How Black Loyalists, sailors and runaways on the streets of Georgian London were shipped to Sierra Leone in 1787, and how Freetown rose from the ashes in 1792.
In the winter of 1786 London had a problem it did not want to talk about. Hundreds of Black men and women were living on its streets in poverty: sailors discharged from the navy, runaways from slavery, and above all veterans who had fought for Britain in the American War of Independence and been promised freedom in return. The government's answer, pushed by a mix of genuine abolitionists and people who simply wanted the Black poor gone, was to send them to Africa.
The result was the "Province of Freedom" in Sierra Leone. It was meant to be a free Black settlement on the coast of a continent still being emptied by the slave trade. It nearly failed, it was burned to the ground, and it was refounded by Black settlers from Nova Scotia who built Freetown in 1792. This is a story that starts in the streets of Georgian London and ends in the capital of an African nation.
Georgian London had a Black population of several thousand. Many had been brought as enslaved servants; others were sailors who had settled in the port. After 1783 they were joined by hundreds of Black Loyalists: men who had escaped slavery in the American colonies to fight for the British, who had promised them freedom. Some had served in the Black Pioneers. In London they found that freedom came without work, pensions or homes.
By 1786 hundreds were living on charity. A group of London philanthropists and merchants began handing out bread, broth and a little money, with a Marylebone pub, the Yorkshire Stingo, as one of the distribution points. That small effort grew into the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, with Granville Sharp among its supporters.
In 1786 the naturalist Henry Smeathman, who had lived on the Sierra Leone coast, proposed sending the Black poor there to found a free farming settlement. The government agreed to pay. For Sharp and the abolitionists it was a "Province of Freedom", a self-governing Black settlement that would prove free labour could work in Africa. For many officials and newspapers it was a convenient way to clear Black people off London's streets.
Black Londoners were divided. About 700 signed up at first, but many feared that a settlement right next to the slave forts of the coast was a trap. Ottobah Cugoano warned publicly that the settlers could be seized and sold again. Olaudah Equiano was appointed commissary for the voyage, then dismissed in March 1787 after he complained that the agent in charge was stealing supplies meant for the settlers. In the end the authorities used pressure and the threat of arrest to fill the ships.
The Gold Coast abolitionist who warned against the scheme.
The ships left the Thames in the winter of 1786–87, but storms and delays held them up for months, first at Portsmouth, then at Plymouth. Dozens of passengers died on board before the voyage had even begun, others were put ashore and some ran away. When the little fleet finally sailed from Plymouth on 9 April 1787 it carried about 411 people: Black men, Black women and around 70 white women, most of them the wives and partners of Black settlers, along with a few white tradesmen.
Fever on the voyage killed many more. The survivors reached the Sierra Leone River on 15 May 1787, at the start of the rainy season.
The settlers landed on a hillside on the south shore of the estuary and, through the expedition's naval officer, made a land agreement with the local Koya Temne ruler, King Tom, and the regent Naimbana. The British believed they had bought the land forever; the Temne understood it as permission to use it. They called their settlement Granville Town.
The first months were a disaster. Rain washed away crops, disease killed many, and some settlers drifted away to work for the slave traders at Bunce Island, the British slave fort just up the river. In 1789, after a passing British warship burned a nearby Temne town during a dispute, King Tom's successor, King Jimmy, gave the settlers three days to leave and then burned Granville Town to the ground.
In 1791 the abolitionist Alexander Falconbridge was sent out to gather the survivors, about 60 people, who rebuilt at Fourah Bay. They are remembered as the Old Settlers.
The settlement was saved by Black Loyalists from the other side of the Atlantic. In Nova Scotia, the British had promised land to the Black veterans and then failed to deliver it. One of them, Thomas Peters, a former sergeant in the Black Pioneers, sailed to London in 1791 to complain. He met Granville Sharp and the founders of the new Sierra Leone Company, which offered the Nova Scotians a new start in Africa.
The navy officer John Clarkson, brother of the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, went to Nova Scotia to organise the move. In January 1792 about 1,190 people sailed from Halifax in 15 ships. Around 65 died at sea. The rest arrived in Sierra Leone between late February and 9 March 1792, cleared the overgrown site of the old Granville Town, and on 11 March 1792 held a service of thanksgiving for the new town: Free Town. John Clarkson became its first governor.
Tradition says the settlers gathered and prayed under a great cotton tree near the shore. The Cotton Tree became the symbol of Freetown for more than two centuries, until it fell in a storm in May 2023. In 1800 Jamaican Maroons arrived, and after 1808, when Sierra Leone became a Crown colony, the Royal Navy landed tens of thousands of Africans freed from slave ships there. Together these groups became the Krio people of Freetown.
The Black Poor scheme is often told as a story of British kindness. The truth is more uncomfortable. The settlers were people Britain had failed: veterans who were not paid, servants who were not freed, poor people London wanted out of sight. Many were pushed onto the ships. More than a hundred died before or during the voyage, and the first settlement collapsed within two years.
And yet Freetown survived, built by Black settlers who had fought for their own freedom on two continents. It became the base for Britain's anti-slavery patrols, the home of the first modern university in West Africa, Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, and the capital of an independent country.
There is no memorial to the Black Poor in London. To understand their world, visit London Museum Docklands, whose London, Sugar & Slavery gallery covers Black Georgian London, and the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. The passenger lists of 1787 survive in the National Archives at Kew, and a searchable version is online through family-history websites.
Guided walks of Black London history and of Georgian London help bring this period to life. Entrance fees for the sights on a tour are always included in the price. Tips for your guide are not included, but they are welcome.
Freetown is reached through Lungi International Airport, across the estuary from the city. The site of the Cotton Tree, St John's Maroon Church, Fourah Bay and the old settler streets of the city centre all carry the story. A boat trip up the river takes you to Bunce Island, the British slave fort the settlers lived beside.
Equiano, Cugoano and the Africans who fought the trade from London.
From Crown colony to independence in 1961.
Black Georgian London and the City that ran the trade.
The West African sailors who linked Freetown to Liverpool.
Every former British colony in Africa.
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