Before he left them Equiano encountered a sneering Captain Pascal walking in Greenwich Park and had the pleasure of reducing the proud officer to fury by instructing him on the illegality ofhis behavior. Thameside village of Maze Hill. He had stayed with them years whom he had two daughters. He left a sizable estate, as noted in before while visiting with Pascal. These two ladies helped place The Gentleman Magazine. Equiano' s life, his book, and his lectures undoubtedly helped to Equiano in trade as a barber in London. Before he left them he encountered a sneering Captain Pascal walking in Greenwich get the Parliament finally to oudaw the slave trade-the vital Park and had the pleasure of reducing the proud officer ro fu1y by measure that allowed Singbe Pi eh to walk free after leading a violent instructing him on the illegality of his behavior. mutiny against slavers aboard the Amistad. "Being still of a roving disposition, " he emSo the ships that Frederick Douglass watched barked on voyages to Spain, Italy, Turkey and sailing through Chesapeake Bay over 150 years the West Indies, from which he was glad to ago were more than poetic harbingers of a better future-they were carrying the seeds of that return, but ready to sail again. In 1773 he embarked on a voyage to reach future in the English language with its burden of law and custom, which the grown Douglass, like the North Pole (which people still felt might be Equiano before him, made so resoundingly his reached by open water), getting as far as 81 °N, within 540 miles of the Pole-an adventure he own, and in which indeed Singbe Pieh found was lucky to escape after eleven days locked in justice and freedom. the ice. This was the trip on which 15-year-old The Oceanic Mission Midshipman Horatio Nelson had his encounAnd Francis Drake, two centuries earlier, adjurter with a polar bear, which passed unnoticed by ing his people to "make no small reckoning of a Equiano, who had other things on his mind! man," who at first accepted slavery, ended up So Equiano pursued his career as seaman and Olaudah Equiano Narrative as trader, venturing small shipments on his own as allied with free blacks barding their former slave andfree seaman in the Atlantic he had done in rhe island trade. Always he overlords in the Americas. In opening the ocean world helped end the slave trade. returned to London, the home port of his farworld, he and his fellow voyagers spread the flung travels in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. In London he was English language, in whose root concepts slavery, Lord Mansfield caught up in the Methodist Christian revival and became involved was to find, simply could not exist. So in the English-speaking sea in the campaign, pursued from the pulpit and in Parliament, to community action was finally taken, for the first time in mankind's abolish the slave trade. Equiano began to write letters to the story, to end slavery throughout the world. How that just reckoning of a man was reached, to give a newspapers on this-a topic on which he was well qualified to speak as a former slavemasrer, as well as a former slave himself. Mansfield the sense of j us rice he found implici r in the law, could He held no brief for slavery, particularly the plantation slavery be matter for another report on the oceanic mission-if you've of the West Indies and the American South. He put the case rime for it. ,!, succinctly in one memorable letter of 1778 to Lord Hawkesbury, president of the Board of Trade: "Torture, Murder, and every To VOYAGE FURTHER ... other imaginable Barbarity are practised by the West India Planters upon the Slaves with impunity. I hope the Slave Trade will be W. Jeffrey Bolsrer's Black jacks: African American Seamen in the abolished: I pray it may be an Event at hand. " AgeofSail(Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1997, $27) Even as a free black he had encountered bearings and intimi- develops a full picture of how black seamen found their own ways dation in the Caribbean plantations and in the American colonies. in the ocean world, sometimes achieving positions of authority in W ith remarkable reserve, he describes the threats of one West seafaring and seaport trades despite all obstacles. The author, a Indies merchant he had to deal with, saying: "I was astonished at professional sailor and distinguished academic, uses carefully this usage from a person who was in the situation of a gentleman." gathered statistics to show how the African American presence Amidst the horrors he relates he had picked up on the distinction grew in seafaring and what it contributed. made by the London journalist Sam Johnson between a gentleman by birth or station and a gentleman by behavior. Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, In a stream of letters published in the London press he ed. Vincent Carretta (Penguin Books, New York NY, 1995, $10.95) denounced rhe Christianity that could tolerate, much less seek to conveys, with Equiano's richly derailed account of his experiences justify, slavery. At one point he even thought of moving to Smyrna afloat and ashore, an important 28-page introduction and comin Turkey, which he had twice visited. They traded slaves there, prehensive notes on use of special terms and sources ofEquiano's bur with no hypocritical defense of slavery. Eventually, being references, ranging from Dr. Johnson's two definitions of a gentleembroiled in arguments with all kinds of people in the newspa- man to obscure practices and beliefs of the times. pers, he was prevailed on by his friends to publish his Interesting Narrative ofOlaudah Equiano, in order to establish his credentials. Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times ofFrederick Douglass (orig. Issued in 1789, the Narrative was a great success, with many 1881; Carol Publishing Group, New York NY, 1995; $22.95). wealthy subscribers signed on as patrons. Equiano embarked on a This full account covers Douglass' s later years, including details of career oflecrures on the slave trade. The work went into numerous his walk to freedom and his dealings with Garrison, Sojourner editions before his death in 1797, aged about 52. In 1792 he had Truth and Abraham Lincoln, which won't be found in the simple married a white Englishwoman of a Cambridgeshire family, by narrative of 1845 which was intended simply as an antislavery tract.
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