John Hawkins (1532 - 95)
Sir John Hawkins was born in Plymouth in 1532, the son of an ivory merchant and a cousin of Sir Francis Drake. He, like Drake, was a privateer, attacking Spanish ships. When he became a sea captain he made the first British slaving trip to Sierra Leone in 1562, with a fleet of three ships and 100 men, capturing 300 Africans by force and selling them to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Between 1664 amd 1669 he made four voyages to Sierra Leone, and took a total of 1200 Africans across the Atlantic. Hawkins was knighted by Elizabeth I (who also sponsored some of his slaving voyages) for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588. He then he had an image of an African woman added to his new noble family crest. Hawkins and Drake both died of fever in the Caribbean, in 1595, on their last expedition against the Spaniards there.