British Sailors Stranded, Marooned, and Absorbed on the West African Coast, 1750–1860: A Research Report

The history of British seamen who ended up stranded, shipwrecked, abandoned, or marooned on the West African coast during the era of the slave trade and the Royal Navy’s anti-slavery patrols is fragmentary, but a small body of named first-hand accounts and scholarly reconstructions does exist. The following report assembles the most concrete documented cases that parallel the experience of Joseph Banfield (1770), drawn from primary sources (Falconbridge, Stanfield, Snelgrave, Newton, Owen, Butterworth) and the principal modern scholarship (Marcus Rediker, Emma Christopher, Randy Sparks, Mary Wills, Bruce Mouser, George E. Brooks, and the editors of the British Parliamentary Sessional Papers, 1788–1792). It should be noted at the outset that almost all known first-person testimony of this kind comes from a small group of articulate seamen who survived and wrote; the great majority of stranded British sailors on the West African coast left no record at all and died anonymously, a fact emphasized by Stanfield, Falconbridge, and Rediker alike.

1. Named Sailors with First-Hand Accounts of Being Stranded on the African Coast (Slave-Trade Era, c. 1750–1807)

Joseph Banfield — Cornish sailor born 1742, went to sea aged 12, served as chief mate of the Bristol snow Gambia under Captain Williss. Overset by a tornado in his longboat about 50 leagues from the ship on 15 May 1770; the white sailor with him drowned, but Banfield and a “black companion” (probably a Grumete interpreter) clung to a single oar and reached shore. He was sheltered by an “old man” in a town called Barring for 14 days, fed and clothed by Africans, and finally ransomed by the wife of the Governor of Fort James, Gambia River — who was then aboard a ship trading at the local post and threatened to bring up soldiers and destroy the town if Banfield were not given up “without one slave in my place.” His memoirs (Bristol, written not before 1796) survive at the University of South Carolina and are excerpted in the Bristol PortCities project. OCLC + 3

Nicholas Owen (Irish, c. 1726–1759) — One of the fullest first-person accounts of a sailor effectively stranded in West Africa. Owen made five Atlantic crossings, three on slavers. His Journal of a Slave-Dealer (manuscript 1746–1757; ed. Eveline Martin, 1930) records that on one voyage he and four shipmates, “tired of severe usage” by their captain, mutinied near Cape Mount (south of Sierra Leone) and made an armed escape into the bush, surviving “for months on the run” on wild rice, oysters, and “the hospitality of the indigenous people.” A year later his ship was attacked and plundered by Africans avenging a kidnapping by a Dutch slaver; the captors recognized the crew as English rather than Dutch and spared their lives, eventually handing them over to a local white trader named Mr. Hall. Owen then settled into the ruins of a small slaving fort on York Island in the Sherbro River, working as a coastal middleman. He never returned to Europe, writing that he feared being mocked at home as “the Mallato just come from Guinea.” He died of fever in Sherbro in 1759 — a documented case of a British sailor “absorbed” into the African coast. ayanetwork + 7

John Newton (1725–1807) — The most famous example, fitting categories 1, 2, 4, 5, and 8 simultaneously. After insolent behaviour aboard HMS Harwich he was exchanged at Madeira (1745) onto a Guineaman, then took his discharge at Sierra Leone to work for a slave trader named Amos Clow on the Plantain Islands and Banana Islands. In Clow’s absence Newton was placed in the household of Clow’s African mistress, “P.I.” (called “Princess Peye” of the Sherbro people in some sources). She mistreated him, half-starved him, and made him eat scraps thrown from her table; he himself wrote, “I have sometimes been relieved by strangers; nay, even by the slaves in the chain, who have secretly brought me victuals (for they durst not be seen to do so).” This is one of the explicit cases that lies behind Marcus Rediker’s claim in The Slave Ship that “marooned sailors survived on the charity of enslaved people.” Newton was transferred to a more humane white trader on the Boom Kittam River, then rescued in 1747 by Captain Anthony Gother of the Greyhound, sent out by Newton’s father at the request of Joseph Manesty. Newton later wrote of being “in effect, though without the name, a Captive and a Slave myself” for about eighteen months. His epitaph still describes him as “once a servant of slaves in Africa.” Newton’s testimony before the 1789–1790 Privy Council and Commons committees (HCSP indexed pp. 12, 36, 60, 67, 118) is one of the few first-person accounts in the abolition record of an Englishman pawned to and fed by Africans. Sierraleoneheritage + 8

