The site known as Sambo’s Grave
Sambo’s Grave decorated with visitors’ tokens
The narrative surrounding ‘Sambo’s Grave’, although derived from folklore, is written as near fact in the history of Sunderland Point. Yet there are serious doubts – even whether he existed at all. So, what do we make of it - let’s be detectives.
The hard evidence is missing, there is no contemporary account, nothing in letters, only an oral tradition of a black African buried on the West Shore.
JT of Kendal
The earliest written reference is in the Lonsdale Magazine of 1822 – almost 90 years after the assumed burial – written by JT of Kendal of whom we know nothing at all.
Reading this account carefully, JT probably picked up the story whilst visiting the Point probably staying at the Ship Inn during the ownership of James Birkett - who is mentioned in the article.
JT of Kendal writes that 25 years earlier, in around 1794 or 1795 the Reverend James Watson spent several summers at the Point and during conversations with George Jackson, the then landlord the Ship Inn, picks up the story of the unusual burial.
We know of George Jackson from this press advertisement from 1792.
Image Courtesy of Lancaster Maritime Museum, Lancaster Museums
Watson is so interested he collects shillings from visitors to fund the laying of a stone slab at the gravesite with an inlaid brass plate to be inscribed with the Epitaph of the Elegy he famously wrote.
The Elegy and Epitaph
To modern eyes the elegy is a strange read, a lyrical whimsy in the style of Grey’s Graveyard Elegy (1750) as a meditation on death, it runs to seventeen verses and, in parts, descends into fanciful nonsense, but is rescued by the standout last line in the Epitaph that life is to be judged “Not on man’s color but his worth of heart”
Watson imagines a biography of ‘Samboo’ from his birth in Africa to enslavement in the West Indies to his death arriving at the Point. We may assume it is based on what he learned from George Jackson.
Now we run into difficulties: In the elegy Samboo is fully grown with a wife and children, he had been introduced to Christian faith and had died from fever or consumption on entering the Lune – not on land, not from a broken heart. No mention of the Ship Inn or brewhouse. And why no burial in consecrated ground?
It’s clear, this is a different version from the account described thirty years later to JT of Kendal in 1822.
Sambo’s Grave in photo dated to the 1920’s - Courtesy of Lancaster County Council
Let’s stay in 1796 for a bit longer. James Watson.
The Reverend James Watson is well known to us, born in 1727 (or 8), he was educated at Appleby Grammar School, and attended both Oxford and Cambridge Universities becoming Chaplain of Lancaster Castle in 1782 and Master of Lancaster Grammar School in 1790. He retired in 1794 and died in 1799.
The Slave Trade
Very importantly, his two brothers, William and John were leading investors and public defenders of the slave trade in Lancaster. Between 1759 and 1771 ten slaver voyages involved ships part-owned by William or John Watson or by both made the triangular navigation.
It has been written that in 1779, during his term at the Grammar School, Watson was accused of ‘improper, inhuman and unjustifiable’ behaviour after administering a ‘heavy thrashing’ to a son of Thomas Hinde. Not only was Hinde the Mayor of the Corporation who had control of the school but was the most notorious slave captain and investor of them all, sending more ships to Africa than any other Lancaster merchant.
Thomas Hinde was also the owner of property at Sunderland Point
And the date,1796, when the slab and plate were laid, the campaign against the slave trade was gathering into an unstoppable force, with abolition in ten years’ time.
Was the Reverend James Watson disgusted and ashamed, perhaps angered by his brothers’ lifelong involvement in the abhorrent ‘black ivory’ trade. Was it in disgrace, an atonement, even a little revenge, that he arranged the commemoration of the black African as a clear anti-slavery message?
Did he press George Jackson – who owned fields attached to the Ship Inn – into surrendering a small rabbit infested spot as the gravesite knowing it was beside the much-used (at that time) West Shore route into the village?
James Birkett - Innkeeper
Now move forward to 1822 and the visit of JT. James Birkett, the current landlord has been in occupation since around 1811 and in 1814 completed considerable building alterations including the addition of the bay windows. In 1823 he advertises the Ship Inn with pride.
Newspaper extract courtesy of The Lancaster Guardian
The opening of Glasson Dock in 1787 finally ended all maritime commerce. Seizing the opportunity of the current fashion for the curative properties of seawater, the Point re-invented itself and by 1822 it had become famous for sea bathing. So popular that in 1828 the Point was referred to as a place "much resorted to for sea bathing where the air was considered particularly salubrious”
The transition from year-round sea trade to a summer season may have been popular but was it financially successful for an Innkeeper? Is this Birkett’s motive. Year on year throughout his ownership, he is a frequent advertiser, was it in his keenness for publicity led him make alterations to the story?
Is it his embellishment that turns Sambo into a youth with the sentimental death, heartbroken at his master leaving for Lancaster and being left in the Ship Inn and his death in the brewhouse - owned by James Birkett?
Suspicion rests on James Birkett for the version we know best today. The gravestone and brass plate, the elegy, perhaps the name and possibly the location of the grave could well be the invention of the Reverend James Watson.
A Myth?
So, is it all a myth? Well, no, these are variations of the same base story of a black African, almost certainly enslaved, who died and was buried on Sunderland Point’s West Shore.
Oral accounts passed down through generations of fisherfolk in the village, recall a black African who was found drowned, maybe after a shipwreck and was buried - not in a field - but on the shore itself
Another version says he was treated so cruelly during the voyage he made his escape at Sunderland and hid for several days in the fields until he died of exposure and was buried close where he was found.
A Lasting memorial
Today, these variations don’t really matter, we have a grave of national importance, in a field in our village commemorating an enslaved black African where we can reflect on the brutal iniquity of the slave trade.
The Ship Inn became The Temperance Hotel in the early 1860’s. Shown here circa. 1915.
Photo Courtesy of Lancaster County Council
For a more detailed discussion on The Grave please follow this link to John Whitehead’s excellent paper ‘The legend of Sambo’s Grave at Sunderland point Lancaster.’
https://lahs.archaeologyuk.org/Contrebis/whiteheadsambo.pdf