Nathaniel Isaacs

[4][5] Leaving Cape Town on 26 August 1825, The Mary the party made several stops along the Southern African coast, anchoring off Port Natal on 1 October.

He lived in daily contact with the powerful King Shaka of the Zulus, at the time the Zulu Empire was at its peak influence in Southern Africa.

Most of what has been written about Shaka comes from the accounts of Henry Francis Fynn and Isaacs who learned to speak the Zulu language fluently.

Lt Farewell, Fynn and Isaacs established the town of Port Natal, later renamed Durban, which became the second largest city in South Africa in modern times.

In 1828 King Shaka made Isaacs "Induna Incoola", or Principal Chief of Natal, and granted him great areas of land.

Kennedy was appointed Governor of New South Wales and took the papers relating to the slave-trading charges with him when returning to England before taking up his post in Australia.

Dan Wylie, an academic at Rhodes University has asserted that Isaacs deliberately exaggerated the extent of Shaka's brutality to boost the sales of his and of Flynn's books.