The Persistence of Thomas Clarkson
At length, I arrived at the place of my last hope. On my first day’s expedition I boarded forty vessels, but found no one in these, who had been on the coast of Africa in the Slave-trade. One or two had been there in King’s ships; but they had never been on shore. Things were now drawing near to a close; and, notwithstanding my success as to general evidence in this journey, my heart began to beat, I was restless and uneasy during the night. The next morning, I felt agitated again between the alternate pressure of hope and fear; and in this state I entered my boat. The fifty-seventh vessel, which I boarded in this harbour, was the Melampus frigate. One person belonging to it, on examining him in the captain’s cabin, said he had been two voyages to Africa; and I had not long discoursed with him before I found, to my inexpressible joy, that he was the man.*
Abridged.
From ‘The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament’ Vol. 2 (1808), by Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846).
* HMS Melampus, named after a legendary Greek seer and ruler of Argos, was a 36-gun frigate laid down at Bristol in 1782 and launched three years later. She served with distinction throughout the wars against the French, and was among the vessels that liberated the slaves of Algiers in 1816.
* His name, we learn, was Isaac Parker.