Editing John Newton (section)

==Early life==
John Newton was born in [[Wapping]], London, in 1725, the son of John Newton the Elder, a [[skipper (boating)|shipmaster]] in the [[Mediterranean]] service, and Elizabeth (née Scatliff). Elizabeth was the only daughter of Simon Scatliff, an instrument maker from London.{{efn|name=register}} Elizabeth was brought up as a [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Nonconformist]].{{sfn|Aitken|2007|loc=Sources and Biographical Notes}} She died of [[tuberculosis]] (then called consumption) in July 1732, about two weeks before her son's seventh birthday.{{sfn|Aitken|2007|pp=29–30}} Newton spent two years at a [[boarding school]], before going to live at [[Aveley]] in [[Essex]], the home of his father's new wife.{{sfn |Lewis|1976|p= 51}}

At age eleven he first went to sea with his father. Newton sailed six voyages before his father retired in 1742. At that time, Newton's father made plans for him to work at a [[sugarcane]] [[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean|plantation]] in Jamaica. Instead, Newton signed on with a merchant ship sailing to the [[Mediterranean Sea]].

===Impressment into naval service===
In 1743, while going to visit friends, Newton was [[Impressment|pressed]] into the [[Royal Navy]]. He became a [[midshipman]] aboard [[HMS Harwich (1743)|HMS ''Harwich'']]. At one point Newton tried to desert and was punished in front of the crew. Stripped to the waist and tied to the grating, he received a [[flogging]] and was reduced to the rank of a common [[Seaman (rank)|seaman]].{{sfn |Dunn|1994|p= 7}}

Following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated murdering the captain and committing suicide by throwing himself overboard.{{sfn|Dunn|1994 | p =8}}  He recovered, both physically and mentally. Later, while ''Harwich'' was en route to India, he transferred to ''Pegasus'', a [[slave ship]] bound for [[West Africa]]. The ship carried goods to Africa and traded them for slaves to be shipped to the colonies in the Caribbean and North America.

===Enslavement and rescue===
Newton did not get along with the crew of ''Pegasus''. In 1745, they left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave dealer.{{sfn|Bennett|1894}}  Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to his wife, Princess Peye of the [[Sherbro people]].{{citation needed|date=August 2022}} According to Newton, she abused and mistreated him just as much as she did her other slaves. Newton later recounted this period as the time he was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa."{{efn|name=MemEpi}}

Early in 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton's father to search for him, and returned to England on the merchant ship ''Greyhound'', which was carrying [[beeswax]] and dyer's wood, now referred to as [[camwood]].{{sfn|Tackett|2017}}