Scottish slavers in West Africa

One slaving venture involved Sir Alexander Grant of Dalvey. In 1748, with Richard Oswald of Caithness and others, he bought an old slaving fort on Bance Island , at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River.

They repaired the fort partly with money from Oswald’s wife, Mary Ramsay . Her father, Alexander Ramsay of Laithers, near Turriff [Map1], had left her a fortune from his planting and business ventures in Jamaica.

People inland go to war on purpose to make slaves. If there is no demand they won’t go to war. … The whites make Africans make war on each other, giving arms and ammunition to both parties.
Chief Namina Modoro explains the slave trade in Sierra Leone to Zachary Macaulay, 1793

Note: Click images to enlarge

A Jamaican heiress of Aberdeenshire origins – Mary Ramsay Oswald, by Johann Zoffany, c.1764. (© The National Gallery)

Fulani traders bringing captives to the coast for sale to Europeans, drawn by a British slaving captain, Samuel Gamble, in 1793. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

A Congolese drum from the 19th century depicts a European trader drinking alcohol. (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

Between 1749 and 1784, Grant and Oswald’s employees in Sierra Leone sold over 12,000 African men, women and children to slaving ships. They did not capture the people themselves. Instead they imported guns, alcohol [2B2], metal and cloth to exchange with local kings who brought captives to sell at Bance Island.

James Low was an Aberdeenshire clerk who worked at the fort. In 1762 he noted that a ‘prime healthy slave’ cost 65 iron bars – just over £16.

He also recorded that nearly 100 captives died each year before they could be sold to slaving ships. They are a reminder of the millions of Africans who suffered from the slave trade without ever leaving Africa.

The Masters of African vessels can't persuade the New Negroes that they are not to be killed and eat by White Men - and many of them throw themselves overboard to return to their own country. If you attempt to capture them, they dive and are no more.
Jonathan Troup describes suicides on slaving ships, 1789