.) Imagining the trials they might have to go through, the blacks even specified the container that was to house the precious document of their liberty: “a small Tin Box, value about Two Pence.” Then they demanded something that whites were not accustomed to giving blacks: weapons. They would need them for hunting, they said, and they would need them to defend themselves. The Commissioners of the Navy blinked, balked, but did not turn the request down, sending it on to the Treasury, which sent it on to the committee, saying that they should have the last word. The committee, those Quaker men of peace, plus a few harder heads, assented: 250 muskets and 250 cutlasses were to be provided, along with enough flint, powder and ball for 400 “stands” of arms.
Then something even more remarkable happened. The expedition was to be led by three officers: the senior naval officer, who would escort the little fleet during the voyage and see it safely landed; Joseph Irwin, the superintendent who had been chosen by the blacks themselves; and a “commissary” responsible for supplies and stores, both on board and on land, and accountable for them to the Treasury. Equiano was appointed as the commissary, the first black to hold any kind of office from the British government, although not, alas, for very long. Later, after things had gone seriously awry, Equiano wrote that he had had misgivings all along about attempting to plant a settlement of free blacks amidst slavers. But, because he believed the design was “humane and politick,” and because he was pressed so warmly to accept, he swallowed his doubts and took the post.
The emigrants were all supposed to have embarked on the two ships lying at Blackwall, the Atlantic and the Belisarius, by the end of October. It was important, if the fledgling settlement was to have a chance, that it should arrive on the Grain Coast before the onset of the rainy season in the spring. But the delays were endless. In late October Irwin reported that more than 600 had signed the Agreement, and he expected 750 in all, making a third ship essential. If they were all to sail together, they should wait until that vessel, the Vernon, was equipped and loaded. But no sooner had this decision been acted on than the numbers began to shrink. By late November, of that 600-plus, no more than 259 had actually come aboard the two ships. And they were, evidently, freezing cold, cramped, dangerously sickly and generally unhappy. Some reported being treated by the white officers no better than if they had been “in the West Indies.” Going aboard, Equiano was shocked at the lack of proper clothing and medication for treating the sick, and began to wonder whether the sums supplied by government were in fact being spent as authorized or misappropriated, possibly by Irwin himself.43 Irwin, for his part, complained of the blacks’ “want of discipline.” It was said that they burned candles and fires all through the night (hardly surprising, in view of the bitter cold that descended on the Thames), and that they wasted water. Granville Sharp was, however, shocked to hear that they had been drinking rum and even giving it to their children, a habit for which he blamed the high rate of illness aboard ship. As many as 60 may have died before the ships ever left England, most of them on the Belisarius, where a “malignant fever” was taking a deadly toll, especially of the children.
Of those remaining on board, not all had signed the Agreement; and of the signatories only a fraction had gone on board. Blacks were seen still begging in the streets and, in an attempt to get more to embark, the committee asked even the most charitably minded citizens not to give them alms. Rumours appeared in the press that after a certain date blacks found begging would be arrested as vagrants, something that the committee never, in fact, contemplated.
But the evaporation of the people of the Province of Freedom continued apace. More false stories circulated in the press—that since both the Australia-bound convict fleet and the Sierra Leone fleet were going to rendezvous at the “Motherbank” (Spithead, near Portsmouth) their fate and purpose were likely to be the same. Some of the blacks even went ashore to visit the notorious Lord George Gordon, the demagogue who had fomented violent anti-Catholic riots in 1780 and still a hero of the London poor, to ask his advice about their intended form of government. One eccentric judging another, the ebullient, mad Gordon scanned Sharp’s lengthy document (called, naturally, “A Short Sketch of Government”) with its fifty pages devoted to forms of daily prayer, its Israelito-Saxon elections and its severe penalties for most of the seven deadly sins, and advised against it. Still more blacks departed.
Whites, however, got on. By February, when the three ships were finally ready to sail from Spithead along with their escort, the Nautilus, commanded by Captain Thomas Boulden Thompson, they did so with a full cabin-load of white artisans and professionals—a gesture that might have struck the blacks as either sensibly precautionary or gratuitously patronizing. There may have been good reason to sign on William Ricketts, a nurseryman and seedsman, to give the first rice planting the best chance of success. Doubtless it was a good idea to include two physicians, Dr Hackney and Dr Young, an engineer, Mr Gesau, and a surveyor, Richard Duncombe. Possibly the tanner, the bricklayer, the brushmaker and even Hugh Smith, the “flax dresser,” were needed to pass on their skills to the settlers. But why, given the fact that at least half of the emigrants were African-Americans and that the escaped blacks were almost always skilled in some practical craft or other, even (or especially) if they had been at sea, it seems over-pessimistic to have recruited tailors, carpenters, gardeners, two people described as “husbandmen” (meaning rural labourers), and even perhaps Mr Schenkel the baker, along with his wife and children. Free or slave, the blacks had been cooks; and some must certainly have been “husbandmen.”
They were not the only whites on board the fleet bound for Freedom. By sailing time in late February there were also more than sixty white women, Margaret Allen, Elizabeth Ramsey, Amelia Homan, Martha James, Mary Jacob and Mary Tomlinson among them. Who were they, and what were they doing on board the Belisarius, the Atlantic and the Vernon? The passenger lists describe them as “White Women Married to Black Men”—and the names of Ann Holder, presumably married to Thomas Holder (with Thomas Holder junior as their son); Rebecca
Griffith, married to Abraham Elliott Griffith (Welsh-African-American, educated at Sharp’s expense); Sarah Whitecuffe, Benjamin’s widow; Sarah Cambridge, married to Corporal John Cambridge, the New Jersey net-maker; Elizabeth Lemmon, married to the Bengali hairdresser Corporal John Lemmon; and Elizabeth Demain, married to Harry de Mane, whom Sharp had rescued from the ship about to carry him away to slavery, all bear this out.44 Until recently the white women were thought to be, as a Swedish botanist who went to Sierra Leone in 1794 described them, “chiefly strumpets.”45 But he was merely following the account given by Anna Maria Falconbridge, wife of an ex-slaver surgeon-turned-abolitionist, Alexander Falconbridge, who was in Sierra Leone in 1791. There, Anna encountered seven white women “decrepid with disease and…disguised with filth and dirt” who, she asserted, told her that they had been lured aboard the ships at Wapping, a haunt of dockland whores, by tankards of drink and rich promises. The next day they were woken, so the Falconbridge account went, and informed to whom they would be “married.”
The story was just the kind of thing the late eighteenth-century public liked to hear: fallen women pounced on by the unscrupulous agents of a crackpot enterprise; compelled to service the animal needs of black men in a revolting pretence of bogus domesticity; ending up covered in sores and flies somewhere up-river in the steaming forest, with parrots and apes hooting a chorus of derision. Such is what happens to the naive and the dissolute, the wise reader could add, nodding vigorously. Beware well-intentioned cranks. Beware the likes of Granville Sharp!