Quashie Sam was an African sailor on board the British ship, Pheasant, as it hunted the coastal waters of West Africa for illegal slave traders. It was 1819 when rescued slaves were being settled in Sierra Leone.
When the Pheasant succeeded in boarding a Portuguese slave brig, the Vulcano, he was among the eight seamen transferred to the brig, which still had on board its captain, boatswain, black cook, one white sailor and a number of slaves. Mr Castles, a midshipman on the Pheasant was charged with navigating the Vulcano to Freetown.
Six weeks into the journey Quashie was feeding the slaves when he heard a shot. He looked out of the hold to see the Portuguese captain slash Mr Castles with his cutlass, and the Prize master fall overboard. More shots rang out and two white crew man tumbled from a mast into the Atlantic. Soon the Vulcano's black cook and Portuguese sailor had joined in the attack. The last of the Pheasant's white sailors still alive was killed and two of her black crewmen jumped overboard and drowned. At midnight that night Quashie and his fellow countryman were brought before the captain and told they were on their way to Brazil, to Bahia where they would be sold.
The brig waited in the seas off Bahia until a schooner appeared. Quashie, his countryman and all the slaves put on board, watched as the Portuguese captain and his crew scuttled the Vulcano before climbing into the schooner, which then sailed about twenty miles and anchored in a bay.
Within a few weeks Quashie was sold. Learning he was about to be taken up country to work in the mines, he fell into deep despair and refused to eat. When it was time to start the journey he would not move, so he was flogged and tied to a horse. Five days later he had still taken no food and was sold to a planter.
For sixteen months he lived on the plantation where his main work was twisting tobacco, but when he heard that his master intended to sell him and that he would be sent to the mines, he ran away. Back in Bahia he boarded an English merchant vessel, but was refused passage. He lay low until an English man-of-war arrived in the harbour.
It was the Morgiana which brought him to Freetown, Sierra Leone where, on 7th March 1822 he told his story under oath before John O'Neill Walsh M.C. and Ag. Sec.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Freetown John
Around this time last year I wrote about Freetown John, a man who was connected to my ancestors (we still do not know exactly how) and who died in Sierra Leone in 1823. At that time we wondered about the cause of his death. Now we know that he died of the black vomit, the toxic form of yellow fever, a viral disease transmitted by female mosquitos and potentially devastating for Europeans who caught it. Two years before he died it had killed thousands of people in Barcelona.
At the time of his death John O'Neill Walsh was acting Colonial Secretary. By then Freetown was thirty years old and had been a British Crown Colony since 1808. It also served as the capital of British West Africa and the base for the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron whose responsibility it was to stamp out the slave trade. The founders of Freetown, who cleared dense forest for land on which to settle, were freed African American slaves, but they had been joined by liberated West Indians and Africans.
A drawing on Wikipedia from 1856 shows a hill overlooking a harbour, mountains rising in the background into a leaden sky. A road runs along the sea front with houses at intervals along it, and behind other hillside houses can be seen their bases hidden in vegetation. In the harbour, the largest natural harbour on the continent of Africa, a sailing ship, bare masted, lies at anchor.
By the end of the eighteenth century there were on this peninsula, separated from the Atlantic Ocean by beaches of white sand, three or four hundred houses, wooden structures built on solid stone foundations. During the following two decades these had been replaced by more comfortable houses and there were almost a hundred Europeans living in the town.
John O'Neill Walsh was also Secretary to the Agricultural Society. Liberated slaves had each been allocated four acres of land on which to grow the maize, sugar cane and cassava they needed to feed their families. Some managed to grow food for cash.Walking down from villages and towns in the mountains they carried on their heads to the market in Freetown pineapples, oranges and various other fruits, cocoa roots and leaves and ground nuts. There was fresh meat for sale in the town in sheds supported on stone pillars and, near the sea front a fish market.
Freetown may have been founded as a haven for liberated slaves, but by 1923 the colonists were not above appropriating large tracts of land for their own use. Companies of gentlemen were being formed for the purpose of growing coffee, cotton, ginger, arrowroot, pepper and other crops, and the Man from Magherafelt was deeply involved, that is if he was still alive.
At the time of his death John O'Neill Walsh was acting Colonial Secretary. By then Freetown was thirty years old and had been a British Crown Colony since 1808. It also served as the capital of British West Africa and the base for the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron whose responsibility it was to stamp out the slave trade. The founders of Freetown, who cleared dense forest for land on which to settle, were freed African American slaves, but they had been joined by liberated West Indians and Africans.
A drawing on Wikipedia from 1856 shows a hill overlooking a harbour, mountains rising in the background into a leaden sky. A road runs along the sea front with houses at intervals along it, and behind other hillside houses can be seen their bases hidden in vegetation. In the harbour, the largest natural harbour on the continent of Africa, a sailing ship, bare masted, lies at anchor.
By the end of the eighteenth century there were on this peninsula, separated from the Atlantic Ocean by beaches of white sand, three or four hundred houses, wooden structures built on solid stone foundations. During the following two decades these had been replaced by more comfortable houses and there were almost a hundred Europeans living in the town.
John O'Neill Walsh was also Secretary to the Agricultural Society. Liberated slaves had each been allocated four acres of land on which to grow the maize, sugar cane and cassava they needed to feed their families. Some managed to grow food for cash.Walking down from villages and towns in the mountains they carried on their heads to the market in Freetown pineapples, oranges and various other fruits, cocoa roots and leaves and ground nuts. There was fresh meat for sale in the town in sheds supported on stone pillars and, near the sea front a fish market.
Freetown may have been founded as a haven for liberated slaves, but by 1923 the colonists were not above appropriating large tracts of land for their own use. Companies of gentlemen were being formed for the purpose of growing coffee, cotton, ginger, arrowroot, pepper and other crops, and the Man from Magherafelt was deeply involved, that is if he was still alive.
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