Rare photo of the arrival of the H.M.S Bloodhound and H.M.S Teazer in Lagos

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Series one Historical scenes from Old Nigeria (Series of Public Postcard promoting Lagos History). Image on the card shows the arrival of the H.M.S Bloodhound and H.M.S Teazer in Lagos 1852, Aftermath of the 1851 Bombardment of Lagos by British Naval forces.

The British bombardment opened Lagos to Christian missionaries in addition to new European merchants. Within a fortnight of Akitoye’s installation, the CMS sent Saro catechist James White to begin preaching the Gospel in the town. Mindful, undoubtedly, of the new oba’s relationship with the missionaries as well as of his place at the center of local religious and political life, White conducted his first service in the courtyard of the king’s palace.

In May 1852, he started a school attended by twelve boys. Before the end of the year, the CMS had moved its coastal headquarters from Badagry to Lagos, and soon after the Wesleyan missionaries did the same. With the merchants and missionaries came hundreds of former slaves from Sierra Leone and Brazil, as well as smaller numbers from Cuba, some from communities further west along the Slave Coast and others directly from Sierra Leone or the Americas. These immigrants swelled the congregations of the new churches and enrollments of the young schools, and they also established new mosques and Islamic brotherhoods. A disproportionate number of the Sierra Leoneans made their living by entering the town’s expanding trade. While some of the Brazilians engaged in commerce, many were artisans, whose skills shaped the style of the settlement’s ornate late nineteenth-century buildings.

Toward the end of 1852, the Foreign Office appointed a vice-consul to Lagos, and half a year later it sent Benjamin Campbell there as consul. A man of some twenty years’ experience on the Guinea coast, Campbell held office at Lagos until April 1859, and he played a major role in shaping the affairs of the town during the consular period.

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