ettle in some town or village upon the
coast.

Of this tour I shall not give the reader any very particular account. I
shall mention only those things which are most worthy of his notice in it.
At Poole in Dorsetshire I laid the foundation of a committee, to act in
harmony with that of London for the promotion of the cause. Moses Neave, of
the respectable society of the Quakers, was the chairman; Thomas Bell, the
secretary, and Ellis. B. Metford and the reverend Mr. Davis and others the
committee. This was the third committee, which had been instituted in the
country for this purpose. That at Bristol, under Mr. Joseph Harford as
chairman, and Mr. Lunell as secretary, had been the first. And that at
Manchester, under Mr. Thomas Walker as chairman, and Mr. Samuel Jackson as
secretary, had been the second.

As Poole was a great place for carrying on the trade to Newfoundland, I
determined to examine the assertion of the Earl of Sandwich in the House of
Lords, when he said, in the debate on Sir William Dolben's bill, that the
Slave-trade was not more fatal to seamen than the Newfoundland and some
others. This assertion I knew at the time to be erroneous, as far as my own
researches had been concerned: for out of twenty-four vessels, which had
sailed out of the port of Bristol in that employ, only two sailors were
upon the dead list. In sixty vessels from Poole, I found but four lost. At
Dartmouth, where I went afterwards on purpose, I found almost a similar
result. On conversing however with Governor Holdsworth, I learnt that the
year 1786 had been more fatal than any other in this trade. I learnt that
in consequent of extraordinary storms and hurricanes, no less than five
sailors had died and twenty-one had been drowned in eighty-three vessels
from that port. Upon this statement I determined to look into the
muster-rolls of the trade there for two or three years together. I began by
accident with the year 1769, and I went on to the end of 1772. About eighty
vessels on an average had sailed thence in each of these years. Taking the
loss in these years, and compounding it with that in the fatal year, three
sailors had been lost, but taking it in these four years by themselves,
only two had been lost, in twenty-four vessels so employed. On a comparison
with the Slave-trade, the result would be, that two vessels to Africa would
destroy more seamen than eighty-three sailing to Newfoundland. There was
this difference also to be