John newton who is he

At that point, the young John Newton seems to have gone adrift. He started this book with a reference to Israel and the wilderness. In his memoirs, he recalls that his mother was pious and that he might have picked up a few things from her, but he only had faint memories of her. He was educated as a young man. He made several voyages through his teenage years, and in between his voyages, he would spend time in the English countryside. On one of his trips into Kent, he met Mary Catlett.

He would call her Polly. From the moment he saw her, he knew that he wanted to marry her. That would be a few years off. For the young John, this life as a sailor would continue for many years. After many voyages, including stints on a Spanish merchant ship and with England's Royal Navy, Newton found himself sailing on a slave ship.

Always troublesome in his youth, Newton was discharged along the African coast, where he went to work for a slave trader. The trader's black "wife" disliked the young Newton intensely and convinced the trader that the boy should be treated as a slave.

So there he worked, along with black slaves -- poorly fed, poorly clothed, unpaid -- for about a year. He was rescued by another white slave trader and later returned to England on the ship Greyhound.

It was on the Greyhound that John turned back to his Christian roots. But his refound religion didn't alter his views on slavery. Five years later, as captain of his own ship, he wrote in his journal that he was thankful for being led into "an easy and creditable way of life.

Newton spent two years at boarding school before going to live in Aveley in Essex , the home of his father's new wife. At age eleven he first went to sea with his father. Newton sailed six voyages before his father retired in Instead, Newton signed on with a merchant ship sailing to the Mediterranean Sea.

In , while going to visit friends, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy. He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. Plagued by ill health and failing eyesight, Newton died on 21 December in London. He was buried beside his wife in St. Mary Woolnoth in London.