James Field Stanfield (1749–1824) — Sailed from Liverpool to Benin c. 1774. In Observations on a Guinea Voyage (1788) he records that he spent eight months on shore at the kingdom of Benin (at Gatoe) before the Middle Passage. He wrote: “I never saw a happier race of people than those of the kingdom of Benin… every thing bore the appearance of friendship, tranquillity, and primitive independence.” Stanfield was one of only three of his original crew of about thirty to survive, and he was emphatic that captains routinely contrived to leave sick or troublesome men behind on the African coast: “By such means, they get rid of those who might call them to an account for their barbarities — and the money due to those, whom they have obliged to desert, is saved to their owners. The mortality, usually ascribed to a Guinea voyage, stops or lessens the proper inquiries about the fate of the crew.” Of his own first crew, after he managed all their accounts in Liverpool, he could find inquiries only after four men out of two crews. Stanfield names few stranded sailors individually because, as he himself argues, the system was designed to make them disappear without record — a key piece of context for everything else in this report. Google Books + 3

Alexander Falconbridge (c. 1760–1792) — Surgeon on four slaving voyages 1782–87. His Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (1788) does not name individual stranded sailors but supplies the statistical and structural context: of crews of 40–50 men leaving England, “scarcely three-fourths, and sometimes not one-third of the complement, ever return to the port from whence they sailed, through mortality and desertion.” He describes the practice of “boating” up the rivers of the Windward Coast — a “very pernicious and destructive” mode of slave collection in which sailors were absent from the ship for weeks at a time, and from which men frequently failed to return. He describes sick sailors put ashore on St. Thomas and Princes Island, “discharged” in the West Indies and dying of disease in the streets, and the cooper of his own ship beaten until “his face covered with blood” — the kind of crew member traditionally then “left ashore” or sold off. Falconbridge himself returned to West Africa in 1791 as commercial agent for the Sierra Leone Company at Granville Town and died there in 1792 — another educated Englishman who in effect ended his life on the African coast. Wikipedia + 4

Captain William Snelgrave (1681–1743) — In A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave-Trade (1734), Snelgrave describes British sailors who were “panyarred” (seized by African traders for debt or insult) up and down the coast. His own father William Snelgrave Sr. died at Old Calabar; Snelgrave himself was captured in April 1719 by the pirate Thomas Cocklyn off Sierra Leone and held for some weeks before being released. Snelgrave gives the only contemporary detailed narrative of the Ferrers Galley (Captain Messervy) at Anomabu in 1722, where the entire crew was killed by an enslaved-person uprising — a vivid case of British sailors “stranded” on the African coast in the most final sense. Wikipedia + 2

Samuel Robinson — Scottish cabin boy on the Liverpool slaver Lady Neilson (1801) and Crescent (1802) under his uncle Captain Alexander Cowan. His memoir, written in the 1860s (“I am the only man alive who served an apprenticeship to the slave trade”), describes being battered and ill on the Gold Coast, briefly being put ashore at the Rio Sestos near Sierra Leone, and being so badly injured by Captain John Ward of the Expedition that he never recovered enough to follow the sea. He represents the type of stranded sailor described by Stanfield — discharged sick, never paid, who only by luck survived to write. ayanetwork + 2

Bartholomew Roberts (the future “Black Bart,” c. 1682–1722) — Welsh second mate of the Guineaman Princess off Sierra Leone in June 1719. When Howell Davis’s pirates captured the Princess, Roberts was effectively stranded at the mercy of his captors and chose to join them. He was killed in 1722 in a Royal Navy action off Cape Lopez and his crew were tried and hanged at Cape Coast Castle. ayanetwork + 3

Henry Ellison — Common sailor whose testimony in the 1790 Commons enquiry (HCSP indexed under “Ellison”) supplied Marcus Rediker with the Africa/Nightingale story off Old Calabar (late 1760s). He gave eyewitness evidence about brutal punishments inflicted on the African coast, and is one of the few crewmen whose name appears repeatedly in the Privy Council record. Marcusrediker

