Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every year I buy Sophie a weapon.
It's true.
It's also about bad people, except for this episode. Well, this week we're doing a reverse episode about some heroes, the people who ended the British slave trade and eventually the whole Atlantic slave trade. And, you know... They're good people. We haven't talked about them yet. We've only talked about bad people so far. Episode one was really a lot of bad stuff in one.
And I do apologize for that on the Christmas week. Our guest today is big ship guy, James Stout. Big boat man, James Stout. Captain James Stout. Captain James Stout. Sir Captain James Stout.
Chapter 2: Who are the heroes discussed in this episode?
Not one of those things. Again, never been near a king. But yeah, I do like to go on a boat. I get very unwell, but I don't let that stop me. No, no, no. I'm afflicted with seasickness. If I've learned one thing about the history of sailing, no one has ever let being sick stop them from getting on a boat. You can't. You can't. You gotta power through it.
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Chapter 3: What role did Olaudah Equiano play in ending the slave trade?
And so they spend some time on voyages together, and he's still kind of being treated more like a servant. They're engaged in, like, pirates attacks several times. Like, he helps defend the ship in several desperate battles. They travel the oceans of the world.
And Olaudah says that at this time, he feels a growing loyalty and affection for Pascal, who he believes has been so kind to him because he plans to free him one day, right? So he's really, like, as loyal to this dude as he can because he thinks that, like, I found a good one, right? Unfortunately, he has not. That is not the case.
Yeah.
In an article for documenting the American South on Equiano, Jen Williamson summarizes, he is shocked at an abrupt betrayal during a layover in England when Pascal has him roughly seized and forced into a barge. Pascal sells Equiano to Captain James Duran, the captain of a ship bound for the West Indies.
Dazed by his sudden change in fortunes, Equiano argues with Captain Duran that Pascal could not sell him to me, nor to anyone else. I have served him many years, and he has taken all my wages and prize money. I have been baptized, and by the laws of the land, no man has a right to sell me.
After Duran tells Equiano he talks too much English and threatens to subdue him, Equiano begins service under a new master, for he is too well convinced of his power over me to doubt what he said. Right? So he's like, but, like, I did all the stuff I'm supposed to do. I feel like I'm English now. And he's like, if you keep talking English, I'm going to beat the shit out of you. Right?
Like, that's what happens here.
Yeah.
So he's taken back to the West Indies. He endures the nightmare trip down the Middle Passage a second time, which is just an unthinkable hell to have to do twice. He writes of seeing white members of the crew gratify their brutal passion with females not 10 years old on the journey. In other words, they're just raping any ā The female that is on the boat, right?
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Chapter 4: How did Granville Sharp contribute to the abolition movement?
Right. So he is simultaneously repeatedly being like enslaved people are property and my ruling should not be seen to free anyone. And is also clearly capable of understanding that they're human beings because he is a black woman. Right. And there's there are a couple of moments where because he's never talks in a way that's very sympathetic to this.
But there's a couple of rulings where it's like, well, maybe this is where his sympathy moved him a little bit. Not to give him much credit, because I don't think he's a very nice guy, but he's a really interesting judge to be trying in this case, right? Now, and again, he is not considered a friendly judge. Sharp considers him a deeply hostile judge, in fact.
And in the Zorg case, Mansfield has no trouble ruling that enslaved Africans are property. Anyway, by the time we hit 1783, Sharp is well-established as the guy to talk to if you're trying to defend or create rights for enslaved people in England, right? And so it's not hard to see why our friend Olada Equiano would like Granville Sharp, right? Seems like a pretty natural friendship. Yeah.
And so once Equiano reads that article about the Zorg case, he does the 1700s equivalent of pasting a link to a news article in the group chat, and he like sends a copy to his friend Granville Sharp. Granville writes in his diary, Gustavus Vassa called on me with an account of 130 Negroes being thrown alive into the sea from on board an English slave ship.
And this is the start of a process that is going to terminate in the creation of the first mass movement against slavery in British history, right? This is the inciting instant. Is Equiano sending this letter to Granville Sharp? So Sharp hits the ground running.
He starts meeting with the lawyers who represented the insurers in that case and is like, hey, I think we can file an action against the Gregson syndicate and request a new trial. And I think we can win that new trial because we didn't really have a full trial last time.
If we really make a thing of this, we can make them go through discovery and we can look at the log books and the other documentation kept by the crew of the Zorg, right? And we can see, did they really need to kill those people? You know? Yeah. He also starts barraging influential figures in the country with letters demanding the Admiralty Court charge the crewmen of the Zorg with murder.
He's going to do this the rest of his life. It never works, but he does keep trying, right? Most of his efforts don't bear fruit, but he succeeds in getting a hearing over a motion to set a new trial. And this hearing is scheduled for May 21st, 1783, less than two months after the first trial. Gregson v. Gilbert, which is the hearing, is not going to be a tiny, largely ignored case.
It's going to be a major court thing with exacting notes taken on court proceedings and a huge amount of media attention covering every twist and turn. Sharp is not technically the lawyer here, but he's basically acting as an advisor to the defense counsel, which consisted of three lawyers. Right.
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