Richard Johnson, Liverpool, to Joseph Angus, [Baptist Mission House, London,] 28 October 1842.

L[iver]pool

28 Oct 1842

My dear Sir

      I have seen the owners & Captain of the African Vessel & cannot arrange for the Missionaries to have a passage in her, they are not certain of going to Fernando Po direct from here; & I find the Capn very much opposed to Dr Prince[2] & Mr Clarke on [account] of their interference with the Servants of the Western Africa Co  in the case of the man who was immured in a Dungeon, I tried to reason with the Captain on the subject, but he was very warmly opposed to them & said there would be no security for either lives or property if such interference was allowed; the hope by this vessel of a passage having failed, I again applied to Messrs Hamilton Jackson & Co & Mr  Jackson promised to help us, & get a passage by the first vessel they send & perhaps it may be as soon as the other;  If you see Dr Prince or Mr Clarke please tell them the reason Mr Jameson[3] is so much offended is owing to a report published in the West Indies & reported in some publication or Magazine, the name of which I have not yet got, which he considers contains an improper reflection on him, I am sorry to lose these two opportunities, especially the services of Jameson, as he trades direct, but have little doubt we shall find other channels of communication with the brethren there, & any letter you have for them I can send by Mr Horsfall’s ship, & will advise you when I can get a package for them by some other & believe me

                        Yours vy truly

                                                            Richd Johnson

To the Revd J. Angus A. M.

London

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 263-64 (annotated version); also MAW, Box 39 (BMS 1737), John Rylands University Library of Manchester. George K. Prince (1800/01-1865) was a medical doctor from Jamaica who served as a BMS missionary with John Clarke at Fernando Po, 1840-48. William Jameson (1807-47) arrived in Jamaica in 1835 as part of a contingent of missionaries sent out by the United Secession Presbyterian Church (Scotland). A presbytery was formed in 1836, and in 1841 a school for training ministers was opened in Goshen, directed by Jameson until 1846, when he departed for the new mission being started by the Presbyterians in Old Calabar, West Africa. He died there in 1847. That same year the Scottish Missionary Society transferred all its missionaries in Jamaica to the United Secession Church, which then became the United Presbyterian Church in Jamaica. John Clarke, who would later assist Jameson on his arrival at Fernando Po in January 1847, offers considerable praise for the Presbyterians and their work in Jamaica, despite his problem with Jameson in letter 231. See John Clarke, Memorials of the Baptist Missionaries in Jamaica (London: Yates and Alexander, 1869), 225-30; Alexander Robb, The Gospel to the Africans: A Narrative of the Life and Labours of the Rev. William Jameson in Jamaica and Old Calabar (Edinburgh: A. Eliot, 1861), 263.