George Glas

Who was George Glas?

George Glas was a Scottish seaman and merchant adventurer in West Africa.

The son of John Glas, the divine, Glas was born at Dundee in 1725, and is said to have been brought up as a surgeon. He obtained command of a ship which traded between Brazil, the northwest coasts of Africa and the Canary Islands.

During his voyages he discovered on the Western Sahara seaboard a river navigable for some distance inland, and here he proposed to found a trading station. The exact spot is not known with certainty, but it is plausibly identified with Gueder, possibly the haven where the Spaniards had in the 15th and 16th centuries a fort called Santa Cruz de Mar Pequena.

Glas made an arrangement with the Lords of Trade whereby he was granted £15,000 if he obtained free cession of the port he had discovered to the British crown; the proposal was to be laid before Parliament in the session of 1765. Having chartered a vessel, Glas, with his wife and daughter, sailed for Africa in 1764, reached his destination and made a treaty with the Moors of the district. He named his settlement Port Hillsborough, after Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough, president of the Board of Trade and Plantations. In November 1764, Glas and some companions, leaving his ship behind, went in the longboat to Lanzarote, intending to buy a small barque suitable for the navigation of the river on which was his settlement. From Lanzarote he forwarded to London the treaty he had concluded for the acquisition of Port Hillsborough. A few days later he was seized by the Spaniards, taken to Teneriffe and imprisoned at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In a letter to the Lords of Trade from Teneriffe, dated the 15th of December 1764, Glas said he believed the reason for his detention was the jealousy of the Spaniards at the settlement at Port Hillsborough because in a time of war the English might ruin their fishery and effectually stop the whole commerce of the Canary Islands.