Isaac Parker — Liverpool sailor who in 1790 testified to the Commons committee about events at Old Calabar. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database he had sailed on the Latham to the Bight of Biafra in 1766 and 1769. His testimony (HCSP, Lambert ed., pp. 123–139) describes being inland in the Calabar hinterland with the African slave trader “Dick Ebro” (Dick Ebruo) — meaning he had spent extended time ashore. He also gave evidence on the Gambia and Barbados. Taylor & Francis Online + 2

Thomas Morgan (Liverpool, Cameroon) and George Phillips (Cameroon) — Both common sailors (HCSP, pp. 129 and 130–131) who testified to the Commons about being inland in the Cameroons river system, including the panyarring of Captain Bibby’s pawns described by Wilberforce in his 1789 speech, where the abolitionist quoted directly from a letter describing British sailors held as hostages by African traders to enforce trade debts in Cameroon. Cambridge Core

Thomas Poplett — A Royal African Company / Company of Merchants Trading to Africa officer at Goree and the Gambia in the 1780s; testified at HCSP pp. 9–10, 26, 59, 63–64, on the conditions of European personnel marooned at the African forts. Cambridge Core

William Butterworth (real name; sometimes mis-attributed to Henry Schroeder) — Leeds engraver born 1769, sailed at age 16 on the Liverpool slaver Hudibras (Captain Jenkin Evans) from May 1786 to early 1788. His Three Years Adventures of a Minor in England, Africa, the West Indies, South Carolina and Georgia (Leeds, 1823) is the most detailed surviving common-sailor’s account of life on a slaving voyage. While at Old Calabar he formed friendships ashore with named African families (“I formed an agreeable acquaintance with a negro, who had a wife and three or four children… I frequently partook with the negroes, and they gave the food with as much cheerfulness as I accepted it”) — a documented case of an English sailor regularly fed in African homes. Butterworth witnessed the Hudibras slave insurrection of 1786 and a sailors’ near-mutiny. Yorkshire Post + 2

2. Cases of African Communities Sheltering, Feeding, Nursing, or Ransoming Stranded European Sailors

The general claim that “marooned sailors survived on the charity of enslaved people” is made by Rediker in The Slave Ship (2007). The specific cases that lie behind this generalization include: Socialist Worker

John Newton on the Plantain Islands (1745–47) — fed clandestinely by Clow’s enslaved people: “even by the slaves in the chain, who have secretly brought me victuals.” Cowperandnewtonmuseum
Joseph Banfield in Barring (1770) — sheltered by an “old man” of the village for 14 days, fed and given clothing.
Nicholas Owen and his four mate-mutineers (c. 1750) — sheltered for months on the run between Cape Mount and Sherbro by indigenous communities.
The crew of the Sherbro/Bullom region, who routinely fed and lodged stranded sailors of the Royal African Company in exchange for trade goods (testimony of Miss Norie of the Sherbro, HCSP p. 85). Cambridge Core
The Bristol Ruby hostage system (Cameroon River, 1780s), where African traders left their own relatives as pawns aboard slave ships in exchange for trade goods, while reciprocally British sailors were panyarred ashore as collateral for debts (described in Wilberforce’s 1789 speech; cf. Lovejoy and Richardson, “The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 67–89; “Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History,” American Historical Review 104 (1999): 332–55). PortCities Bristol
Rediker’s evidence of slave women in the Caribbean (not in Africa) nursing dying ex-slave-ship sailors who became “wharfingers,” “scow bankers,” and “beach horners” in Bridgetown, Kingston, and Port Royal — derived from sailors’ testimony in the 1790 Commons enquiry (HCSP, Lambert ed.) and from Equiano’s Interesting Narrative. The stunning passage in The Slave Ship about ex-slaves giving “amazing graces to discarded sailors” refers principally to the Caribbean ports, not to the African coast itself; readers should be cautious about conflating the two. Socialist WorkerLakefronthistorian

3. Royal Navy West Africa Squadron (post-1807): Sailors Ashore, Stranded, or Cared for by Africans

The Squadron lost roughly 1,587 sailors between 1830 and 1865, principally from yellow fever and malaria — a ratio of one sailor dead for every nine slaves freed. Most stranded Squadron sailors are anonymous in the records, but several documented cases survive: History ArchivesAll That’s Interesting

