Stop 1
LONDON
Early 1787
SOURCE A: The Lively (LONDON, Early 1787)
The first African trading ship Clarkson boarded was not a slave ship.
However, it had a dramatic impact upon Clarkson. The Lively had arrived
from Africa with a cargo of ivory, beeswax, palm oil, pepper and
beautifully woven and dyed cloth. Clarkson realised that many of the
goods had been produced by skilled craftsmen and was horrified to think
that these people might be made slaves.
Clarkson bought samples of everything and added to this collection over
the following years. Clarkson kept these products in a small chest (see
picture) and used the contents to challenge the negative views about the
African way of life held by many British people at the time.
Clarkson’s aim was to show that African foodstuffs and fine textiles,
could replace the trade in slaves, to the benefit of both African and
European traders. The key message was that Britain could carry on a
profitable trade with Africa. It did not have to trade in human beings.
This painting of Thomas Clarkson was produced by A E Chalon. On the
table is a map of Africa. At his feet is Clarkson's Box, a collection of the
products of Africa. The chest contains samples of African produce and
manufacture – woods, ivory, pepper, gum, cinnamon, tobacco, cotton, and
an African loom and spindle.
SOURCE B: JOHN WESLEY
Some people at the time argued that Europeans were superior to
Africans. They ignored the great achievements of the Empires of Mali,
Benin and Egypt. They also ignored the possibilities for trading with
Africa. One of the few people to write positively about Africa was John
Wesley. His pamphlet ‘Thoughts upon Slavery’ was published in 1774.
The Gold-Coast and Slave-Coast, all who have seen it agree, is fruitful and
pleasant. It produces vast amounts of rice and other grain, plenty of
fruit, oil, and fish in great abundance, with much tame and wild cattle.
The same is true of the kingdoms of Benin, Congo and Angola.
These three nations practice several trades; they have smiths, saddlers,
potters and weavers. And they are very ingenious at their several
occupations. Their smiths not only make all the instruments of iron, but
also work many things neatly in gold and silver. It is chiefly the women
and children who weave fine cloth, which they dye blue and black.
SOURCE C: GRANVILLE SHARP
Granville Sharp was one of the few people in England at the time to
speak out against slavery. He had tried to prosecute the captain of one
slave ship for murder.
In 1782 Collingwood, the captain of the slave ship ‘Zong’, ordered that
over 130 sick slaves be thrown overboard. The slave ship had left Africa
in early September. By late November over 60 slaves had died and many
others were seriously ill. Collingwood knew that when he reached Jamaica
he would not be able to sell the sick slaves and that the ship’s owners
would lose money. Collingwood thought that if they threw the sick slaves
overboard the owners would be able to claim money back from the
insurance company.
Those slaves that put up a fight were chained before they were thrown
overboard. Collingwood told the crew to pretend that the ship had run out
of water and that this meant that some of the slaves had to be killed in
order to save the crew and the ‘more healthy’ slaves. However, when the
Zong finally arrived in Jamica on 22 December it still had over 400
gallons of water left. The owners claimed insurance money for the value
of the dead slaves. I tried to prosecute the ship’s captain for murder but
failed. The judge said that murder was not the issue and that it was ‘just
as if horses were killed’.
SOURCE D: John Clarkson
Clarkson’s brother, John was another important source of information. He
had served in the Royal Navy from the age of 12 and had met sailors who
had served on slave ships. When he left the navy, John Clarkson became
an active member of the abolition movement.
John Clarkson
African salve dealers capture men, women and children and march them to
the coast where they are traded for goods. The prisoners are forced to
march long distances, sometimes hundreds of miles, with their hands tied
behind their backs. The prisoners are connected by chains or and wooden
neck yokes.
Their journey to the coast can take months and sometimes nearly half can
die on the journey. Slave dealers often move their prisoners during the
dry season and sometimes there is only stagnant water to drink.
However, British slave ship captains do not always buy slaves from
African traders. One man told me about British expeditions in heavily
armed canoes that travel up the Niger River kidnapping slaves.
Stop 2
KENT
Early 1787
SOURCE E: Reverend James Ramsay (KENT, 1787)
James Ramsay was an Anglican minister who had recently returned from
the West Indies.
