Olaudah Equiano’s interesting life

ABOUT 1768, Olaudah Equiano returned from America to Britain, where his very interesting life continued to unfold. He went back to work on the sea, travelling sometimes as a helper on deck. In 1773, he travelled on the Royal Navy ship HMS Racehorse to the Arctic in an expedition towards the North Pole.

Equiano worked with Dr Charles Irving, who had developed a process to distill seawater. Two years later, Irving recruited Equiano to work on a project on the Mosquito Coast in Central America. They had a working relationship for more than 10 years, but the project eventually collapsed. Equiano left the Mosquito Coast in 1776 and arrived at Plymouth, England, on January 7, 1777.

Indeed, it was a very interesting life he had, and in 1789 he published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It is one of the earliest books published by a black African writer in the Western Hemisphere, and is regarded as the most comprehensive narrative of an enslaved black person. In London, it was printed for and sold by the author at 10 Union Street, Middlesex Hospital. It was also sold by many people of note, and had a very long list of subscribers.

In it, Equiano gave an account of his country, its culture and customs; his birth and parentage; his kidnapping along with his sister; horrors of a slave ship; his journey to Virginia; his arrival in England; his wonder of seeing his first snowfall; the celebrated engagement between Admiral Boscawen and Monsieur Le Clue; various graphic instances of oppression, cruelty, and extortion; and changes in his fortune.

He also noted: his disgust at the West Indies; his initiation of schemes to obtain his freedom; a shipwreck on the Bahama Bank; his arrival at Martinico, where he meet with new difficulties; his journeys to England; some account of his conversion to Christianity; his picking up 11 “miserable” men at sea in returning to England; different transactions of his life; and his petition to the queen.

He had fond memories of his childhood before he was taken away from it. “We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets. Thus, every great event, such as a triumphant return from battle, or other cause of public rejoicing is celebrated in public dances, which are accompanied with songs and music suited to the occasion. The assembly is separated into four divisions, which dance either apart or in succession, and each with a character peculiar to itself,” he explains.

“The first division contains the married men, who in their dances frequently exhibit feats of arms, and the representation of a battle. To these succeed the married women, who dance in the second division. The young men occupy the third; and the maidens the fourth. Each represents some interesting scene of real life, such as a great achievement, domestic employment, a pathetic story, or some rural sport; and as the subject is generally founded on some recent event, it is therefore ever new. This gives our dances a spirit and variety which I have scarcely seen elsewhere.”

But Equiano was ripped away from all of that, and his life was never, ever, the same. He writes, “One day, as I was watching at the top of a tree in our yard, I saw one of those people come into the yard of our next neighbour, but one, to kidnap, there being many stout young people in it. Immediately on this I gave the alarm of the rogue, and he was surrounded by the stoutest of them, who entangled him with cords, so that he could not escape till some of the grown people came and secured him.

“But alas! ere long it was my fate to be thus attacked, and to be carried off, when none of the grown people were nigh. One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands, and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house.”

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African was a pivotal reference in the anti-slavery movement in England. Parts of it were quoted extensively as evidence of the barbarity and inhumanity of the transatlantic trade in Africans and plantation slavery in the West Indies.