William Clevland (king)

William Clevland (1720 – 6 December 1758) was an Anglo-Scot who became the self-appointed King of the Banana Islands off the coast of present-day Sierra Leone.

[2] In the 1730s Clevland was working for the Royal African Company, which had a monopoly on trade at Sierra Leone.

He was on board a slave ship that was wrecked off the Banana Islands.

John succeeded his father as sovereign of the Banana Islands, but died in 1764.

[6] In this period, the British had a trading post at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River and by 1792 had established a colony of freedmen at Freetown.