John Atkins sailed as surgeon with the Royal Navy squadron sent to the West African coast in the early 1720s. He describes Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde, the coasts of Sierra Leone and Guinea, trade winds and tornadoes, the people he met and, in plain detail, the workings of the Atlantic slave trade before the voyage on to Brazil and the West Indies.
A valuable eyewitness source for historians of Africa and slavery, written with the assumptions of 1735. Download the free EPUB.