Contents
 1789 in Great Britain: |
Other years |
| Countries of the United Kingdom |
| Scotland |
| Sport |
| 1789 English cricket season |
Events from the year 1789 in Great Britain.
| 1789 in Great Britain: |
Other years |
| Countries of the United Kingdom |
| Scotland |
| Sport |
| 1789 English cricket season |
Events from the year 1789 in Great Britain.
Vice-Admiral William Bligh was a British officer in the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. He is best known for the mutiny on HMS Bounty, which occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command. After being set adrift in Bounty's launch by the mutineers, Bligh and those loyal to him all reached Timor alive, after a journey of 3,618 nautical miles. Bligh's logbooks documenting the mutiny were inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register on 26 February 2021.
1789 (MDCCLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar, the 1789th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 789th year of the 2nd millennium, the 89th year of the 18th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1780s decade. As of the start of 1789, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, and became an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an Evangelical Anglican, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.
The Thames and Severn Canal is a canal in Gloucestershire in the south-west of England, which was completed in 1789. It was conceived as part of a cargo route from Bristol and the Midlands to London, linking England's two largest rivers for better trade. The route climbs the steep Cotswold escarpment through the Golden Valley, tunnels underneath the summit of the Cotswold Edge, and emerges near the source of the Thames.
The thumbscrew is a torture instrument which was first used in early modern Europe. It is a simple vise, sometimes with protruding studs on the interior surfaces. The crushing bars were sometimes lined with sharp metal points to puncture the nails. While the most common design operated upon a single thumb or big toe, variants could accommodate both big toes, all five fingers of one hand, or all ten toes.
Thomas Clarkson was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and helped achieve passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended British trade in slaves.
Olaudah Equiano, known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir, he was from the village of Essaka in modern southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in West Africa, he was shipped to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more before purchasing his freedom in 1766.
Ottobah Cugoano, also known as John Stuart, was an abolitionist, political activist, and natural rights philosopher from West Africa who was active in Great Britain in the latter half of the 18th century.
Amazing Grace is a 2006 biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted, about the abolitionist campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the 1772 hymn "Amazing Grace". The film also recounts the experiences of John Newton as a captain of slave ships and subsequent Christian conversion, which inspired his writing of the poem later used in the hymn. Newton is portrayed as a major influence on Wilberforce and the abolition movement.
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast in West Africa.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first published in 1789 in London, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, an African from what is now Nigeria who was enslaved in childhood and eventually earned his freedom and became an abolitionist in the United Kingdom.
Events from the year 1787 in Great Britain.
Events from the year 1783 in Great Britain. This year is notable for the conclusion of the American Revolution.
Events from the year 1790 in Great Britain.
Events from the year 1792 in Great Britain.
HMS Namur was a 90-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Chatham Dockyard to the draught specified by the 1745 Establishment as amended in 1750, and launched on 3 March 1756. HMS Namur’s battle honours surpass even those of the more famous HMS Victory.
The Sons of Africa were a late-18th-century group in Britain that campaigned to end African chattel slavery. The "corresponding society" has been called the Britain's first black political organisation. Its members were educated Africans in London, including formerly enslaved men such as Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community.
A scramble was a particular form of slave auction that took place during the Atlantic slave trade in the European colonies of the West Indies and the domestic slave trade of the United States. It was called a "scramble" because buyers would run around in an open space all at once to gather as many enslaved people as possible. Another name for a scramble auction is "Grab and go" slave auctions. Slave ship captains would go to great lengths to prepare their captives and set prices for these auctions to make sure they would receive the highest amount of profits possible because it usually did not involve earlier negotiations or bidding.
The Slave Trade Act 1788, also known as the Regulated Slave Trade Act 1788 or Dolben's Act, was an Act of Parliament that limited the number of enslaved people that British slave ships could transport, based on the ships' tons burthen (bm). It was the first British legislation enacted to regulate slave shipping.
Charles Irving was a Scottish naval surgeon and inventor. In 1770, he introduced a method for distillation of seawater to the Royal Navy, and was awarded the sum of £5,000 for his method in 1772. His apparatus for distilling seawater was used on the second voyage of James Cook and on the 1773 expedition by Constantine John Phipps towards the North Pole, in which Irving participated both as surgeon and as scientific collaborator of Phipps. He was later involved in British colonial enterprises in Central America that included an attempt to establish a crown colony on the Mosquito Shore, but his plans were thwarted by Spanish intervention.