Ruins of John Newton's Slave Barracks

Sierra Leone Heritage:

Destined by his parents for a post in a merchant’s office in Jamaica, he was seized during a drunken orgy by a Naval Press Gang in 1743. His father instead of buying him out had him made midshipman. His bad behaviour soon caused him to be degraded to the forecastle and in 1744, he sailed as an ordinary seaman in H.M.S. Harwich for Madeira. There the Captain on account of his continued unruly behaviour gladly exchanged him for a sailor off a Guineaman bound for Sierra Leone and the West Coast of Africa.

Arriving at Sierra Leone and seeing the wealth to be made out of the slave trade, he obtained his discharge without pay and landed on the Banana Islands where he entered the services of a white slave trader who soon transferred to the Plantain Island.

Here he stayed about a year, during which time, in the absence of his master he was very badly treated by the master’s wife who half starved him, and generally treated him worse than a slave. However, he managed to smuggle some letters to his father in England. Meanwhile he was able to transfer to another white master on the Boom Kittam River and it was here he was rescued by a ship sent out by his father, and after a very bad voyage reached England in 1748. The perils and salvations of this last voyage played a large part in turning his thoughts to religion. But the urge of the sea was still in him and between 1748 and 1754 when he gave up the sea, he made at least three voyages to West Africa as a slave trader, going on with its human cargo to the West Indies and the Southern States of America. During these voyages, he was noted for strict religious studies and observances.

PJHAP:

We were taken to the place where oral tradition has it that John Newton had a divine revelation. Newton was abandoned by a naval vessel in West Africa and given, by the slaver Amos Clow, to his mistress, who enslaved Newton on Plantain Island. He was rescued in 1748 by a ship his father had sent. On the return voyage, a storm and subsequent delivery there-from, caused Newton to convert to Christianity, but he continued in the slave trade until 1754 – possibly during this time visiting the Banana Islands again and seeing the light?

Photo Christian Trede