Canot Theodore was born in Florence in 1804. His father was a captain and paymaster in the French army, and his mother was a native of Piedmont. He made his first voyage in 1819 on the American ship Galatea, of Boston, from Leghorn to Calcutta. He visited Boston and sailed to various parts of the world.
His ship wrecked near Ostend and again on Cuba’s coast, where he fell into the hands of a gang of pirates. One of whom claimed to be his uncle, befriended him for some time, and finally sent him to an Italian grocer at Regia, near Havana. This grocer was secretly concerned about the African slave trade.
He made his first voyage to Africa in 1826, landing at the slave factory of Bangalang on the Rio Pongo in Senegambia. After quelling a mutiny on board and helping to stow away 108 slaves under 15 years of age in a hole 22 inches high, the young adventurer entered the service of the factory owner. He soon became a favorite with the native chiefs, whose proposals for a matrimonial alliance made them uncomfortable.
He visited various parts of the neighboring country, taking advantage of every opportunity to study the workings of the trade in which he had determined to engage. He collected, with the aid of the African princes, a stock of slaves for his newly established depot at Kambia, near Bangalang.
In May 1828, his factory and goods were destroyed by fire. He subsequently purchased a vessel in Sierra Leone that carried slaves wrested from a trader in the Rio Nunez, and he sailed to Cuba. Three more expeditions followed. In the first, he lost 300 slaves to smallpox. Therefore, in the end, he was taken by the French and condemned to 10 years of confinement in the prison of Brest, in France. However, after a year’s endurance, Louis Philippe pardoned him. Resolved to continue his dangerous occupation, Canot Theodore returned to Africa and pioneered the slave trade at New Sestros.
After experiencing various adventures during his expeditions among the surrounding tribes, we heard of him in 1839 on a pleasure trip to England. He returned to New Sestros and, in 1840, shipped to Cuba 749 slaves. However, he abandoned the slave trade around 1840, and he became a plantation operator. He still occasionally traffics slaves.
He now resolved to abandon his illicit course and obtain from an African chief a valuable land grant at Cape Mount. He established there in 1841 a trading and farming settlement called New Florence.
In March 1847, the British destroyed New Florence because they suspected it was a slave station. Canot Theodore was removed to South America, where he engaged in legitimate commerce. A French colony in Oceania, Napoleon III, received him after he lived in Baltimore for some time. Consult Mayer, Captain Canot, or 20 Years of an African Slaver (1854).
The eventful life he lived was described in an account he wrote in 1854. In a fascinating glimpse into the slave society of the time, both Europeans and African tribes integrated this trade into their lifestyles. Canot Theodore died in 1860 at 56.
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