Ramsay was able to give a powerful eyewitness picture. Clarkson spent a
month with Ramsay at his rectory in Kent. He soon realized how much
more he needed to learn about slavery.
James Ramsay
(Life on the slave ships)
I first saw at first hand what was going on when I was a navy doctor. In
the West Indies a slave ship from Africa approached our fleet and asked
for help. An epidemic of dysentery had killed many slaves and crew. I was
the only navy doctor who volunteered to go on board and help. I was
shocked by the feces and blood that covered the slave decks. Soon after,
I resigned from the navy and entered the church.
( Life on the plantations)
I lived on St Christopher in the West Indies for 14 years.
As a clergyman I preached to the slaves, taught them the bible in their
homes and made enemies of the sugar plantation owners.
I saw for myself what conditions were like on the plantations. I often saw
beatings and weary slaves still carrying cane to the mill by moonlight.
New mothers had to bring their babies to the fields, leaving them
exposed to the sun and rain whilst they worked.
SOURCE F: EXTRA EVIDENCE
LIFE ON THE PLANTATIONS IN THE WEST INDIES
Life on the Plantations
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The slaves are often underfed. Their rations are so small that they
are left with nothing during the second half of the week.
Slaves suffered from tropical diseases such as leprosy, dysentery
and yaws (a skin disease causing large red swellings).
These diseases together with the slaves’ bad diet and poor living
and working conditions meant that life expectancy (the average age
of death) was only 26. 40% of the Africans who arrive to work on
the plantations die in the first year.
Work on the Plantations

More than half the workers in the sugar cane fields were women.
Pregnant women were expected to work until six weeks before they
gave birth. They often had to return to work after just three
weeks.
Punishment
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Twelve lashes of the whip could be given for bad work.
Slaves who ran away could be given over a hundred lashes. They
were sometimes branded on the face or had an ear nailed to a post.
Stop 3
Back to
LONDON
1787
SOURCE G: The Interesting life of Olaudah Equiano
Whilst in London Clarkson met Olaudah Equiano. Equiano had been taken
from his home in Africa to Barbados (in the West Indies) as a slave when
still very young. He had worked as a servant to a ship’s captain and had
travelled widely. Equiano learned to read and write, became a Christian
and eventually made enough money to buy his own freedom and settle in
England. He worked closely with Granville Sharp, trying to help slaves who
had escaped from their owners. Equiano also wrote a book The
Interesting life of Olaudah Equiano in which he was able to tell his own
story of slavery.
Capture
One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and
only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a
woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both. My sister and I
were separated and I ended up in the hands of a slave dealer who supplied
the Atlantic slave ships. Six months later I found myself on board a slave
ship.
The Middle Passage
The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the
number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to
turn himself, almost suffocated us. The air soon became unfit for
breathing, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness
among the slaves, of which many died. This wretched situation was made
worse by the chains and the filth of the toilet buckets into which the
children often fell and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of women,
and the groaning of the dying, created a scene of horror almost
unbelievable. Three desperate slaves tried to kill themselves by jumping
overboard. Two drowned, the other was captured and beaten
unmercifully. When I refused to eat, I too was beaten.
Arrival in the West Indies
When we arrived in Barbados (in the West Indies) many merchants and
planters came on board and examined us. We were then taken to the
merchant’s yard, where we were all pent up together like sheep in a fold.
On a signal the buyers rushed forward and chose those slaves they liked
best.
Life on the plantations
I have seen a slave beaten till some of his bones were broken, for only
letting a pot boil over. I have seen a man staked to the ground and cut
most shockingly (ie castrated), and then his ears cut off bit by bit
because he had been connected with a white woman who was a common
prostitute. I have seen slaves put into scales and weighed, and then sold
from three pence to nine pence a pound.
SOURCE H
EXTRA EVIDENCE: LIFE ON THE PLANTATIONS IN BARBADOS
Life on the Plantation
 Slaves are forced to build their own homes in the little spare time
they have. They live in earth-floored wooden huts with leaky roofs
made of sticks and ‘trash’ (cane with the juice squeezed out).
These huts are held together with thin strands of rope and often
blow down during hurricanes.
 Many slaves find it hard to adjust to their new life. The long and
horrendous Middle Passage leaves many slaves weak and disease is
common. Roughly one third die within three years of arriving in the
West Indies.
