His talk was interesting and informative, starting with The Virginia Company of London, formed in 1606, with the intention of establishing a colony in North America, rumours of precious metals in Central South America creating an interest.

It took three months to cross the Atlantic and the first colonists arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

The Dutch had already been taking slaves from West Africa and transporting them to Europe for many years, and when, because of bad conditions and diseases like smallpox, many of the incomers and 80% of American natives died, the first Dutch ship arrived in Jamestown with just 19 slaves from Africa.

The white servant class from England was also encouraged to travel to Jamestown and workers were then indentured to plantation owners for seven years, often having this period extended to ten years because of poverty and exploitation.

A triangle of exporting was soon established. From England to Africa - copper, cloth, silks, glass and ammunition, from West Africa to America - enslaved men, women and children and Indigo and from America to England - sugar, rum, rice, coffee and tobacco.

This trade continued for some three hundred years. In the period until slavery was finally abolished, some eleven million slaves were transported from Africa.