author
Alexander Falconbridge
d. 1792
A ship's surgeon turned outspoken critic of the slave trade, he used firsthand experience to expose its brutality. His short life produced one of the era's most influential eyewitness accounts for the British abolition movement.
1 Audiobook
An account of the slave trade on the coast of Africa
by Alexander Falconbridge
About the author
Alexander Falconbridge was a British surgeon who served on several slave ships in the 1780s before breaking with the trade. Drawing on what he had witnessed aboard those voyages, he published An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa in 1788, a work that helped give the British abolition movement vivid, firsthand evidence of the trade's cruelty.
He also supported abolitionist efforts beyond writing. In 1791 he went to Sierra Leone on behalf of the Anti-Slavery Society, where a settlement for formerly enslaved people had been established. He died there in 1792, still a young man.
Though little is known with certainty about many details of his early life, Falconbridge is remembered for turning personal experience into powerful testimony. His writing remains important for readers who want to understand how eyewitness accounts helped change public opinion about the transatlantic slave trade.