John Clarkson is best remembered for his actions during a three-year period. In 1790 he led a fleet of 15 ships, containing nearly 1200 destitute, freed slaves living in Canada to start new lives in Sierre Leone in West Africa. He became the colony’s first Governor and introduced the world’s first election involving women voters.
Clarkson’s Early Years
John Clarkson was born on 4 April 1764, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England. He attended Wisbech Grammar School where his father was headmaster. John joined the Royal Navy in 1777 as a ‘young gentleman’ on HMS Monarch. He fought in several sea battles during the American War of Independence before receiving his commission as a lieutenant in 1782. He served in nine Royal Navy ships, and would have observed black slavery in British colonies, before returning to England in 1783.
In 1789 John Clarkson became a member of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. His older brother, Rev. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), was a well known advocate for the abolition of the slave trade and both brothers were closely associated with William Wilberforce, although Thomas Clarkson assumed a much more prominent role than John on the Committee.
Canada to Sierre Leone – a Long and Dangerous Voyage
In 1790 Thomas Peters, an escaped slave living in Canada, lobbied the British government. He had joined the British army during the American War of Independence (American Revolution), and was one of countless black people who had subsequently left the ex-colonies with the defeated white Loyalists. The blacks were left in Nova Scotia in Canada where these escaped slaves were supposed to receive freedom and land. Destitute, they didn't get either. When Peters told the British government about how the King's promises were being betrayed, the abolitionist committee decided to dispatch someone to Canada to find out about how the newly freed Britons were being mistreated. They sent John Clarkson, then aged 26.
Clarkson kept a diary from the first day he set sail from London to Halifax, Nova Scotia. His first entry says that he felt unworthy, and terrified that he couldn't deliver the happiness and freedom the people wanted. When he arrived he was shocked by the poverty he encountered. Clarkson assembled a large transport fleet of 15 ships and announced that the freed slaves could travel, if they wished, to Sierre Leone in West Africa.
Clarkson was inundated by people who wanted to go, and was very conscious that, for many, the last time they had crossed the Atlantic they were in chains. He decided to have a properly equipped hospital ship, and that he would sail on it. He dictated what kind of food the travellers would have, and established rules for the white sailors stating that the blacks were to be treated as passengers.
The fleet departed late in 1790 with 1200 freed slaves, meeting terrible conditions at sea. An extraordinary storm nearly wrecked the fleet. After a harrowing trans-Atlantic passage in winter when Clarkson came close to death, the flotilla remarkably arrived intact in Freetown harbour in March 1792.
Sierra Leone and Beyond
Clarkson stayed in Sierra Leone for the first year. He wanted the people to have good local government and that they should have the right to vote. The first time in history that women were allowed to have an equal say in elections was in 1793 when the black women of Sierra Leone voted.
But there were many problems - he was very hostile to the white officials sent from London to keep the colony in order. In his diary he wrote that they were mostly drunk, corrupt, incompetent and very brutal to the people.
He went back to London on sick leave and to marry his fiancé, stormed into a council meeting of the Sierra Leone Committee, accused them of arraogance and was promptly sacked. The settlers in Sierre Leone hated the replacement governors and wanted John to return, but he told them that while he was honoured that they had faith in him, it was now time to obey the law.
John Clarkson's Later Life
On 24 April 1793, the day after his dismissal as governor of Sierra Leone, John Clarkson married Susan Lee. He became manager of a chalk and lime quarry, and in 1820 became a banker at Woodbridge, Suffolk. The couple had ten children, but six pre-deceased their father.
Throughout the rest of his life he continued to hope for the abolition of the slave trade and the end of slavery, and when Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 part of his dream was realised. However, he did not live to see the end of slavery in the British Empire in 1838.
He is buried in St Mary's churchyard in Woodbridge, Suffolk.
John Clarkson had a dramatic early life, a quiet rural life in later years, but a remarkable 3–year period in his late 20s helping to settle freed black slaves in Africa gave him his place in history.
Source:
“Rough Crosssings: Britain, The Slaves and the American Revolution” by Simon Schama, BBC Books 2006
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