'A View of the Fort at Senegal taken from the Road, Feb 75' (Bray album) RMG PT2034

'A View of the Fort at Senegal taken from the Road, Feb 75' [Bray album]

No. 59 of 74 (PAJ1976 - PAJ2049)

Titled and dated as above on the tag of a backing sheet, and signed 'AVprGB' (to the life by Gabriel Bray). The British fort at the mouth of the Senegal River was the first place of call specified in the ship's orders for the 'Pallas' voyage in 1775, and she arrived there on 28 January, sailing again on the 31st for the Gambia River: Bray's inscribed date is therefore slightly adrift, probably due to faulty memory. Three small vessels are present on the right, probably merchantmen or small slavers, or others attached to the fort. One is clearly an unrigged brig, laid up behind the buildings, far right. On the left behind the fort is another brig in seagoing condition, presumably the one which Captain Cornwallis's log noted as for the use of Governor O'Hara at the fort, at whose request he supplied her with a small consignment of gunpowder on 31 January, just before the 'Pallas' sailed. The fort may be the mud-built one, dating from 1700 on an islet in the river, which A.W. Lawrence identifieds as Fort St Joseph in his 'Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa' (1963).

This is one of 73 drawings by Bray (plus one signed 'NF 1782') preserved in a 19th-century album. They have now been separately remounted. Bray (1750-1823), was second lieutenant of the 44-gun ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819) – later a well-known admiral - on two voyages (1774-77) to report on British interests in West Africa, including the slave trade. The dated drawings refer only to the first of these, from December 1774 to September 1775, though a few may be from the second. Others comprise country views, some of Deal, Kent (where Bray may have come from), and others of social-history interest.

A View of the Fort at Senegal taken from the Road