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1700-1918

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Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano was born in 1745 and there are
no records of his early years. In some accounts,
he was born a freeman in what is now Southern
Nigeria, and in others he was born in the Americas.
However, all accounts agree that he was sold in
Virginia to a Royal Navy officer at about the age of
11 and was renamed ‘Gustavus Vassa’. He remained
the slave of Lieutenant Michael Pascal for eight years,
during which time he learned to read and write.

He was then sold to a ship’s captain in London,
and sold on to prominent merchant Robert King.
He worked as a deckhand, valet and barber. By trading on the side, he managed to
earn enough money to buy his freedom in three years.
He spent most of the next 20 years travelling the world and even went to the Arctic.
Due to his experience as a slave, he joined the abolitionist movement in 1786 in
London, and became a prominent member of the ‘Sons of Africa’ (a group of 12
black men in the abolitionist movement). He also spent four years as a crew
member aboard a Bermudian sloop in the West Indies.

In 1786 he published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, which was one of the earliest
books published by a black African author. Like Bermudian Mary Prince’s narrative,
Equiano’s book was crucial in showing the immorality of slavery through a first
person account. He resumed his travels to promote the book, which became very
popular and advanced the abolitionist cause as well as making him a rich man.
In 1792, Equiano married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen, with whom he had
two daughters – Joanna Vassa and Anna Maria Vassa. He died on March 31, 1797
at the age of 52. The title page and frontispiece from
Equiano’s 1786 book, The Interesting
This book can be accessed for free on Google Books or at Gutenberg.org Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

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