Josiah Erasmus

Character Profile

Name:	Josiah Erasmus
Date of Birth:
Service:
Rank:	Reverend
Nationality:	African/Jamaican
Billets:

Biography

Josiah Erasmus was a friend of William Wilberforce. He was invited to a party thrown in William Laurence's honor meant to help combat the slave trade and raise money for the dragons sick with the Dragon Plague. When a gentleman named Mr. Bathurst argued for the slave trade, Erasmus gently rebutted his arguments.

Erasmus himself was a member of the Lunda people who had been taken from Africa at six years old. He bore scars on his face and elsewhere from being whipped. He was brought to Jamaica where he was eventually freed and became a preacher. He aided Wilberforce in speaking out against slavery and hoped to one day to return to Africa as a missionary.

This desire was fulfilled in due course and along with his wife Hannah Erasmus and two daughters Erasmus took over an abandoned mission in Cape Town, travelling there as a guest of William Laurence aboard the HMS Allegiance. After only a short time in Cape Town Erasmus agreed to act as a translator for Captain Laurence in his efforts to secure a supply of an African fungus. He was killed by a member of Hannah's Tswana people when he identified himself as a Lunda, a rival of the Tswana.