I’m big on bearing witness to history. The slave market in Zanzibar left a lasting impression and I was expecting something similar at Bunce Island. But, as my mother was fond of saying, ‘Blessed is she who expects nothing for she shall never be disappointed’.
Parcelled as part of a day trip taking in both Tasso Island and Bunce, the visit to this small inhabited island was sandwiched between a visit to Tasso Town and lunch at Kissi Camp.
A major 18th-century slave-holding site, Bunce Island was the last stop in Africa for tens of thousands of slaves bound for Europe and America. We were told of two systems of slavery. The Portuguese allowed their slaves to see their friends and relatives; the British treated theirs as ‘second-class animals’. I found this interesting article by Andrew Shepherd on the two main slave-trading nations, if you’re curious to know more.
This tiny uninhabited island, once home to the largest Slave Castle on the Rice Coast, has left its mark on history in more ways than one.
During the American Revolutionary War the French, jealous of Bunce Island’s commercial success, took the opportunity of their alliance with the American colonists to attack and destroy the castle in 1779. Thus, a battle of the American Revolution was actually fought on Bunce Island. But even more important, Henry Laurens, who had grown rich from the trade in African slave labor, became President of the Continental Congress and later US envoy to Holland. Captured by the British and imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was bailed out of jail by his friend Richard Oswald. Later, Laurens and Oswald sat across the table from one another at the Paris negotiations that led to American independence. Thus, US independence was negotiated, in part, between Bunce Island’s British owner and his long-time agent for the sale of Rice Coast Africans in South Carolina.
Much of what’s still standing is in ruins but the history remains.
Bunce Island was established as a slave trading station in 1670. From 1670 to 1728 two companies- the Gambia Adventurers and the Royal African Company of England ran Bunce Island one after the other. Bunce Island’s prosperity ran from 1744 to 1807 during private management by a consortium of London firms. At their slave trading heights British traders shipped tens of thousands of African slaves to the Americas from this place. The trading fort was subjected to attacks a number of times by other Europeans. Slave trading ceased on the island with the abolition of slace trade in 1808. It was however in the 1840 that the Bunce Island fort was finally abandoned. Bunce Island was declared a National Monument in 1948.
We walked through the gate of no return, safe in the knowledge that, unlike tens of thousands of captives who walked this way towards an uncertain future, we would be going back.
We ambled by the canons, all originals. We wandered through the ruins and I tried hard to imagine what things might have been like 250 years ago.
Looking at what was the original branding fire, it was difficult to imagine the savagery of it all. I tried. I really did. I could see it but I couldn’t feel it. Unlike the Peace Museum in Freetown, where I was moved to tears, Bunce Island felt unrelatable.
Here, slaves were branded as originating in Sierra Leone when they first got to the island. Slaves from this stretch of West Africa, known as the Rice Coast, were in high demand by rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia.
Bunce Island illuminates the slave trade in a dimension that is unique. The property stands today to testify in the greatest measure the only instance in the slave trade were slaves were valued on account of their skills. Although tens of thousands of Africans passed through Bunce Island into slavery, in general, slaves from other parts of Africa outnumbered those from Sierra Leone in the Americas. In South Carolina and Georgia however, the concentration of slaves from Sierra Leone outnumbered those from any other single area in Africa.
Then, when they were purchased for shipment, they were rebranded with their new owner’s brand.
Families were torn apart. Men and women separated, held 300 at a time, while the prospective buyers looked down on them from above – catalogue shopping.
What happened to them? Did many survive? Did any return?
I had more questions than I had answers.
I’d noticed a fishing boat off Tasso Island called the Mary Moran. I was caught by the Irishness of the name and made a note to check it out later.
I’m glad I did.
I found a documentary about some dogged detective work by an anthropologist, a linguist, and an ethnomusicologist searching for the roots of a song still sung in one village in Sierra Leone and by one woman in Georgia, USA – Mary Moran.
Now would be a good time to get that coffee.
The Language You Cry In tells an amazing scholarly detective story reaching across hundreds of years and thousands of miles from 18th-century Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia. It recounts the even more remarkable saga of how African Americans retained links with their African past through the horrors of the Middle Passage, slavery and segregation. The film dramatically demonstrates the contribution of contemporary scholarship to restoring what narrator Vertamae Grosvenor calls the “non-history” imposed on African Americans.
My dad’s cousin did our family tree some years back. I’m as Irish as they come – on both sides. I don’t know what it’s like to not know where I come from.
I wonder if it would bother me if I weren’t so certain.
It’s pretty amazing that the Gullahs of coastal Georgia have kept their connections to Sierra Leone alive, centuries later.
I wondered, too, about those whose ancestors were slave owners who traded in human life. What sort of genetic imprint would that leave on a soul? Remember Ben Affleck’s reaction a few years back when he discovered that his great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves?
Some traders, like John Newton, came to see the light. He was a press-ganged sailor turned slave trader who became a clergyman and gained fame as the author of the classic hymn Amazing Grace. Seeing the riches to be made, Newton got a discharge from the Navy when he docked in Sierra Leone and started learning his trade in the Banana Islands, later moving to Plantain Island. He also has an Irish connection – it’s a small world indeed.
We saw yet another well where the stubborn and incalcitrant were deposited to reflect upon the error of their ways. Man’s propensity for cruelty and his lack of compassion are astounding.
After paying our respects to the splendid African Stone Tree, we made our way back to the boat for our return to Tasso and lunch at the Baobab.
I’m still thinking about why I couldn’t relate to these accounts as I did in Zanzibar. Sensory overload perhaps? Too much to think about? No more space in my head?
Slavery is horrendous and rather than something consigned to the past, it is still very much a concern today with more than 50 million people enslaved around the world.
When will we learn?
Learn to treat all people with respect and compassion. Learn not to take our freedom for granted. Learn to be more human.
