The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.2 | September 2022

Member’s article

on the slaving ship Elizabeth under the command of Captain John Smith and that he returned to England on 6 December 1789. Slaves were shipped at the Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands and carried to the Rio de la Plata. Quite what possessed Wilson to participate in such an unspeakable business is unclear, but it is not inconceivable that, as part of a circle of like-minded thinkers, he agreed to do so for the express purpose of collecting evidence. Early in the 1787 Parliamentary session, William Wilberforce had "announced his intention of bringing forward a motion relative to the slave trade but, by ill health, which interrupted the attendance to his publick duties, he was prevented from doing it for nearly two years". When in 1790 and 1791 a Select Committee of the House of Commons came to consider abolition of the slave-trade, Wilson not only gave telling evidence of the appalling conditions of the slaves on the journey across the Atlantic, but also confirmed the equality of Africans to Europeans in "capacity, feeling, affection, and moral character". In his celebrated speech to the House of Commons on 2 April 1792 calling for abolition of the trade, William Wilberforce relied heavily on Wilson’s evidence to show, notwithstanding the relative humanity of the ship owner and captain, the appalling conditions on the slaving vessels and the serious level of mortality on passage. As he said "it was no longer ago than in the year 1788, that Mr Isaac Wilson, whose intelligent and candid manner of giving evidence, could not but impress the committee with a high opinion of him, was doomed to witness scenes as deeply distressing as almost ever occurred in the annals of the slave trade."

Extensive research, especially in ships’ muster books at the National Archives, failed to produce evidence that Prince William and Wilson were ever shipmates. However, they were in the Royal Navy at the same time. With an interval in Hanover between June 1783 and June 1785, Prince William served from 1779 until 1789. Meanwhile, on 21 November 1782 Wilson had begun his career as a Naval Surgeon when he was passed “2nd Mate for a 3rd rate” by the Surgeons Company. It is thus quite possible that their paths crossed at some time between 1785 and 1789. Philip Ziegler’s biography of King William IV refers to two bouts of tropical fever suffered by William during 1787 in the West Indies and at Quebec while in command of HMS Pegasus . If HMS Camilla , on which at the time Wilson was serving as Surgeon, was then present on the same station, it is not impossible that he treated Prince William then. Almost immediately thereafter Wilson had to invoke his half-pay entitlement. His record shows a two year gap (14 December 1787 - 22 January 1790) before he got a further posting. The American War of Independence had ended in 1783 and the French Revolutionary War proved to be still some five years off. Isaac Wilson was not, it seems, one to sit idly by. Marshall’s biography suggests that he acquired at least two merchant ships and other sources say that he traded in both North and South America and made money shipping goods between North American settlements. It has not been possible to verify these claims. Isaac Wilson and the abolition of the slave trade It is however certain that on 10 May 1788 Isaac Wilson sailed from London as surgeon

62