A Tale of Ship Wrecks and Slavery.
In December 1701, Dunworley received a surprise visit from a slave ship of the Royal African Company. The ship was named The Amity and was bound for London having departed the Guinea coast in Africa. The Amity was heavily laden with ivory and camm-wood (a red hardwood from the African Padauk tree).
A series of Atlantic storms blew the ship hopelessly off course and onto a submerged reef in Dunworley Bay. In no time the ship was pounded to pieces on the rocks and its cargo scattered in all directions. All hands were drowned save a black slave boy who somehow made it ashore under ferocious conditions. Folklore tells us that the following morning Dunworley’s beach was littered with dead bodies, some were Africans, the remainder were white-skinned.
We do not know how many lost their lives on that fateful night but we can assume around fifty people including captain Phaxton, the average slave-ship engaged a fifty-man crew to work their vessels, local lore gives us an insight into the sectarian attitudes of the day. The African corpses on Dunworley Strand were presumed to be heathens and therefore buried in shallow graves in the sands where they lay. However, white skinned corpses were presumed to be Christians and carted off to be buried in hallowed ground.
Further accounts of the welfare of the slave boy fade from the record. The slave boy does not appear to have made it back to London – there are numerous mentions of him in letters from the ship’s owners. Did he die of pneumonia as a result of his long immersion in the storm-tossed Atlantic on that fateful night in December 1701? Could he have died as a result of injuries inflicted on him when his ship broke up on the foaming reef? We do not know!
Throughout the Amity saga, it seems the locals were busy spiriting away tusks and camm wood washed up on the shores. Amity tusks can still be seen in some local gardens near Dunworley.
(National Maritime Museum)