Owen - Journal Of A Slave-Dealer

NICHOLAS OWEN Journal of a Slave-Dealer

Nicholas Owen

"A View of Some Remarkable Axcedents in the Life of Nics. Owen on the Coast of Africa and America from the Year 1746 to the Year 1757."

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY
Eveline Martin, M.A., Ph.D.

"I loose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad but new."
MR. POPE.

First published in 1930 by Kegan Paul International

This edition first published in 2009 by

Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Kegan Paul, 1930

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 10: 0-7103-1344-6 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-1344-7 (hbk)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

The manuscript of this Book was the property of my great, great, grandfather, Mr. Commissioner Marsh, who was a personal friend of Lord Nelson, and Commissioner of the Navy and Chairman of the Navy Board when Nelson was winning his great battles at sea. How the Journal came into the hands of the Commissioner cannot now he ascertained; but it is possible that some ship's captain, into whose hands the Journal had fallen, may have brought it home from. Sierra Leone, or, possibly, the surviving brother, who wrote the last pages of the Journal, may have been a protege of the Commissioner.

F. C. Heath-Caldwell.

Linley Wood,
Talke,
Staffordshire.

The Editor desires to thank the Librarian of the Colonial Office for some valuable references to contemporary literature.

d

In the Life of Nics. Owen

By DR. EVELINE MARTIN

THE following Journal is a record of the attempts of one, Nicholas Owen, an Irishman, to retrieve the fortunes of his family which had been squandered by a spendthrift father. Owen has little to say that helps in the identification of his family; he gives neither his father's name nor the position of his "good estate ", and he merely tells the by no means unwonted tale of ruin brought by his father's "liveing in granduour above his fortune" and by "the help of a pirticular law-sute".

His experience of life as the son of an impoverished house left Owen with no illusions about the kindliness of human nature, and as his "hard-harted relations who themselves "enjoyed all the blessings of a plentyfull fortune even to excess", failed to show any signs of " a giveing hand" he decided to seek his fortune overseas.

In the course of the twelve years covered by this Journal Owen visited England, Portugal, the correct Indies, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, the Cape Verde Islands, the Azores, the Canaries and the Guinea Coast; he crossed the Atlantic six times and the "easey seas" between Europe and West Africa three times before he finally settled down as a resident in Guinea.

As the dating of the Journal is spasmodic it is not possible to say with certainty exactly how the years are divided between his various activities, but the period of wandering begins in 1746, and ends about 1754, being followed by the period of more or less settled life in Africa from 1754 to the time of his death in 1759.

Owen's object in writing, as he says in his preface, was to show the dangers of a seafaring life, an undertaking to which he was moved by a "powerful pashon" and by the consciousness that he had experienced "some particular axcedents that does not often hapen in the life of others". The Journal was, therefore, clearly designed to be read, and careful selection of material was made so that it should only contain matter considered by the author remarkable or of special interest.

In wilting the account of his early travels Owen's anxiety to provide "remarkable axcedents" led him to so many digressions that the course of each voyage is a little obscured. The following list shows briefly the chief points in his wanderings:

The narrative of these journeys bears witness to Owen's determination to point out the hazards of a seafaring life. Even the short passage from Ireland to England gave him matter for his theme, the misery of a sailor's life, and an engagement with a French privateer showed its dangers. The third voyage in which Owen and others joined in a mutiny against an incompetent captain to whose mis-management was ascribed the failure to capture a French privateer, emphasised the lesson and the sixth voyage ended in such complete disaster that Owen might consider his "Lessons from Experience" well and truly illustrated. The wandering part of his life also provided some matter for his collection of remarkable things. The predominance of the Irish in Montserrat, the tedious length of a passage from Ireland to America of fourteen weeks, the Quaker population of Philadelphia, the goods used in the Atlantic trade, negro kingdoms on the Guinea coast and their manners and customs, the Cape Verde Islands and their products, are all considered subjects worthy of a place in the Journal.