I asked Dixon if there was any person in Bristol beside himself, who could confirm to me this his own treatment, as well as that of the other unfortunate man who was now dead.  He referred me to a seaman of the name of Matthew Pyke.  This person, when brought to me, not only related readily the particulars of the usage in both cases, as I have now stated them, but that which he received himself.  He said that his own arm had been broken by the chief mate in Black River, Jamaica, and that he had also by the captain’s orders, though contrary to the practice in merchant-vessels, been severely flogged.  His arm appeared to be then in pain; and I had a proof of the punishment by an inspection of his back.

I asked Matthew Pyke if the crew in general had been treated in a cruel manner.  He replied they had, except James Bulpin.  I then asked where James Bulpin was to be found.  He told me where he had lodged; but feared he had gone home to his friends in Somersetshire, I think, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater.

I thought it prudent to institute an inquiry into the characters of Thomas, Dixon, and Matthew Pyke, before I went further.  The two former I found were strangers in Bristol, and I could collect nothing about them.  The latter was a native of the place, had served his time as a seaman from the port, and was reputed of fair character.

My next business was to see James Bulpin.  I found him just setting off for the country.  He stopped, however, to converse with me.  He was a young man of very respectable appearance, and of mild manners.  His appearance, indeed, gave me reason to hope that I might depend upon his statements; but I was most of all influenced by the consideration that, never having been ill-used himself, he could have no inducement to go beyond the bounds of truth on this occasion.  He gave me a melancholy confirmation of all the three cases.  He told me, also, that one Joseph Cunningham had been a severe sufferer, and that there was reason to fear that Charles Horseler, another of the crew, had been so severely beaten over the breast with a knotted end of a rope, (which end was of the size of a large ball, and had been made on purpose,) that he died of it.  To this he added, that it was now a notorious fact, that the captain of the Alfred, when mate of a slave-ship, had been tried at Barbados for the murder of one of the crew with whom he had sailed, but that he escaped by bribing the principal witness to disappear[A].

[Footnote A:  Mr. Sampson, who was surgeon’s mate of the ship in which the captain had thus served as a mate, confirmed to me afterwards this assertion, having often heard him boast in the cabin, “how he had tricked the law on that occasion.”]