Thomas Phillips from Brecon got money from a the local MP and slave trader Sir Jeffery Jeffries to buy the Hannibal, a large slave ship.
He made one journey from Britain to Africa and then on to the Caribbean before returning, in ill health, to live out his days in Brecon. Captain's Walk in Brecon is still named in his honour.
Phillips' diary has become a valuable source for historians studying the slave trade. He describes, for example, the branding of Africans:
"We mark the slaves we had bought on the breast or shoulder with a hot iron, having the ship's name on it, the place being before anointed with a little palm oil which caused but little pain, the mark usually being well in four or five days."
He also tells of the cruelty of African rulers who traded with the European captains.
"The King of Whydah, often, when ships are in great straight for slaves and cannot be supply'd otherwise, will sell 300 or 400 or his wives to complete their number."
But Steve Murdoch of St Andrews University, who has studied the diaries, says Phillips was "a bit special" and more humane than other captains of his time.
Phillips tells of an incident at the infamous slave port of Wydah in 1694 when Africans tried to kill themselves rather than being taken away in slave ships.
"The negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that they have often leape'd out of the canoes, boat and ship, and kept underwater till they were drowned to avoid being taken up and saved... they having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than ewe have of hell, though in reality they live much better there than in their own country, but home is home etc."
Dr Murdoch told a BBC Radio Wales special programme on links between Wales and the slave trade that more experienced officers were advising Phillips to terrify the Africans by cutting the arms or legs off a "few of the more wilful".
"Phillips is absolutely outraged by this...It clear that all the way through that Phillips is something different. He won't do it," he said.
When he returns to Brecon and edits his diaries he also makes some remarkably liberal comments on race. In one passage he says:
"Nor can I imagine why they should be despised for their colour, being what they cannot help. I can't think there is any intrinsic value in one colour more than another, that white is better than black, only we think it is so, because we are so, and prone to judge favourably in our own case."
But however liberal these reflections were for a slave captain, Dr Murdoch says Phillips was a "man of his time". His views didn't stop him participating in the slave trade. He referred to the Africans on his ship as "cargo" and around 400 of them died on the way between the African coast and the Caribbean.
Written by Nick Skinner
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Ben Davies, Brisbane Australia
Phil's point is a fair one. In response to Michael's point - The African slave trade is not only the responsibilty of White Europeans : It was far easier and more common to make use of existing African middlemen and slave traders.
It is believed that capital punishment in the region nearly disappeared since prisoners became far too valuable to dispose of in such a way.
For the Atlantic slave trade, captives purchased from slave dealers in West African regions known as the Slave Coast, Gold Coast, and Côte d'Ivoire were sold into slavery as a result of a defeat in warfare. In the Bight of Biafra near modern-day Senegal and Benin, some African kings sold their captives locally and later to European slave traders for goods such as metal cookware, rum, livestock, and seed grain. Previous to the voyage, the victims were held in "slave castles" and deep pits where many died from multiple illnesses and malnutrition.
Tue Jun 3 09:10:19 2008
Mikme Fawdrey, Staffs
i agree totally with Phil, my surname is quite unusual and after searching the web I discovered that at a time of slump in England in the 1800s some of my family members were sent from Oxfordshire to New York state to create a new village with the same name of the one they had left. They had no choice other than to starve. They are now classed as pioneers of New York State. In the 1800s thousands of working class left for the new world and Australia and New Zealand because they were starving, many died on the journey. caused changes to the prison system. People could be hung for poaching a ! rabbit, or a loaf of bread. My Dad told me as a child he was horsewhipped by the local squire for not opening a field gate so that squire could ride in. In the early 1960s I was apprenticed at a very low rate of pay and when the employer had to start paying a reasonable wage I was sacked as too dear. Ive just come back from Tennessee where I visited a slave holding estate which provided some pause for thought. Whilst not trying to defend slavery the guides in the house made the point that it was in the interests of the estate owners to look after slaves in much the same way as other livestock. Slavery is dreadful, it was practised by Germany in WW2 and the companies which practised it were never brought! to book...
Mon May 26 21:36:32 2008
Joseph Batty
What of the British slaves in the mills and pits etc? Here in our village the local squire shot his gun accross the villagers to send them to their beds each evening (queensbury village) and that was after the truck act.
Sat Mar 24 18:17:27 2007
Michael Lewis, Virginia
Regarding Phil's response, it is unacceptable to mitigate the inhuman nature of African slavery by equating it with the servile plight of british "Subjects" from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.
Slavery emasculated a segment of our race because of a different skin colour and a different social development pattern.
Prejudice and bigotry and discrimination have all combined to create social circumstances which distance the average black person from competing on a fair and level playing field.I recall only too well the fellow Welshpeople of a different colour who lived beyond Cardiff's Bute Street Bridge, coralled in poverty in The Docklands and the notorious Tiger Bay.
Dialect, address, education... Who do you think generally got through the interview and got the job ?
They say that we white people of today are not guilty and not responsible for the sins of our fathers, but we have reaped the benefits of the sufferings of others and the best way in my opinion to reddress the inbalance is to enact the sort of US affirmative action programs which carved out a space in the system to begin to provide a bridge to integration and equality of opportunity.
Thu Mar 22 09:52:42 2007
Phill, Welshpool
I am not condoning slavery, far from it, but we should all bear in mind that a great amount of the general populace of England, Ireland, scotland and not least Wales were themselves as good as slaves at this time. If you were a worker and not in either upper or middle class you were indentures to the nearest landowner. You were a slave up until late Victorian era.
Sun Mar 11 11:05:57 2007
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