Banjul Banjul Gambia

Hanno the navigator, encountering various indigenous peoples on his journey and meeting with a variety of welcomes, could have reached Gambia.

However, ...

Nuno Tristão, a knight of the household of Henry the Navigator, is in 1441 dispatched by Henry in one of the first prototypes of the lateen-rigged caravel to explore the West African coast beyond Cape Barbas, the furthest point reached by Gonçalves in 1436).

Around Rio de Oro, Tristão met up with the ship of Antão Gonçalves, who had been sent on a separate mission by Henry that same year to hunt monk seals that basked on those shores.

But Gonçalves happened to capture a solitary young camel-driver, the first native encountered by the Portuguese since the expeditions began in the 1420s.

Nuno Tristão, who carried on board one of Henry's Moorish servants to act as an interpreter, interrogated Gonçalves's captive camel-driver.

Tristão and Gonçalves were led by his information to a small Sanhaja Berber fishing camp nearby.

The Portuguese attack the fishermen, taking some ten captives, the first African slaves taken by the Portuguese back to Europe.

Gonçalves returns to Portugal immediately after the slave raid, but Nuno Tristão continues south, reaching as far as Cape Blanc (Cabo Branco), before turning back.

European travelers to sub-Saharan Africa in 1586 describe the Mbira, or thumb-piano, an African musical instrument known as a lamellaphone, consisting of a set of tuned metal or bamboo tongues (lamellae) of varying length attached at one end to a soundboard that often has a box or calabash resonator.

Board-mounted lamellaphones are often played inside gourds or bowls for increased resonance, and the timbre may be modified by attaching rattling devices to the board or resonator or by attaching metal cuffs at the base of the tongues.

The area of present day Gambia becomes England’s first African possession in 1588 when the defeated claimant to the Portuguese throne, Antonio, Prior of Crato, sells exclusive trade rights on the Gambia River to English merchants; this grant is confirmed by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I.

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, captured and sold into slavery in 1732, is an extremely rare exception in the slave trade.

Due to his intelligence and monetary prowess, and Englishmen's desire to use him to increase their own profits in trade on the coast of Africa, he has been able to legally escape the hardships of slavery in Maryland and return to Gambia in July 1734 and later return to his homeland.

His father had died, and one of his wives, presuming that Ayuba had perished, had remarried.

His homeland has been ravaged by war, but being a prosperous individual, Ayuba is able to regain his old lifestyle.

His memoirs are published by Bluett in English and French.

Ayuba had faced later hardships.

He had been imprisoned or held as a parolee by the French in June 1736.

Ayuba may have been targeted by the French because of his alliances with the British.

He had been held perhaps for a year by the French, when Ayuba's local countrymen, rather than the British, secured his release.

He had later sent letters to the London RAC to visit London, but this request was denied.

Notably, none of Ayuba’s English contemporaries mentioned the conditions and experience of Ayuba and Loumein during the Middle Passage.

Ayuba had continued to press London factors for Loumein’s freedom.

Due to Ayuba’s commitment and the help of Bluett, Loumein is eventually returned to the Gambia region in 1738.

The African Association had decided in May 1792 to capitalize on their discoveries and enlist the support of the British government.

They had authorized their committee to make "whatever application to Government they may think advisable for rendering the late discoveries of Major Houghton effectually serviceable to the Commercial Interests of the Empire."

A British presence on the Gambia would "strengthen the bonds of trade", so they have proposed to install James Willis as consul in Senegambia.

He is to develop good relations with the king of Bambouk by a gift of muskets, thereby opening up communication between the Niger and the Gambia and make inroads for trade with all the "gold-rich lands of the interior which undoubtedly lined the Niger’s banks". 

Mungo Park, a Scottish country doctor, was to travel with Willis to Senegambia, but when Willis’ departure was held up by bureaucratic and logistical problems, Park had left England on the trade ship Endeavour, a vessel trading to the Gambia for beeswax and ivory and arrives on the Africa coast on June 4, 1795.