MAN WHO SANG "AMAZING GRACE" JOHN NEWTON WAS ONCE A SLAVE TRADER

John Newton – 21 December 1807) was an English Anglican clergyman and abolitionist who was forced to serve as a sailor in the Royal Navy for a period.

Newton went to sea at a young age and worked on slave ships in the slave trade for several years. In 1745, he himself became a slave of Princess Peye, a woman of the Sherbro people, but later returned to sea and was the captain of slave ships. Some years after experiencing a conversion to Christianity Newton later renounced his trade and became a prominent supporter of abolitionism. Now an evangelical, he was ordained as a Church of England clergyman and served as parish priest at Olney, Buckinghamshire, for two decades. He also wrote hymns, including "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken".

Impressment into naval service

In 1743, while going to visit friends, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy. He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. At one point Newton tried to desert and was punished in front of the crew of 350. Stripped to the waist and tied to the grating, he received a flogging of eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman.

Following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated murdering the captain and committing suicide by throwing himself overboard. He recovered, both physically and mentally. Later, while Harwich was en route to India, he transferred to Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa. The ship carried goods to Africa and traded them for slaves to be shipped to the colonies in the Caribbean and North America.

Enslavement and rescue

Newton did not get along with the crew of Pegasus. In 1745 they left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave dealer. Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to his wife, Princess Peye of the Sherbro people. She abused and mistreated Newton just as much as she did her other slaves. Newton later recounted this period as the time he was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa."

Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton's father to search for him, and returned to England on the merchant ship Greyhound, which was carrying beeswax and dyer's wood, now referred to as camwood.

Spritiual Conversion

In 1748, during his return voyage to England aboard the ship Greyhound, Newton had a spiritual conversion. He awoke to find the ship caught in a severe storm off the coast of Donegal, Ireland and about to sink. In response, Newton began praying for God's mercy, after which the storm began to die down. After four weeks at sea the Greyhound made it to port in Lough Swilly, Ireland. This experience marked the beginning of his conversion to Christianity.

He began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of evangelical Christianity. The date was 10 March 1748, an anniversary he marked for the rest of his life. From that point on, he avoided profanity, gambling and drinking. Although he continued to work in the slave trade, he had gained sympathy for the slaves during his time in Africa. He later said that his true conversion did not happen until some time later: "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards."