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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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hostilities . Some qf the traders were secured on beard , some were killed in resisting , and some got overboard and were fired upon . When the firing began , the New Town people who were in ambush behind the point , came forward and picked up the people of Old
Town who were swimming and had escaped the firing . After the firing was over , the captains of five of the ships delivered their prisoners ( persons of consequence , ) to the New Town canoes , two of whom were beheaded along-side the ships ; the inferior prisoners were carried to the West-Indies . One of the
captains who had secured three of the king ' s brothers , delivered one of them to the chief man of New Town , who was one of the two beheaded alongside : the other brothers he kept on board , promising when the shi p "was slaved , to deliver them to the chief man of
New Town . His ship was soon slaved from this promise , and the number of prisoners made that day ; but he refused to deliver the king ' s two brothers , and carried them to the West Indies , and sold them . Thence they escaped to Virginia , and thence after three years to Bristol , where the captain who brought them , fearing he had done V ^ rong , meditated carrying or sending them back to Virginia . Jones of Bristol , who had ships trading to Old Calabar , had them taken from the ship ( where they were in irons ) by an Habeas Corpus . —The king escaped from the ship he was in , by killing two of the crew who attempted to seize
him : he then got into a one man canoe , and paddled to the shore ; a six-pounder from one of the ships struck the canoe to pieces ; he then swam on shore to the woods near the ship , and reached his own town though * closely pursued ; it was said , he received eleven wounds from musket shot . "
It appears that this account of the massacre was given on the authority of the boatswain of one of the vessels engaged , and confirmed by a deposition taken at Bristol
in 1773 , from the nuitcof another vessel . It also agreed with the affidavits , made by the surviving brothers of the African king , a pTinted copy of which I once had in inv possession .
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The two brothers thu& rescued from the slavery to which they were a second time devoted , had the happiness , on their liberation at Bristol , to come under the
notice of the late Rev * Charles Wesley , who then presided over the methodist connexion in that city . Mr . W . appears to have paid great attention to their improvment , and especially ; as might have been expected , to their
religious instruction . I have some papers in the hand -writing of these Africans , as appears by Mr . Wesley ' s endorsement . These he communicated to his friend , my much respected father . On his decease , more than 30 years ago , they came into my possession and have never been published .
From these papers it appears that a ship was provided , probably by Jones the trader to Old Calabar mentioned in the evidence , to convey the brothers to their own country . They sailed from Bristol , in March , 1774 . The vessel was wrecked on one of the Cape
de Verd Islands , where they suffered great hardships . An American schooner conveyed them , to Barbadoes , from whence they returned to Bristol , after an
absence of three months . An account of the voyage and shipwreck they wrote in two letters to Mr . Wesley , dividing between them this arduous task of composition . Ancona Robin Robin John tells the story to their shipwreck on the Island , when Little Ep hraim Robin John continues the . account to their re-arrival-at Bristol . The penmanship and orthography of these papers are lik ^ those of an European , who ) n hue lite acquires a very partial education . From this , which &
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294 Account of Calabar Massacre and Two AJrican Princes .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1808, page 294, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2393/page/2/
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