Juan de Córdoba of Seville became the first merchant to send an African slave to the New World in 1502. By 1504, a small group of Africans, likely slaves, who were captured from a Portuguese vessel, made their way to the court of King James IV of Scotland but the English will not join the slave trade until 1562 – 60 years after the Spanish.  When they do, however, they will do so in such a scale that it will soon have devastating consequences. 

In October of 1562, John Hawkins of Plymouth became the first English sailor known to have obtained African slaves – approximately 300 in Sierra Leone – for sale in the West Indies.  Hawkins, viewed by the Portuguese and Spanish as a pirate, traded the slaves illegally with Spanish colonies.  Early English pirates like John Hawkins’ father, William Hawkins, focused on harassing Spanish treasure ships and illegal harvesting of dyewoods from the Spanish Main (Central America) and West Africa.  While sailing to the Gulf of Guinea and venturing into Sierra Leone, Hawkins captured 300-500 slaves, mostly by plundering Portuguese ships. He sold most of the slaves in what is now known as the Dominican Republic.  These slaves were captured by the Spanish and Portuguese.  Hawkins will soon take a more direct, and perhaps sinister, approach to slave trading by capturing slaves directly off the coast of Africa.

John Hawkins who claimed to be a devout Christian and missionary.  On a trip to Sierra Leon, he found a group of farmers harvesting their crops and proceeded to tell these natives of a god named “Jesus.”  Naturally skeptical, these farmers were lured onto Hawkins’ ship with the promise of meeting this “Jesus.”  Several hundred people were led to the beach and onto his ship “Jesus of Lubeck.” As the Africans to entered the ship, they soon found they were barred from disembarking and the ship got underway for the West Indies.  Between 1562 and 1567, Hawkins and his cousin Francis Drake made three voyages to Guinea and Sierra Leone and enslaved between 1,200 and 1,400 Africans.

Hawkins’ personal profit from selling slaves was so huge that Queen Elizabeth granted him a special coat of arms. He was appointed as Treasurer for the Navy in 1577 and knighted in 1588 by the Lord High Admiral, Charles Howard, following the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  Hawkins’ slave business only concluded in 1567 when a hurricane decimated his fleet in the Gulf of Mexico.

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