The Magherafelt Man meets Quashie Sam

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.