John Newton was born in London but captained two Liverpool slave ships during his twenties. Early in his travels Newton was discharged from a ship off the coast of Sierra Leone on condition he went into the owner, Clow’s, service. Clow’s wife was African and she disliked her husband’s new white assistant. She treated him cruelly and persuaded her husband to use him as a slave, working with the black slaves on a lime-tree plantation. Only when Clow was sufficiently ashamed to be seen by others treating another white man in this way did he release Newton, who then became involved in the trading of Africans himself.
Newton therefore experienced slavery both as a slave and as a slave trader. The first ship he commanded as captain was the Duke of Argyle, and then the African. He embraced religion during one voyage home and, although he continued in the slave trade afterwards, he ensured the slaves were treated more humanely and saw little contradiction between slaving and his religious views. He converted to evangelical Christianity in 1748 and was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1764.

In 1755 John Newton gave up his seafaring life and, influenced by Clarkson, gave evidence on the inhumanity of the slave trade to a Parliamentary committee. He wrote an account of his personal experiences of the slave trade, ‘An Authentic Narrative’, published in 1764, which included a powerful description of the Middle Passage. We also have first-hand evidence of conditions on board ship from the journal he kept and the letters he wrote to his wife. John Newton wrote popular hymns including ‘Amazing Grace,’ written in collaboration with William Cowper.

---