In the 1780s, Alexander Falconbridge, a British surgeon, made several voyages aboard slave ships along the West African coast. Initially employed to care for the crew and captives, Falconbridge later turned into one of the most effective voices against the very trade he once served.
Falconbridge was born around 1760, likely in either Prestonpans, Scotland or Bristol, England. Trained as a surgeon, he began his professional life in a field that offered him an unexpected and harsh opportunity: serving as a ship’s surgeon aboard vessels participating in the transatlantic slave trade. Between 1782 and 1787, he made four voyages aboard slave ships, the Tartar, Emilia, Alexander, and again the Emilia, witnessing the horrors of the transatlantic slavery firsthand.
Initially a participant in the trade, Falconbridge’s experiences on these voyages planted seeds of deep moral conflict. After meeting the influential abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, a major figure in Britain’s anti-slavery movement, he underwent a profound transformation. Falconbridge soon withdrew from the trade, and Clarkson came to view him as a valuable ally, even trusted him to serve as his personal armed bodyguard during investigations against the trade.
In 1788, Falconbridge published An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. The book was based on four trips he took between 1780 and 1787, and it gave a clear and honest description of what he saw.
He described how Africans were captured, chained, and marched to the coast. He gave horrifying accounts of how enslaved men, women, and children were packed into ships with barely any space to breathe. Falconbridge wrote about the frequent deaths on board, the psychological torment of the captives, and the inhuman treatment meted out by the crew.
“The stench of the hold… was so intolerably offensive that it was dangerous to remain there for any time… The floor of their rooms was so covered with blood and mucus… that it resembled a slaughterhouse.”
— Alexander Falconbridge
His account of the slave trade was one of the first popular pieces of abolitionist publishing and became a crucial weapon for the abolitionist cause, humanizing the suffering that statistics and distant reports could never fully convey.
Falconbridge also testified before a House of Commons Committee in 1790, facing hostility from those eager to defend the slave trade. His evidence, however, added powerful weight to the abolitionist arguments.
In 1791, the Anti-Slavery Society sent Falconbridge, his wife Anna Maria, and his brother William to Sierra Leone, a British colony for freed slaves, to help govern and oversee settlement. Unfortunately, he died there in 1792 under unclear circumstances, just as the abolitionist campaign was gaining real political traction.
Sources:
https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_an-account-of-the-slave-_falconbridge-alexander_1788/mode/1up
https://spartacus-educational.com/USASfalconbridge.htm
https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/primary-source-falconbridges
https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/this-abominable-traffic/william-pitt-abolition/sale-of-slaves
