St Andrews to Cambridge

Across Tuesday the 20th and Wednesday the 21st we drove back from St Andrews to Cambridge. along the way be stopped overnight at Whitby, as well as brief stops at interesting places. Our first stop was Scarborough, where we visited Anne Bronte's grave. Ann Bronte was one of the Bronte sisters, 3 famous authors from Yorkshire, who wrote under an alias due to publishers believing it improper for women to write novels of the sort the Bronte sisters wrote. They all had short, tragic lives, and died young, Anne and Emily of TB, and Charlotte during childbirth.

Anne Bronte's grave

Later we stopped at Hull, to visit the house of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist. Wilberforce was a key part in the abolition of the slave trade in England, and across the world. Thousands of African men, women, and children were captured, packed so tight in boats that they were lying over each other, drowning in their own filth, suffocating in the stinking air, shipped over to America. It was said that you could always smell slave ships before you saw them as they drew in to port.Upon arrival in the new world, the slaves would be exchanged for cotton, which was then shipped back to England. The captured slaves would then be auctioned off, and forced to work in horrible conditions for the rest of there miserable lives. The whole practice was barbaric.

Statue of Wilberforce outside his house

Wilberforce was a graduate of Cambridge University, where he was very popular amongst the student's, smart, witty, rich, and a great public speaker. As a young man he became an evangelical Christian, and soon afterwards decided to join the campaign for it's abolition. Using his great voice and speech-making skills, in 1807 the inhumane trade was finally banned.