Did You Know the history of William “Panchoo” Campbell?

Believed to be one of the longest living persons in Trinidad and Tobago, he had been kidnapped into the slave trade in 1850.
Campbell (pictured) was illegally kidnapped by Portuguese slave traders in his home village in the Congo. He was then taken to the coast with other captives, and sent to the Americas on a slave ship. While in transit, a British warship intercepted the vessel and arrested the slave traders.
Campbell and others who had been abducted from their homes were sent to St. Helena, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. They were a few of many enslaved Africans who were removed from slave ships by the British Royal Navy after the Slave Trade Act of 1807 was passed. This Act made the British slave trade illegal, although the trade continued in French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and in parts of the Americas.
Beginning in 1810, the British established treaties that allowed them to use their naval vessels to patrol the West Africa coast and the Caribbean Sea, stopping and searching ships of other nations suspected of participating in the illegal trade. The kidnapped Africans found on these ships in the Caribbean Sea were taken to British Caribbean colonies, while those found on ships off the West African coast were sent to St. Helena or Sierra Leone.
Referred to as “recaptives,” or “Liberated Africans,” by the British, many of them were eventually taken to British colonies to fill post-Emancipation labour shortages. Between 1841 and 1861, a total of 6,581 recaptives were sent to Trinidad from Sierra Leone and St. Helena as indentured labourers.
Tobago received smaller numbers—292 people from St. Helena in 1851 and 225 during 1862. William “Panchoo” Campbell (pictured) was among those sent to Tobago from St. Helena. He settled in Speyside in 1871 until his death at 115 years of age in December 1938, still bearing the scars of branding on his skin.
This photo of William “Panchoo” Campbell is courtesy of "The Book of Trinidad" (2010) by Gérard Besson and Bridget Brereton. This book is part of the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago Reference Collection. (Source: National Archives of Trinidad & Tobago, July 29, 2022)
References:
Alford, C. E. R. A Guide Book to Tobago. Trinidad Pub. Co., 1936.
Archibald, Douglas. Tobago: Melancholy Isle, Volume III, 1807-1898. Westindiana, 2003.
Besson Gérard A., and Bridget Brereton. The Book of Trinidad. Paria Publ., 2010.