Budleigh Past and Present

J.M.W. Turner was inspired to paint ‘The Slave Ship’ in 1840 after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson. In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong had ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected. This event probably inspired Turner to create his landscape and to choose to coincide its exhibition with a meeting of the British Anti-Slavery Society. My blogging is less frequent nowadays, but every so often researching Budleigh’s local history sends me back to the keyboard to record yet another curious and sometimes important discovery. The latest find relates to my earlier investigation into the early life of the 19 th century scientist Henry Carter FRS, and specifically into the question of his education. Who paid for it? And why? And how come his benefactor, Budleigh resident John Campbell was such a wealthy man?   The answer came from the discovery of the Cam...

Continued from   https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2015/10/from-slavery-to-sponges-imagining.html It seems that John Campbell, the wealthy Budleigh resident and benefactor of Henry John Carter, the future FRS, took a keen interest in the voyages undertaken by adventurers of his time.  Admiral Sir John Ross By an artist of the British school, 19th century  He would probably have read the 740-page volume written by a fellow-Scot who had made his name as an explorer. This was Captain, later Admiral, Sir John Ross (1777-1856), pictured above;  the account of his adventures was entitled Narrative of a second voyage in search of a North-West passage, and of a residence in the Arctic Regions during the years 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833. The book was published by the London firm of A.W. Webster in 1835, and John Campbell’s name is on the List of Subscribers to the companion Appendix which app...