Work on the Plantations
 Cane shoots are planted in holes or trenches that have to be dug by
hand, often in marshland where there are many mosquitoes. Cattle
manure is used to fertilize the soil. Slaves have to carry this to the
fields on their heads in dripping 80 pound baskets.
 At harvest time slaves are forced to carry huge, heavy bundles of
cane to the mill. Each bundle is then fed twice through powerful
rollers that squeeze out the juice, which flows into large copper
vats in the boiling house, where it is simmered, filtered and
crystallized into sugar.
 The mills often run all day and night during the harvest season.
Slaves work all day in the field and then have to work, every other
night, four to six hours in the mill or boiling house. Their clothes
get soaked with cane juice and they often lay down to sleep
wherever they are, too exhausted to walk to their huts. As a
result, many catch pneumonia.
 Children are put to work from the age of seven or eight. They have
to weed, plant corn or shovel manure into cane holes.
 Adults start work in the fields between five and seven A.M., and
continue, with meal breaks, until seven P.M., usually six days a week.
Punishment
 If a slave runs away for 30 days or more the punishments is death,
yet an owner who kills a slave is only fined £15.
 Slaves are regularly whipped and at times have to wear an iron
collar or a straitjacket.
SOURCE I: Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, by
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano
Clarkson would have also learnt about the slave trade from a book
Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery published by an African
living in London named Quobna Ottobah Gugoano.
I was kidnapped by one of my own countrymen at the age of thirteen and
taken to the coast by an African slave dealer.
At the castle I saw him take a gun, a piece of cloth, and some lead for me,
and then he told me that he must now leave me there, and went off.
I was soon taken to a prison, for three days, where I heard the groans
and cries of many, and saw some of my fellow-captives. But when a vessel
arrived to conduct us away to the ship, it was a most horrible scene;
there was nothing to be heard but rattling of chains, smacking of whips,
and the groans and cries of our fellow-men. Some would not stir from the
ground, when they were lashed and beat in the most horrible manner.
We were taken in the ship that came for us, to another that was ready to
sail from Cape Coast. I was enslaved for two years in the West Indies
until I was brought to England in 1772 by my master.
Stop 4
BRISTOL
1787
SOURCE J (BRISTOL 1787)
In 1787, after a three day journey from London, Clarkson visited Bristol
find out about conditions on the slave ships. The city had warehouses full
of slave-grown products just arrived from the Americas. Clarkson
managed to track down documents about a massacre of three hundred
Africans by British slave traders on the African coast.
He also boarded two small ships that were being fitted out to carry
slaves from Africa to the West Indies. Clarkson took measurements of
the ship and calculated that the slaves will be packed in rows into a space
that is only two feet eight inches high.
Each evening Clarkson searched for witnesses. Many captains and sailors
were unwilling to talk to him, fearing that they would lose their jobs.
However, he managed to find two doctors who had worked on slave ships.
The first was James Arnold, who had made two slave voyages and was
soon leaving on a third. The second was Alexander Falconbridge.
SOURCE K: James Arnold (Bristol, 1787)
James Arnold
Slave ships often carry doctors, the slave traders do not want profits to
drop because of too many deaths. Doctors also advise the captains which
captives on the African coast were the most healthy to buy.
On my last voyage there was a slave uprising that was eventually stopped.
On rebel slave remained barricaded below deck until boiling water and fat
were poured down on him.
Clarkson managed to persuade Arnold to keep a journal for him on his
next voyage. As you can see this diary contained crucial evidence that
Clarkson could use against the slave trade.
Extracts from James Arnold’s diary
I saw slaves flogged and tortured. Our captain kidnapped and enslaved
African traders who came on board to sell ivory.
A woman was one day brought to us to be sold; she came with a child in
her arms. The captain refused to purchase her because of this. On the
following morning she was again brought to us, this time without the child
and was in great sorrow. The black trader who brought her on board said
that the child had been killed in the night so that the sale could go ahead.
SOURCE L: Alexander Falconbridge (Bristol, 1787)
Alexander Falconbridge was another important witness. He had made four
slave voyages and provided a great deal of information.
The slaves lie on bare planks and frequently have their skin, and even
their flesh, rubbed off by the movement of the ship. The surgeon, upon
going between decks, in the morning, to examine the situation, frequently
finds several dead. These dead slaves are thrown to the sharks.
