Ingram in Africa

Abstract John Hawkins’s fleet of slaving ships reach Sierra Leone after a stormy voyage by way of the Canary Islands. Ingram was impressed by the people of West Africa. He described their environment, resources, and customs in sympathetic terms. Although he was probably not fully literate, Ingram had a natural historian’s interest in the cultures, technology, botany, and zoology of West Africa. Surviving documents clearly show that Ingram began the story of his extraordinary journey with his observations in Africa. Hawkins organized the enslavement of hundreds of Africans by siding with the winners of a local war. After filling his cargo holds with the captured people, he took his fleet westward across the Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea.