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 Bahia still had survived.  Brazil was in turmoil at the time as it revolted against Portuguese colonial rule.  There were also internal disputes and during part of the time, Bahia was somewhat independent from the rest of Brazil.

The academic paper also referenced a key incident in the Brazilian slave trade. Pennell was on leave in England, so Follett handled the case.

With the turmoil in Brazil and Pennell on leave there are no surviving documents in the Foreign Office records in Brazil.

I contact the Bahian Archives to request a copy of the file,  since, amazingly, that archive does not have a digitization or copy service.

I then contacted the academic involved but received no reply.  This attitude seems to be more prevelant these days than when I was doing research in the past, in the 80s, 90s when academics were eager to collaborate and point a journalistic researcher in the right direction to ensure the accuracy of the work.  I noticed that attitude was beginning to change in the early 2000s, as I worked on the book A River Kwai Story, some academics were helpful while others were less so and a couple dismissive.  Now in 2024, it seems that old cooperation has disappeared completely.  I am not the only author that has experienced that, it is quite common, at least in reports on social media, that everyone is getting the brush off. So it is not just a case of a message going into a spam file.

So with decades of experience in television news I turned to the first choice of a producer working internationally. I found a “fixer” on WorldFixer.

It took a while for the fixer to navigate the bureaucracy and obtain and photograph the files. They have finally arrived and I now have the letters between the President of Bahia and the Consulate and the key information theat I am researching. Not quite.  The four month gap in the UK Foreign Office files is matched by a similar four month gap in the Bahia archives.

But I do have enough to advance the story and fill in some of the gaps.