Sambo's Grave

Sambo's Grave is the burial site of a black cabin boy or slave on unconsecrated ground in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, Lancashire, England. Sunderland Point was a port, serving cotton, sugar and slave ships from the West Indies and North America, which declined after Glasson Dock was opened in 1787. It is a very small community only accessible via a narrow road, which crosses a salt marsh and is cut off at high tide.

History

In the early 18th century Sunderland Point was a port for Lancaster serving ships too large to sail up to the town.^[1] According to the Lonsdale Magazine of 1822,^[2] which appears to rely on the then oral history,^[3] Sambo had arrived around 1736 from the West Indies as a servant to the captain of an unnamed ship:

After she had discharged her cargo, he was placed at the inn…with the intention of remaining there on board wages till the vessel was ready to sail; but supposing himself to be deserted by the master, without being able, probably from his ignorance of the language, to ascertain the cause, he fell into a complete state of stupefaction, even to such a degree that he secreted himself in the loft on the brewhouses and stretching himself out at full length on the bare boards refused all sustenance. He continued in this state only a few days, when death terminated the sufferings of poor Samboo. As soon as Samboo's exit was known to the sailors who happened to be there, they excavated him in a grave in a lonely dell in a rabbit warren behind the village, within twenty yards of the sea shore, whither they conveyed his remains without either coffin or bier, being covered only with the clothes in which he died.

— Lonsdale Magazine, 1822

It has also been suggested that Sambo may have died from a disease to which he had no natural immunity, contracted from contact with Europeans.^[4] He was buried in unconsecrated ground (as he was not a Christian) on the weatherbeaten shoreline of Morecambe Bay.^[5]

Plaque

Part of a series on
Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Balkan slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Muslim world Contract of manumission Crimean slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Esir Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Esir Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad Circassian slave trade 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia South Africa Sudan North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

With the opening of Glasson Dock in 1787, trade ships deserted Sunderland Point and it became a sea-bathing place and holiday venue.^[1] Sixty years after the burial, a retired headmaster of Lancaster boys' grammar school, James Watson, heard the story and raised money from summer visitors to the area for a memorial, to be placed on the unmarked grave.^[1] Watson, who was the brother of the prominent Lancaster slave trader, William Watson, also wrote the epitaph that now marks the grave (note the use of ſ, the long s character, and the eccentric and inconsistent spelling typical of the time):^[6]

The present plaque is a modern replica, replacing the original which had been stolen.^[7] This is explained by a smaller plaque, set immediately above the main plaque, which reads:^[6]

Preservation

Official signposts on Sunderland Point define the grave and locality as a tourist attraction. The grave almost always bears flowers or stones painted by local children.^[1][5][8] The grave was enclosed by a low stone wall in 2019 and Chris Drury's "Horizon Line Chamber" was built on the approach path.

References

External links

• Media related to Sambo's Grave at Wikimedia Commons
• Sunderland Point and Samboo's Grave
• "Sambo" 1657, antedates OED 1704-
• The Graves of Slaves & other Black People in 18th C Britain

53°59′47″N 2°52′58″W / 53.9963°N 2.8827°W / 53.9963; -2.8827

This page was last edited on 10 February 2024, at 06:03