coast. The Dutch and French also started arriving and set up trade near the coast. Different European nations started using Sierra Leone as a trading point for slaves brought to the coast by African traders from interior areas undergoing wars and conflicts over territory. In 1562, the English initiated the Triangular Trade when admiral Sir John Hawkins of the Royal Navy transported 300 enslaved Africans – acquired "by the sword and partly by other means" – to the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea area of the West Indies islands, where he sold them. Sir Francis Drake reached Sierra Leone on 22 July 1580 as the last stop of his voyage along the west coast of Africa. Bunce Island, an island on the Sierra Leone River, was used as a base for European slavers as a place for slave ships to dock before sailing via the Middle Passage to the Americas. Until the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, the island was operated by the London-based firm Grant, Oswald & Company, who occupied it in 1748. Black Poor of London In the late 18th century, many African Americans claimed the protection of the British Crown. There were thousands of these Black Loyalists, people of African descent who joined the British military forces during the American Revolutionary War. Many of these Loyalists had been slaves who had escaped to join the British, lured by promises of freedom (emancipation). The official documentation known as the Book of Negroes lists thousands of freed slaves whom the British evacuated from the nascent United States and resettled in colonies elsewhere in British North America (north to Canada, or south to the West Indies). Pro-slavery advocates accused the Black Poor of being responsible for a large proportion of crime in 18th century London. While the broader community included some women, the Black Poor seems to have exclusively consisted of men, some of whom developed relationships with local women and often married them. Slave owner Edward Long criticized marriage between black men and white women. However, on the voyage between Plymouth, England and Sierra Leone, seventy European girlfriends and wives accompanied the Black Poor settlers. Many in London thought that moving them to Sierra Leone would lift them out of poverty. The Sierra Leone Resettlement Scheme was proposed by entomologist Henry Smeathman and drew interest from humanitarians like Granville Sharp, who