Quobna Cugoano was captured by slavers aged 13 but later played a big part in the UK abolition movement.
Artist Che Lovelace was on his way to the coast on the Caribbean island of Trinidad to collect mud to use in carnival celebrations when he received a message that a church in the UK wanted him to create an artwork to commemorate the life of an African man he had never heard of.
Forced to work on a sugar plantation after two years of "dreadful captivity... without any hope of deliverance, beholding the most dreadful scenes of misery and cruelty", he was brought to Britain and managed to gain his freedom in 1772.This is the only reliably attributed image of Ottobah Cugoano - from an etching done in 1784
On 20 August 1773, 250 years ago, at the age of 16, Cugoano was baptised John Stuart in St James's Church Piccadilly, in the centre of London. But he published his book 13 years later under his original, African name. He tells the BBC he was surprised not to know about Cugoano because he thought he was well-informed about the abolition movement.
"When we were finished getting the mud, the men were washing off in a nearby river, and that scene immediately resonated because of the cleansing and transformative powers of water," Lovelace says. This includes poet and artist William Blake, who was a contemporary of Cugoano - and one of Lovelace's favourite artists.
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