Captain Canot: or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver

Conneau, Théophile: - Theodore Canot (real name Théophile Conneau) was born in Italy in 1804. After first going to sea at the age of 16, he was shipwrecked off Cuba, and there was recruited as a crewman on a slave trader ship operating the trans-Atlantic route. He quickly earned his own command and was for many years one of the most prominent slave traders opening on the African west coast. After many adventures-which included being arrested by British and French forces, and spending time in a French prison-he attempted to set up a legitimate trading station on the coast of Liberia, only to have it destroyed by the British who believed that he was still engaged in the slave trade. Through the intervention of his brother-who had Emperor Napoleon III's physician, Canot was then appointed France's official agent of colonization in the southwest Pacific Ocean colonial territory of New Caledonia in 1854. He died on December 22, 1860, and is buried in Paris.