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Hawkins' Hoax? A Sequel to “Drake's Fake”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

J. D. Fage
J. D. Fage*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

English schoolchildren were once brought up on tales of the exploits of Drake and the two Hawkins, father and son, leaders of the English seafaring adventures who invaded the monopolies of Atlantic trade claimed by the Iberian monarchs, who signed Philip II's beard, and who eventually brought his great Armada to destruction. Strangely enough, some two centuries later the names Drake and Hawkins would seem to reappear in Atlantic history as those of two North American adventurers who sought to profit in the slave trade from West Africa.

Not so long ago my friend and colleague T. C. McCaskie presented in History in Africa grounds for believing to be spurious inventions those parts of the published reminiscences of Richard Drake which deal with Asante, the great kingdom behind the Gold Coast (on which he may well have traded), and which he claimed to have visited in 1839. Unlikely though it may seem, there would also appear to be substantial grounds for believing that Joseph Hawkins' account of a trip into the interior of West Africa, which he claimed to have made from the Rio Nunez in 1795, is also at least in some measure an invention.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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Footnotes

*

In the course of preparing this article, I have been greatly helped by information and suggestions kindly and freely provided by Christopher Fyfe, P. E. H. Hair, and Adam Jones. But if my discussion leads to any conclusions, I alone am responsible for them.

References

Notes

1. McCaskie, T. C., “Drake's Fake; a Curiosity Concerning a Spurious Visit to Asante in 1839,” HA 11 (1984), 223-36.Google Scholar

2. Revelations of a Slave Smuggler; being the autobiography of Captain Richard Drake…., with a Preface by his Executor, Rev. Henry Bird West (New York, 1860).Google Scholar

3. Second edition, Troy [N.Y.], Printed for the Author by Luther Pratt, 1797.

4. London, Published for the Proprietor, by A. Schloss, 1837.

5. London, 1970.

6. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself (2 vols.: London, [1789]Google Scholar).

7. See Hair, P. E. H., “An Early Seventeenth-Century Vocabulary of Vai,” African Studies, 23 (1964), 129-39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also his “Ethnolinguistic Continuity of the Guinea Coast,” JAH, 8 (1967), 256-57.Google Scholar On Dapper's Kquoja account more generally see Jones, Adam, “Who Were the Vai?” JAH, 22 (1981), 159-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Kquoja Kingdom; a Forest State in Seventeenth-Century West Africa,” Paideuma, 29 (1983), 23–43.Google Scholar

8. For Dapper generally (and also Ogilby), see Jones, Adam, “Olfert Dapper et sa description de l'Afrique” in Objets Interdits (Paris, 1989), 73–84.Google Scholar Most of this large book is taken up with a reprint of the seventeenth century French translation of Dapper's description of Black Africa, a translation which is not very reliable, but which in this case is accompanied by useful notes and commentary by Albert van Dantzig. For Barbot, the most useful single work in the context of the present article is still probably Hair, P. E. H., “Barbot, Dapper, Davity; a Critique of Sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount,” HA, 1 (1974), 25–54.Google Scholar

9. Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705 and 1721)Google Scholar; Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomy (London, 1793)Google Scholar; Norris, Robert, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy (London, 1789)Google Scholar; Snelgrave, William, A New Account of some parts of Guinea (London, 1734 and 1754).Google Scholar

10. Mollien, Gaspard-Théodore, Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique, aux souces du Sénégal et de la Gambie, fait en 1818… (2 vols, Paris, 1820).Google Scholar Chapters 8 and 9 describe Futa Jalon. In the modem edition, Deschamps, Hubert, L'Afrique occidentale en 1818 (Paris, 1967), the description of Timbo is on pp. 245-46.Google Scholar

11. A useful recent article which touches on Futa Jalon and its trade with the coast in Hawkins's time is McGowan, Winston, “The Establishment of Long-Distance Trade Between Sierra Leone and its Hinterland, 1787-1821,” JAH, 31 (1990), 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For greater detail, see chapters 1 and 2 of McGowan's 1976 London University Ph.D. thesis on the history of Futa Jalon.

12. E.g. Mouser, Bruce L., “Trade, Coasters and Conflict in the Rio Pongo From 1790 to 1808,” JAH, 14 (1973), 45–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. See, for example, ibid., JAH, n. 31.

14. Professor Hair has written to me: “R. Dundy, cf. Doundéa village near the Dubréka River; may have given rise to ‘Dania River’ which appears on maps of the 1780s and 1790s for ‘Dubréka.’ But I do not find Doundéa or Dundy on any pre-1800 maps.”

15. Professor Hair drew my attention to the map in Wadstrom's, C. B.Essay on Colonization (2 vols.: London, 1794–1795)Google Scholar and it was also he who pointed out to me that “Little Pongo,” “presumably one of the Pongo mouths,” appears on a map of 1797.

16. Remembering that Hawkins sailed from Charleston, S. C., in a vessel dialled Charleston, it might just be of some significance in this context that Mouser indicates (“Trade, Coasters and Conflict,” 64 and map, 51) that Charleston was also the name for a factory in the Rio Pongo which was established by 1797, and also for the particular affluent on which it stood).

17. Afzelius, Adam, Sierra Leone Journal, ed. Kup, A. P. (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia, XXVII), (Uppsala, 1967), 100.Google Scholar

18. The question is meant to be rhetorical, but insofar as it is answerable, the preferred answer would be “No.” Hawkins would then have been traveling in northwestern Angola, which had been thoroughly penetrated by European slavetraders and their pombeiro allies, and it is difficult to see how he could have avoided noticing this. But then he seems to have missed so much of the commercial activity in the Rivers of Guinea and its hinterland that one cannot be quite sure!