P_10433_0428 – William Deacon
Born: Unknown
Died: Unknown
Co-owner of six voyages from London between 1699 and 1701, five of which were destined for Jamaica, and earlier captain of two slaving voyages from London destined for Barbados and inferred to have been captain of two more, also for Barbados. He was captain and then later co-owner of the Henrietta Marie, one of the better documented wrecks of slave-ships, from which artefacts initialled ‘WD’ have been recovered. The will of William Deacon mariner of Stepney London made in 1688 and proved in 1706, a conventional mariner’s will leaving everything to his wife Caecelia [sic], was apparently that of this man: although it is surprising that he did not update it as he moved into ship-owning, his widow Cecilia or Cecelia was evidently socially mobile, marrying the clergyman Jeremy Collier, who has an entry in the ODNB as ‘non-juror’. Her son Thomas Deacon (1697-1753) became a non-juring bishop, whose eldest son was executed after the 1745 Jacobite rising.