Historic Dockyard welcomes visiting Anglican Bishops

News release issued: 15th July 2008

Anglican Bishops from Ghana and the United States will be given a special tour of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The tour is part of their 5 day stay in the Diocese.

During their afternoon visit on July 15th, they will enjoy lunch in the Captain’s cabin onboard HMS Warrior 1860 and then tour both Warrior and HMS Victory.
 
Of particular interest will be the Chasing Freedom exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum which gives an insight into the role of the Royal Navy’s West Africa squadron during their campaign to enforce the abolition of the slave trade just over two hundred years ago.  

The 11 bishops and their spouses, who are being hosted by Portsmouth’s Anglican diocese from July 11th-16th, attended a special day in Portsmouth Cathedral on Saturday (July 12th), joined in with worship at churches across the diocese on Sunday (July 13th) and visited the Isle of Wight on Monday (July 14th).
 
On Tuesday (July 15), they will hear about Sir Henry Leeke, who was in command of the Myrmidon in 1822, policing the waters of the Gulf of Guinea, when the ship captured a Portuguese slave-vessel. On board the slave ship was a young boy called Adjai who had been kidnapped along with his mother and sister and sold to the Portuguese to be transported across the Transatlantic.  

Sir Henry freed the Africans on the Portuguese vessel and placed them on board his own ship, and after a further two month’s sail, he set them free at Freetown, Sierra Leone, a settlement for liberated Africans.

Adjai later became Samuel Adjai Crowther , the first African Bishop ordained into the Anglican Church, and Bishop of Niger. Sir Henry was one of the guests at Crowther’s ordination in 1864, over forty years after they first met.

By 1865 nearly 150,000 enslaved Africans had been freed through anti-slavery operations by the Royal Navy and many sailors had given their lives to end their suffering.  Boarding disease-ridden slave ships posed dangerous risks of infection and the unfamiliar climate was similarly unhealthy. Many sailors died from the tropical diseases common on the squadron, including dysentery, yellow fever and malaria.