HMS Waterwitch (1839–1861) — A 10-gun sloop that captured 29 slave ships in three years before being sunk by a slaver in 1861; her memorial stands in the Castle Gardens, St. Helena. Captain Henry Matson (commanding 1839–43) employed 20 Kru sailors at any one time and his shipboard memoir, drawn on by John Rankin and Mary Wills, is one of the best sources for officer–African relations. Alan Lester + 3
Commodore Sir George Ralph Collier (HMS Creole, 1818) — His official correspondence describes anti-slavery feelings among his crews (“active benevolence” and “philanthropic feelings”), but he also personally cared for sick and shipwrecked British sailors brought to Freetown. The ConversationYahoo!
Commodore John Hayes — His correspondence (“Gracious God! Is this unparalleled cruelty to last for ever?”) is quoted extensively in Mary Wills, Envoys of Abolition (Liverpool University Press, 2019). The Conversation + 2
Lieutenant Henry Binstead of HMS Owen Glendower (Squadron flagship, 1820s) — His diary in the National Maritime Museum (used in the Chasing Freedom exhibition) records sailors of his ship dying of fever ashore at Sierra Leone and being nursed and buried by African and Krio residents of Freetown. History Archives
Lieutenant Philip de Sausmarez — Recorded by Wills as having tied an African captive in the rigging on a prize voyage; survived a shipwreck on the Bight of Benin coast and was lodged in a Krio mission station. The Conversation
John M’Kie, sailor — His memoir (cited by Alan Lester) describes the “exhilarating effect” of capturing a full slaver and the conditions of Squadron life including being briefly stranded ashore at Sierra Leone. Alan Lester
Captain the Hon. Joseph Denman — Active Squadron officer (1840s) whose papers, used in the Royal Naval Museum Chasing Freedom exhibition, describe rescue and care of British sailors blockaded ashore in the Gallinas River while he conducted his anti-slavery treaty negotiations there in 1840. History Archives
The freed Africans on St. Helena — Whose role in tending British and freed-African patients at the Liberated African Establishment in Rupert’s Valley was specifically commemorated by HMS Protector and the Lord Bishop of St. Helena in 2021. Historic UK

The single most important scholarly source for the personal experience of Squadron sailors (as opposed to officers) is Mary Wills, Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa (Liverpool, 2019), which draws on previously unpublished officers’ diaries and letters in private and county archives in the UK. The complementary source for African (especially Kru) sailors who served alongside the British is John Rankin’s articles in International Journal of Maritime History. AmazonAbeBooks

4. Sailors “Absorbed” Into African Coastal Communities

The phenomenon of British (and other European) sailors who married locally, became traders, or otherwise built lives on the African coast was real but small in scale, and most cases pre-date 1750. Named individuals include:

John Tucker (fl. 1665) — English Royal African Company / Gambia Adventurers agent who landed in Sherbro in 1665 alongside Zachary Rogers; married a Sherbro princess and founded the Tucker chiefly clan, which still exists. His descendant Henry Tucker (mid-18th century) was the most powerful merchant in Sherbro country in Newton’s day. (Source: Peter L. Tucker, The Tuckers of Sierra Leone, 1665–1914.) Wikipedia + 2
Thomas Corker (c. 1670) — RAC agent on York Island who married a Sherbro woman; ancestor of the Sherbro Caulker chieftaincy (the Sherbro Caulkers). WikiMili
Zachary Rogers (1665) — Founder of the Sherbro Rogers (Kpaka Rogers) Afro-European clan. Enacademic
Nicholas Owen (1750s, see above) — Settled on York Island in the Sherbro; never returned home; died there in 1759.
James Cleveland (late 18th century) — Anglo-African slave trader on the Banana Islands, Sierra Leone, descendant of an English sailor; cited in Bruce Mouser’s work and in George E. Brooks’s Eurafricans in Western Africa (Ohio U.P., 2003). The Root
John Ormond Sr. (c. 1750–c. 1791) — White Liverpool sailor who arrived in Sierra Leone as a cabin boy c. 1758–59, worked at Bunce Island, established himself at Boké on the Rio Pongo and became “the most notorious slave trader of the late 18th century.” His son John Ormond Jr. (“Mongo John”) inherited the business; the Ormonds form the most fully documented case in Bruce Mouser’s American Colony on the Rio Pongo (2013) of an English-sailor-turned-coastal-dynasty. The Root + 2
Thomas Gaffery Curtis, John Pearce (“King of Rio Nunez”), and William Skelton Jr. — All identified by David Eltis (in correspondence quoted in Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Were There ‘Mulatto’ Slave Traders?” essay) as Anglo-African coastal slave traders descended from European sailors who never returned home. The Root
“Old Cracker” John Leadstine — Head of the Bance Island slave factory in Sierra Leone in the 1720s, an English sailor who had become a coastal slave trader; the man who whipped Captain Tomba in front of John Atkins, surgeon of HMS Swallow (Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies, 1735). ayanetwork
James Plantain (also John Plantain) — Pirate-turned-coastal king of Ranter Bay, Madagascar (1720s), often confused with the Plantain Islands of Sierra Leone (the Sierra Leone Plantain Islands appear to take their name from a different “Captain John Plantain” who established a slave factory there before Newton’s time). WikipediaSierraleoneheritage

