HEDDLE, CHARLES

Charles Heddle (1812-187?) was an outstanding businessman who pioneered the export trade in peanuts (groundnuts) from Sierra Leone, and became in time the most prosperous merchant in the Colony.

He commanded general respect and was entrusted by the governor to negotiate with local chiefs in order to safeguard British trade from French encroachments. A prominent and active public figure, he was appointed first to the Governor’s Council and later to the Legislative Council which replaced it. He was also largely instrumental in establishing a mail packet service between Britain and Freetown.

Born in Freetown in 1812, Heddle was the son of a British army doctor, from the Orkney Islands and an African mother. As a child he visited the Orkneys. After his education (possibly in Britain like his brothers) he went into business, first at Bathurst in the Gambia in 1834 and a few years later in Freetown, where his European ancestry stood him in good stead in official circles. He was in partnership for a while with J.P. Pellegrin, a merchant from Senegal, and by 1840 had established his own firm of Heddle & Co.

It was Heddle who opened up the peanut (groundnut) trade. Peanuts, together with timber, were among the earliest exports from Sierra Leone Colony. In 1837, £13 worth of peanuts was exported, largely by his firm, and shortly after he went into business on a grand scale. He bought up factories from the timber trader, John McCormack, at strategic points on Kikonke Island at the mouth of the Scarcies River, and at Ghinti on the Melacourie River, in what is now Guinea. From these points he could tap the peanut production of the interior.

By the mid-1840s, he already owned half a dozen ships transporting peanuts and timber to Freetown, and by 1850 had become the most important merchant in the colony, having acquired the premises of his predecessors in this position, Macaulay and Babington. By 1846 he was also including palm kernels in his exports.

Because of his wealth and his far-reaching trade connections, Heddle was well known in Sierra Leone and its surroundings, his reputation as the “groundnut king stretching as far as 300 miles beyond the Colony to distant chiefdoms. He also held a prominent position in the Colony itself.

In 1845 he persuaded Governor William Fergusson (term of office 1844-46) to let him lead a mission to negotiate a commercial and anti-slavery treaty with the king of the Morea in Soso country (northwestern Sierra Leone) in order to safeguard British trading interests (in which he largely participated) against French initiatives. Impressed by his enterprise and success, Fergusson gave him a seat on his advisory council.

In 1851, he became the first chairman of the Mercantile Association, formed in Freetown to articulate the interests of the business community. He also played an important role in the establishment in 1852 of a mail packet service between Britain and Freetown called the African Steamship Company, controlled by Macgregor Laird. By the 1860s, he owned an impressive amount of property, both in Freetown, and in Bendu, in Bonthe, and on the Rokel River. He put part of his enormous profits into the acquisition of property, whether by purchase of mortgage, from less successful traders.

In 1863 Heddle was appointed to the newly-constituted Legislative Council by Governor Norman William Macdonald (term of office 1846-52), where he was an outspoken critic of the colonial administration. Among other things, he urged the policy of keeping the French out of the northern rivers.

By 1870, however, he was a sick and crippled man. He left Freetown in that year to settle in Paris, leaving first his nephew and then one of his sons as his agent in Freetown. It is probable that he died in Paris.

C. MAGBAILY FYLE