Category: Brazil

The Slave Traders’ Pilot Book

Captain’s log 18191029 It was October, 1819. The Royal Navy sloop HMS Pheasant part of the new anti-slavery West Africa Squadron, was on patrol off Accra in what is today Ghana. For the research and writing on my latests book project,  I was reading the log and came across a reference that I had not […]

The archives from Bahia

While researching the work of  my fourth great grandfather , William Pennell,  while British consul in Bahia, and his vice consul, his nephew, William Follett, the question is what is the Brazilian side of the story? I did find an academic reference that showed the correspondence between the British Consul and the then government of […]

Captain’s log 1819108

  I’ve just completed five days of research for my Pennell Projects at the British National Archives at Kew. (And a couple of weeks earlier I spent the afternoon at the British  Library in London). William Pennell was a diplomat and a spy under diplomatic cover from 1814 to 1832.  That meant I had a […]