5. Pawning of Stranded Europeans

“Pawnship” — pledging a person as collateral for trade debt — was a long-established West African institution that European traders adopted as part of the credit machinery of the Atlantic slave trade. Although the great majority of pawns were Africans pledged to European captains, the reverse situation also occurred:

Cameroon River, c. 1789 — Captain Bibby of Liverpool refused to release a group of pawns from the African town and was himself “panyarred” (seized) by the local merchants until the dispute was settled; described in Wilberforce’s House of Commons speech of 12 May 1789, drawing on the Privy Council Report. Wilberforce quoted: “I cannot help having my suspicions… that there was a general combination in these unwarrantable practices among all the masters of the vessels then in Cameroons river.” Derekbishton
1709, Old Calabar — A British slave-trade captain was panyarred by African traders and held until a dispute over an alleged “mad” slave was resolved (Wikipedia “Panyarring,” citing Lovejoy & Richardson). Wikipedia
1773, Old Town Calabar — Chief Robin John Ephraim’s sons, having been pawned, were carried off as slaves by an English captain. The chief retaliated by panyarring the next British vessels in the river — the chain of events that produced the Robin Johns’ odyssey documented in Randy Sparks’s The Two Princes of Calabar (Harvard, 2004). WikipediaHarvard University Press
1722, Cape Coast Castle: Surgeon John Atkins of HMS Swallow records that the Royal African Company “used to make persons asking for credit pawn themselves to the Company, with the liability of being eventually sold” — the inverse of the system, but evidence that pawnship straddled racial lines. (Ellis, History of the Gold Coast.) Manuherbstein
Joseph Banfield (1770) — His account is itself a textbook example: the African “old man” of Barring would only release him “without one slave in my place” — i.e. on payment of a substitute pawn, which the Governor’s wife of Fort James eventually negotiated by threat of force. PortCities Bristol

The most important scholarly framework for these cases is Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, “The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c. 1600–1810,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 67–89; “Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade,” American Historical Review 104 (1999): 332–55; and the Cambridge Journal of African History article reassessing pawnship. Cambridge Core

6. James Field Stanfield’s Account of Sailors Left Behind

Stanfield does not name many of the individual sailors abandoned during his Liverpool–Benin voyage of 1774, partly because, as he wrote, “of the first crew, officers excepted, not one of them had sent their friends the smallest account of their destination.” Specific elements of his account that bear on the question are: Project Gutenberg

He spent eight months on shore at Gatoe in the kingdom of Benin while the ship gathered slaves, an experience in which he formed strong positive impressions of the local society.
He records, but does not name, “a most harmless, hard-working, worthy creature” — the cooper of his ship — beaten by the mate four times until “his face covered with blood,” then “hurried away” by sailors. The fate of such an injured man at the end of the voyage is the unspoken lesson of Stanfield’s letters. Encyclopedia VirginiaEncyclopedia Virginia
He details how captains drove the sick “shortened to the very verge of famine” and forced them either to die at sea or desert and be lost on the African coast or in the Caribbean. Of his own crew of about 30, only 15 reached Jamaica, and Stanfield ended his voyage as one of three original survivors when he reached Liverpool — the rest having “perished” in ways the “studied circumspection” of the trade kept “from the publick eye.” The Irish TimesThe Irish Times

Stanfield’s writings are therefore best read as a systemic account of how and why named individual stranded sailors became invisible, rather than a register of names.

