A Slave Ship Captain

John Newton Clark is one of the people I noted in my Juneteenth Handbook. As a child young Newton was placed in a divinity school by his mother where they lived. His father was a ship's captain and lived his life at sea. Rebellious in his youth John had often spoken against and engaged in heated arguments about the church and religion in an attempt to break free from the path he felt was chosen for him. After his mother died suddenly his father returned from the sea and took his son John to sea with him where the younger Newton grew into his teens as an accomplished sailor and skilled navigator.

When John Newton was old enough he was pressed into military service on one of Great Britain's Royal Navy Man-of-war sailing ships. Perhaps being more accustomed to giving orders, than taking orders, John Newton found it hard to adjust to the militaristic no-nonsense way of handling a ship and he deserted the British Royal Navy. Living on the run until he was captured a John Newton in his early 20s was sentenced to serve on board a British Merchant Sailing ship engaged in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Onboard, the slave ship with none of the polish or organization of the Royal Navy Fighting Ship he had once served aboard. John witnessed first-hand the inhumane treatment of the ship's human cargo, the African Slaves.

He soon came to realize that as bad as his sentence for desertion was his cramped crews quarters, second rate food, and officers who seemed to show little mercy to a Royal Navy deserter, what he saw being done to the captive people on board the slave ship, the animal conditions in which the African men and women were chained and quartered, the slop they were fed and the misuse and abuse visited upon them by the ship's crew, in some cases, for the mere act of being sick, John realized that as bad as his lot in life was at the time, there was truly a worse condition if your skin was black.

When his time onboard the slave ship was done, it was British custom at the time that, whatever port his ship found itself in after he had served his sentence for desertion, that was the port in which he would be discharged. John Newton found himself marooned on the west-coat of Africa without a ship, and without his country. The abandoned British sailor was able to find employment with a slave trader, however, he was distrusted, and disliked, by the slave merchant’s African wife and soon found himself living and eating with the slaves.

He would remain in Africa until a crew member from the British sailing ship Greyhound spotted the unusual sight of a white man working alongside the slaves. In an act that, John Newton would forever view as an act of mercy he was given passage on board the ship and returned to England. During the long ocean voyage home, John Newton found the book Imitation of Christ, by Thomas A. Kempis, and as his shipboard hours past he recalled the brutal conditions imposed upon him having his freedom taken from him and he took from the book the seed of Christianity that began to renovate his soul.

Maturity stilled the uncertainty of his youth and John grew as a Christian. It wasn’t long before his life’s experiences helped him get promoted to the rank of ship’s master, a master of his own ship, a slave ship. It was during his days as a slave ship captain sailing the Atlantic that his newfound Christian beliefs often clashed with the act of slavery that was now his livelihood. The slave trade was acceptable in England in the middle 1700s; slave commerce filled the British need for American goods like Tobacco and cotton.

Deeply troubled by the inhumane aspect of the slave trade John Newton found himself at an impasse that would finally result in his decision to leave the sea, where he had grown up, and that had been his home for most of his adult life. Attitudes about the slave trade were more than three hundred years slow in changing but the British would eventually outlaw the trading of people as slaves in 1807; going so far as to set up blockades along the African coast to enforce their controversial new policy. In 1808, more than fifty years before the Civil War, an act of the U.S. Congress would make it illegal to continue to import slaves from outside of the Americas. American navy ships would join the British navy to strengthen the blockade against the transatlantic slave trade.

After giving up his life at sea and his career as a slave ship's captain John Newton returned to the ministry. As a child, John Newton had chosen to ridicule Christianity and had been adrift from his religion for decades. To pay his bills Newton found work as a tide surveyor and after completing his study for the ministry he would spend the last forty-three years of his life promoting the gospel in London and Olney England. Giving thanks for what he felt was the undeserved mercy and favor from a merciful God. During his lifetime, John Newton wrote many hymns but none were more popular than the one he titled Amazing Grace, in 1770.

AMAZING GRACE, HOW SWEET THE SOUND THAT SAVED A WRETCH

LIKE ME

I ONCE WAS LOST, BUT NOW AM FOUND WAS BLIND, BUT

NOW I SEE

TWAS GRACE THAT TAUGHT MY HEART TO FEAR AND

GRACE MY FEARS RELIEVED

HOW PRECIOUS DID THAT GRACE APPEAR THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED

THROUGH MANY DANGERS, TOILS, AND SNARES I HAVE ALREADY COME

TIS GRACE HATH BROUGHT ME SAFE THUS FAR AND GRACE WILL LEAD ME HOME

Where the slave ship captain turned-servant-of-the-church tombstone rest there is an inscription on it that reads:

“John Newton Clark, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.”