The Journal of Sierra Leone Studies – March, 2016.

While the majority of the slaves from this region were captured on the mainland, the islands off the coast were where the barracoons (holding pens) were primarily located and where the slave ships docked to carry out their trade. [...] In the 1730’s, William Clevland, the son of a Scottish Commodore and brother of the Secretary of the Admiralty was working for the Royal African Society, a major slave trading company that had developed a monopoly of the trade in the Sierra Leone region. [...] He produced the “Plan of a Settlement to be made near Sierra Leona, on the Grain Coast of Africa”, where he significantly embellished the welcome and the quality of the fertile lands that the Black Poor would encounter upon arriving in the region3. [...] He died in 1786, a year before the first contingent of the Black Poor were sent to the Sierra Leone region and the reality of the land and environment was encountered. [...] The inhabitants of the island in order to escape the attack, boarded the slave ships anchored on the island waiting for their slave cargo but were captured, shipped across the Atlantic and sold into slavery.