7. Falconbridge on Abandoned Sailors

Falconbridge’s Account (1788) likewise gives more system than names, but he supplies these specifics:

The custom of unloading the sick at St. Thomas and Princes Island, where many died “in an old house, taken on purpose for their reception” — Falconbridge himself was nearly killed by the heat and stench when he descended into the slave deck and recovered only after several months ashore. gutenberg
Cases at the river Ambris (Angola) where the surgeon’s tent was ashore for weeks; the boating trade up the rivers of the Windward Coast that “is very pernicious and destructive to the crews of the ships,” with parties of sailors absent two or three weeks and frequently failing to return. Project Gutenberg
Falconbridge’s own subsequent fate: died at Granville Town, Sierra Leone in December 1792, in effect an English surgeon who ended his life on the African coast. Wikipedia

8. John Newton, William Snelgrave, and Others as Witnesses or Subjects

Newton’s Authentic Narrative (1764) and Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (1788), together with his Privy Council testimony (1789–90), supply the richest single first-person account of an English sailor enslaved/stranded on the West African coast. He explicitly described the pawnship system: “Sometimes, when goods are lent, or trusted on shore, the trader voluntarily leaves a free person, perhaps his own son, as a hostage, or pawn, for the payment; and, in case or default, the hostage is carried off, and sold.” He also alluded to “instances of unprincipled captains, who, at the close of what they supposed their last voyage… have detained, and carried away, free people with them; and left the next ship, that should come from the same place, to bear the consequences” — confirming both inward and outward kidnapping at the African–European maritime frontier. Spartacus EducationalSpartacus Educational

Snelgrave (1734) supplies the most graphic stories of crews killed wholesale on the African coast — the Eagle Galley (Old Calabar, 1704), the Elizabeth (Sierra Leone, 1719, after pirate plunder), and the Ferrers Galley (Anomabu, 1722) — each a case of British sailors stranded by mutiny, piracy, or violence and never seen again. SlaverebellionEncyclopedia Virginia

9. European Forts as Refuges (Cape Coast Castle, Fort James, Goree, Bunce Island)

Stranded sailors regularly turned up at the European forts:

Cape Coast Castle, 3 January 1772 — Council records (in Crooks, Records relating to the Gold Coast Settlements, London, 1923): “8 soldiers at CC castle afflicted with ulcers; will never recover in this country. Sent off the coast by any vessel who will carry them. Five pounds per head to be paid to the Master.” This is one of the few documented monetary records of stranded British military personnel being shipped off the coast as living cargo. Manuherbstein
Surgeon John Atkins of HMS Swallow (1721) described the wretched condition of Royal African Company personnel at the Castle, “wretchedly paid and badly used,” fined heavily and effectively trapped on the coast. Also described sailors deserting from HM ships into the Castle and being recaptured (the captain of the Company’s garrison who escaped to a brig was retaken by the Weymouth and his rescuer flogged). ManuherbsteinManuherbstein
Fort James, Gambia River — As shown by the Banfield case, the fort served as an active rescue centre for shipwrecked British sailors; the Governor’s wife was the agent of his ransom.
Bunce Island, Sierra Leone (1670–1840) — The English/London-firm slave fortress where stranded sailors and disabled traders routinely ended up; Newton was rescued from nearby Boom Kittam in 1747 by a Bunce-area ship. UNESCOWikiMili
Goree — Senegal slave-trading centre administered (1758 onwards) by the British Company of Merchants Trading to Africa; Thomas Poplett’s HCSP testimony (pp. 9–10, 26, 59, 63–64) describes its conditions. Cambridge Core

10. Parliamentary and Privy Council Evidence (1788–1792)

The most comprehensive printed source is the eight-volume British Parliamentary House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1788–1792, edited by Sheila Lambert (1975), indexed in History in Africa by Suzanne Schwarz and Paul Lovejoy. Named seamen who gave testimony bearing directly on stranding, abandonment, or African shelter include: Cambridge Core

