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Cape Coast Castle – the Slave Dungeons and the Grave of L.E.L.

When
since 15 October 1838 date from records made at the time
Where
Cape Coast Castle, Cape Coast, Ghana
Verdict
Disputed

In the dungeons where enslaved Africans waited for the ships stands a shrine to a sea deity, and in the courtyard lies a poet whose death still raises questions.

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5.10°, -1.24° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Cape Coast Castle on the coast of Ghana began as a Swedish fort in 1653; from 1664 it belonged to the English and became one of the main centers of the trade in human beings on the Gold Coast. Beneath the courtyard, vaulted dungeons were cut into the rock, where as many as a thousand people were held at a time; they spent weeks there before being led through the “Door of No Return” onto ships bound for the Americas. One of the dungeons contains a shrine to Nana Tabir, a sea deity of the Cape Coast shore whose cult Europeans were already describing in 1601. In the courtyard lie Governor George Maclean and his wife, the celebrated English poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon, who signed her work L.E.L. She arrived in August 1838, and on 15 October she was found dead, holding a bottle of dilute prussic acid. In London people spoke of suicide, and of poisoning by the governor's jealous mistress. Visitors to the castle describe the crushing silence of the dungeons and sounds they cannot put down to either the sea or the living.

Witnesses

Reports from 1838 and later letters and memoirs by L.E.L.'s friends; today, guides and visitors to the castle, including accounts published by Global Voices (2009). The history of the Tabir cult has been studied by the historian Andrew Apter.

Explanations and hypotheses

There is no documented “haunting” at Cape Coast – stories of voices in the dungeons are above all people's response to a place of immense suffering, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. The Tabir shrine is not a ghost legend but part of a living religion; Apter shows that this deity was woven into Africans' dealings with European traders from the 17th century onward. L.E.L.'s death was most likely an accident: prussic acid was then prescribed for heart complaints, and her surviving prescription dates from 1836. Rumors of poisoning and a hidden mistress circulated mainly in London and were never confirmed – Maclean's mistress had left for Accra long before the poet arrived.

Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.

Sources

  1. Andrew Apter, History in the Dungeon: Atlantic Slavery and the Spirit of Capitalism in Cape Coast Castle, Ghana (American Historical Review, 2017)
  2. UNESCO World Heritage Centre – Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions
  3. Julie Watt, Poisoned Lives: The Regency Poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.) and British Gold Coast Administrator George Maclean (Sussex Academic Press, 2010)
  4. William St Clair, The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade (BlueBridge, 2007)
  5. Global Voices – Ghana: Visiting Cape Coast Castle (2009)

More: Wikipedia (en)