In 1789 at the age of only twenty-nine, James Irving was appointed as captain of the recently built, Anna. His improved financial situation enabled him to move to Pownall Square. Under the terms of the Dolben Act the ship was allowed to carry eighty slaves. He therefore only had a crew of eight men. This included John Clegg, Matthew Dawson, and three black men, Silvin Buckle, James Drachen and Jack Peters.
On 3rd May, 1789, Irving left Liverpool for Africa. On 27th May, the ship got into trouble off the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Irving later recalled that his attempts to alter the ship's course and "bring her to the wind" failed and the Anna was over-whelmed by the waves which "fell on board so heavily, and followed one another so quickly, that she soon lost head way, and struck in the hollow of the sea so very hard, that the rudder went away in a few seconds". Within ten minutes the ship filled with water and was pushed into the rocks. Irving and his crew were forced to abandon ship, and luckily they managed to safely get to the shore.
Irving and his crew were captured the following day by local Arabs and sold into slavery. Irving wrote to his wife, "all our hopes and prospects are vanished". Irving sent a letter to John Hutchinson, the British vice-counsul at Mogador (modern-day Essaouira), on the 24th June, 1789: "I hope you can feel for us, first suffering shipwreck, then seized on by a party of Arabs with outstretched arms and knives ready to stab us, next stripped to the skin, suffering a thousands deaths daily, insulted, spit upon, exposed to the sun and forced to travel through parched deserts." He pleaded with Hutchinson to "rescue us speedily from the most intolerable slavery".
Hutchinson successfully negotiated his release and after arriving in Marrakesh in January 1790 Irving informed his wife: "I have now the pleasure to tell you that after many difficulties and inconceivable hardships every one of us are got safe here in perfect health, and are under the care of our humane vice-consul, Mr. Hutchinson, who supplies us with clothes and the necessaries of life."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REirvingJ.htm
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