Thomas Ludlam (ca. 1775 – 25 July 1810) was thrice Governor of

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

. Thomas Ludlam was the son of

William Ludlam William Ludlam (1717–1788) was an English clergyman and mathematician. Life Born at Leicester, he was elder son of the physician Richard Ludlam (1680–1728), who practised there; Thomas Ludlam, the clergyman, was his youngest brother. (His so ...

and Frances Ludlam,England, Births & Baptisms 1538-1975
Transcription at find my past
(Subscription required) née Dowley, and nephew to Thomas Ludlam the clergyman. He was baptised in Leicester on 15 September, 1775. He received a classical education. He shared his father's practical abilities and trained as a printer, being apprenticed to John Nichols. However shortly following the completion of his apprenticeship the opportunity for him to take up a post with the

Sierra Leone Company The Sierra Leone Company was the corporate body involved in founding the second British colony in Africa on 11 March 1792 through the resettlement of Black Loyalists who had initially been settled in Nova Scotia (the Nova Scotian Settlers) aft ...

(SLC) arose, and he moved to their colony in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Having previously served on the Council of the SLC, he subsequently rose to become governor, fulfilling the role three times: May 1799 – 1800, 28 August 1803 – January 1805 and 1806 – 27 July 1808. On 19 November 1807, Ludlam arrested the American slave ship ''Triton'', enacting the newly-established

Slave Trade Act 1807 The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it ...

. He died on board on 25 July 1810.

References

Platts, Charles, 2004,
Ludlam, William (bap. 1717, d. 1788), mathematician and writer on theology
, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed 14 August, 2018. Thomas Ludlam is included in the biography of his father. Schama, Simon, '' Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution'' (London: BBC Books, 2005) pp449-57 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ludlam, Thomas 1770s births 1810 deaths Governors of Sierra Leone