Note 19.6 — INDEX

The first Englishman to engage in the slave trade between the Guinea coast and America was Capt. John Hawkins, a younger son of Capt. William Hawkins of Plymouth, who was trading on the coast of Brazil as early as 1630, “in a tall and goodlie ship of his owne.” Young Hawkins was born in 1532 and also followed the sea. He made several voyages to the Canary Isles and while there formed a trade alliance with a Spanish merchant, Pedro de Ponte, of Teneriffe, who suggested to him the feasibility of a trade in negro slaves to be obtained in the gulf of Guinea and sold to the sugar planters in the Spanish West Indies. Between voyages Hawkins made inquiry of his father and others as to the conditions existing in the West Indies, but his principal source of information was found among the traders in the Canaries. He was assured that negroes were greatly desired in Hispaniola (Haiti) and that they might easily be had on the African coast. Pedro de Ponte agreed to furnish a pilot familiar with Spanish America and the state of the trade there and Hawkins finally decided to make a trial of the venture.