John Newton Huey in web

John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725, the son of John Newton Sr., a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth Newton (née Seatclife), a Nonconformist Christian. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was six. [1] Newton spent two years at boarding school, and at the age of eleven he went to sea with his father and sailed with him on a total of six voyages until the elder Newton retired in 1742. Newton's father had planned for him to take up a position as a slave master at a sugar plantation in Jamaica. He did become a Captain of a slaveship, but in 1743, while on the way to visit some friends, he was captured and pressed into naval service, and became a midshipman aboard the HMS Harwich. After attempting to desert upon learning of an extended voyage, Newton was returned to the Harwich for punishment. The captain, who detested traitors and deserters, was determined to make an example of Newton for the rest of the crew. Thus, in the presence of 350 members of the crew, the eighteen year old midshipman was stripped to the waist, tied to the grating, and received a flogging of ninety-six lashes, and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman