Authors: Terence Brady and Evan Jones.
In 1750 John Newton set sail for West Africa from Liverpool. He was on the first leg of the 'Triangular trade'. His cargo of cheap cloth, brandy, muskets, kettles, mirrors, and glass beads would be used to buy two hundred human beings. Shackled together, in a hold forty feet by fifteen and five feet high, many of these men, women and children would die. The terrible journey known as the Middle Passage lasted about sixty days, and during it, or during the 'seasoning' period on the plantations, fifty per cent of the original cargo was expected to perish. But there were still enormous profits to be made - the slaves were replaced by West Indian produce, above all by sugar, and the final leg back to Liverpool was run. John Newton later became a minister of the church and an abolitionist. It was reports of men like him which stimulated opposition to a barbarous and immoral trade - but initially it was only a small band who fought to end the system. They were lead by the frail and gentle William Wilberforce and supported in parliament by Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox. At a time when the means of mass communication were in their infancy, and with much of the power and wealth of the country lined up against them, they conducted a campaign of mass protest. After a long struggle it lead to the end of an infamous trade, in which Britain had made vast profits and Africa had lost forty million men, women and children.