Isaac Parker (Liverpool/Old Calabar/Gambia/Barbados) — pp. 123–139. Cambridge Core
Henry Ellison — testimony on the Africa and Nightingale.
Thomas Morgan (Liverpool/Cameroon) — p. 129. Cambridge Core
George Phillips (Cameroon) — pp. 130–131. Cambridge Core
Isaac Nixon (Liverpool/Cameroon/Barbados) — pp. 189, 318. Cambridge Core
Captain John Smith (London/Bonny) — pp. 226, 238, 273–293. Cambridge Core
Captain William Sherwood (Liverpool/Bonny/Bight of Benin) — pp. 203–205. Cambridge Core
Rev. John Newton — pp. 12, 36, 60, 67, 118. Cambridge Core
James Towne, carpenter — described stranded shipboard conditions. Black History Month
Dr. Thomas Trotter, surgeon (Gold Coast, Brookes) — pp. 81–101, 110–113, 115; described the unnamed Fante trader from “Saltpan” who took his own life rather than cross the Atlantic. Cambridge Core
Charles Berns Wadström, Swedish naturalist (Senegal/Goree/Gambia) — pp. 18–44; described conditions of European personnel at the forts. Cambridge Core
Captain Thomas Bolton Thompson, RN (Sierra Leone/Gold Coast) — pp. 169–177. Cambridge Core
Miss Norie of the Sherbro (Upper Guinea) — p. 85; one of the very few female English witnesses, who testified to the daily life of European traders and pawned dependents. Cambridge Core

A Note on Limitations of the Evidence

Three caveats run through this whole literature. First, almost all named first-person accounts come from the small minority of literate sailors who survived; Stanfield, Falconbridge, Rediker, and Christopher all argue that the typical stranded common sailor disappeared without record. Second, several of Rediker’s most evocative passages — about ex-slaves giving “amazing graces to discarded sailors” — refer to Caribbean ports rather than to West Africa itself, and care should be taken not to conflate the two. Third, the post-1807 Squadron’s experience is dominated by officer-class diaries (used by Mary Wills); the experience of common Squadron sailors stranded ashore remains under-documented and is one of the genuine gaps in the field. The Kru and Krio sailors who served alongside the British and whose communities (often) cared for stranded white seamen left far less of a written record than did their officers.

Key Modern Scholarship Used

Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking, 2007), esp. chs. 5 (Stanfield), 6 (Newton), and 8 (the sailor’s vast machine). Britishtars
Emma Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807 (Cambridge, 2006).
Mary Wills, Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa (Liverpool, 2019).
Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (Harvard, 2004).
Bruce Mouser, “Trade, Coasters, and Conflict in the Rio Pongo from 1780 to 1808,” Journal of African History (1973), and American Colony on the Rio Pongo (2013). The Root
George E. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa (Ohio, 2003). The Root
Peter L. Tucker, The Tuckers of Sierra Leone, 1665–1914.
Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, “The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 67–89; “Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History,” American Historical Review 104 (1999): 332–55.
Suzanne Schwarz and Paul E. Lovejoy, “An Index to the Slavery and Slave Trade Enquiry: The British Parliamentary House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1788–1792,” History in Africa.
Jennifer Lofkrantz and Olatunji Ojo, “Slavery, Freedom, and Failed Ransom Negotiations in West Africa, 1730–1900,” Journal of African History 53 (2012): 25–44. JSTOR
Eveline Martin (ed.), Journal of a Slave-Dealer: Nicholas Owen (1930).
Bruce Hindmarsh, John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition (1996).
John Rankin, articles on Kru sailors in International Journal of Maritime History.

This body of work, taken together with the primary sources excerpted above, makes clear that Joseph Banfield’s experience — overset by a tornado, sheltered by Africans for fourteen days, ransomed by Europeans for the price of one slave — was not an anomaly but a representative case of a much larger but largely unrecorded phenomenon, in which the West African coast functioned simultaneously as a graveyard, a refuge, a pawn-market, and a place of unexpected absorption for the British and Irish sailors of the slave-trade and post-abolition eras.