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Amazing Grace's author ran slave ships
Liverpool's slave trade
Liverpool was once the capital of the slave trade. People think of the Beatles or the football club now, but the city was the dominant force in the entire European Atlantic slave trade, and Newton was one of its captains.
The triangular trade
His voyages followed the triangular trade. A ship left Liverpool loaded with trade goods such as mirrors, knives, rum, and cowrie shells, and sailed to the forts and castles Europeans had built along West Africa to accumulate captives. It traded the goods for people, carried them across the Atlantic, and returned to Europe with the output of the plantations.
Newton's journal
Newton's journal records a day he brought aboard Africans who had been marched about 1,000 miles from the inland. Many captives did not survive marches of 500 to 800 miles, yoked at the neck and tied. Newton also described how they were to be stowed on the ship: like books on a shelf.
Why did Liverpool overtake Bristol in the slave trade?
Bristol led British slave voyages in the early 1700s, but Liverpool grew faster after opening Britain's first commercial wet dock in 1715. The city sat close to Manchester's textile mills and Birmingham's gun makers, whose goods were traded for captives in West Africa. Port charges there were lower than in Bristol, and its merchants invested heavily in the trade. By the end of the century Liverpool ships carried most of Britain's slave voyages.
Why were captives marched so far from the coast?
Inland states such as Asante and Dahomey fought wars and raids that produced prisoners, and captives were walked toward the coast to be sold. Europeans mostly stayed at their forts and traded with African merchants and rulers, who controlled the routes. Disease made travel inland dangerous for Europeans, and African states held the power to keep them out. Mortality among Europeans in West Africa was so high that the region was nicknamed the white man's grave.
How did Newton go from captain to preacher?
In 1748 a storm nearly sank Newton's ship, and he later called that night the start of his religious conversion. He kept working in the slave trade for several years afterward and left the sea in 1754 after a serious illness. He became a curate in Olney in 1764, and his hymn Amazing Grace appeared in the Olney Hymns collection in 1779. In 1788 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, condemning the trade he had served.
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