It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the latrine
(toilet) buckets, in trying to get to them, tumble over their companions,
as a result of being shackled. Unable to carry on, and prevented from
getting to the tubs, they have to ease themselves where they lie. This
situation is added to by the tubs being too small and only emptied once
every day.
The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with blood and
mucus from slaves suffering from the flux [dysentery], that it resembled
a slaughterhouse. It is not in the power of the human imagination, to
picture a situation more dreadful.
Stop 5
LIVERPOOL
1787
SOURCE M (LIVERPOOL, 1787)
Liverpool was a dangerous place for Clarkson to be. Anti-slavery
campaigners such as Clarkson received threats that their houses would be
torn down if they spoke out against the trade. A group of slave traders
tried to get Clarkson thrown out of his hotel and it was not long before
Clarkson received death threats and a gang of sailors tried to throw him
from the pier. For the first time, Clarkson saw the ‘tools of the trade’
displayed in a shop window. Clarkson was able to buy:
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iron handcuffs
leg shackles
a hideous thumb screw
a surgical instrument with a screw device, called a speculum oris,
used by doctors in cases of lockjaw. When Clarkson asked why it
was there, the shopkeeper told him it was for wrenching open the
mouths of any slaves who tried to commit suicide by not eating.
These items provided important evidence of how slaves were treated
on the journey from Africa to the West Indies.
SOURCE N (Liverpool, 1787)
Liverpool’s six miles of docks was the slaving capital of the world.
This year these docks would be sending a total of 81 slave ships to Africa.
Liverpool’s shipyards built many of these ships, some of which could hold
up to a thousand slaves each.
Clarkson soon discovered for himself just how horrendous conditions on
Liverpool slave ships actually were. Each slave:
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had a five and a half foot by sixteen inch space to lie in
spent up to 16 hours of every day chained to his neighbour
after a small meal of yams and beans was forced to jump in his
irons for exercise.
SOURCE O: John Newton
Clarkson had already met one man who had sailed from Liverpool on slave
ships. Liverpool was John Newton’s home port on each of his voyages.
Newton had been retired from the slave trade for over thirty years and
was now a preacher in London. In 1788 Newton published a powerful
pamphlet, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.
John Newton
I believe that most of the slaves are brought from afar. Some travel
more than a thousand miles, before they reach the coast.
There are three lodging-rooms below deck (for the men, the boys and the
women). The slaves lie close to each other, like books upon a shelf. The
poor creatures are cramped for room and chained, two together, by their
hands and feet. This makes it difficult for them to turn or move, to
attempt to rise or lie down, without hurting themselves, or each other.
Sometimes the weather keeps them below deck for a week and they have
to breathe hot and corrupted air. Diseases often break out and I believe
nearly half of the slaves on board have sometimes died. On one trip the
ship, in which I was mate, left the coast with 218 slaves on board; and
though we were not much affected by disease, 62 died on the journey.
I have seen slaves sentenced to unmerciful whippings; I have seen them
agonizing for days under the torture of thumbscrews. I remember a
sailor, annoyed by the crying of a child, tearing the baby from its
mother’s arms and throwing it overboard.
Stop 6
PLYMOUTH
1788
SOURCE P: PLYMOUTH (1788)
In the second half of 1788, Clarkson set about collecting more witnesses
and evidence that he hoped would persuade parliament to pass a law
abolishing the slave trade. He set out on another tour, covering 1600
miles in two months. At Plymouth he uncovered a key piece of evidence,
the plan of a loaded slave ship.
The plan showed how the enslaved Africans would have been positioned
inside the hull of the ship. Clarkson’s drawing shows the slave ship
Brookes carrying 454 Africans.
The Brookes had carried as many as 609 Africans on earlier voyages.
SOURCE Q: PLYMOUTH (1788)
Clarkson’s shocking diagram of the slave ship Brookes was published in
April 1789 and widely distributed. It was a powerful visual image that
exposed the appallingly cramped conditions below deck that still existed
on the slave ships.
It was calculated that on a slave ship:
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a man was given a space of 6 feet by 1 foot 4 inches
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a woman 5 feet ten by 1 foot 4 inches
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every boy 5 feet by one foot two
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every girl four feet six by one foot