Edward Rushton

For example, at age 16, he took the helm of a ship which the captain and crew were about to abandon and guided them safely back to Liverpool.

Working with human cargo gave Rushton first-hand experience with the ways that slaves were treated, and caused him to become an abolitionist later in life.

In 1773, the same year that he survived the ship sinking, Rushton was sailing to Dominica with human cargo when a highly contagious outbreak of ophthalmia struck many of the slaves.

The disease spread quickly and Rushton was appalled with the conditions that the slaves had to endure, so he would sneak food and water to them.

Rushton also wrote letters to his heroes George Washington and Thomas Paine to ask why they were not using their public influence to oppose slavery, but neither man replied.

Rushton made no attempts to censor his radical beliefs about the French Revolution or the social unrest in Britain.

In the late 1780s, he became a member of the literary and philosophical society and began donating money to help blind paupers.

1787 – West-Indian eclogues 1788 – Neglected genius: or, Tributary stanzas to the memory of the unfortunate Chatterton 1797 – Expostulatory Letter to George Washington, of Mount Vernon, in Virginia, on his continuing to be a proprietor of slaves 1800 – Lucy's ghost.

Edward Rushton appeared as a featured character in "The Dark," an interactive installation hosted at the Dana Centre of the Science Museum, London in 2004.

The work, described as "a specially created three-dimensional audio environment in which the echoes of virtual ghosts inhabited a haunted soundscape,"[1][2] enables visitors to "experience life on board a slave ship in the 18th century.