Ingram in the 1560s

Abstract David Ingram grew up in Barking, England, now a suburb of London. He was a child during the tumultuous reign of Henry VIII, and he came of age during the religious strife of his reign and those of Henry’s daughter Mary I and her half-sister Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was initially against slavery, but she warmed to the practice as she came to understand its financial benefits. John Hawkins became Elizabeth’s slaver, making his first voyage to Africa and then to Spanish colonies around the Caribbean Sea in 1564–1565. There he illegally sold enslaved Africans to colonists using a combination of threats, bribes, and violence. He made a second voyage in 1564, on which David Ingram was probably a crewman. In 1567 Hawkins set out on his third voyage, this time with a flagship, the Jesus of Lübeck, on loan from Queen Elizabeth. This time David Ingram was certainly aboard as a crewman, and his extraordinary journey began when the fleet left Plymouth.