People · 1835–1866
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Britain helped him keep his throne, then helped take it away and shipped him to England. Seven years later it paid him more than £7,500 and sent him home. He landed, eventually, and asked for missionaries.
Bonny, in the eastern Niger Delta, was one of the great Atlantic ports long before most of today's Nigerian cities existed. By the 1730s, historians Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson have shown, it had overtaken Old Calabar as the main slave port in the Bight of Biafra. In the nineteenth century, as Britain's navy squeezed the slave trade, Bonny moved over to palm oil. It stayed rich, and British merchants crowded its waters. But Bonny was not British. It was an African kingdom with its own king, chiefs and politics.
Those politics ran through the Houses. A Bonny House was not just a family home. It was a trading firm, a political party and a small community rolled into one, with its own dependants, traders, canoes and business contacts. A strong House head could rival the king.
William Dappa Pepple was a son of King Opubo, one of Bonny's important rulers. When Opubo died, regents and House leaders had grown powerful, and the young prince had to fight for real authority. The historian K. Onwuka Dike places his accession in 1835. Very quickly he faced a challenge from Alali, a strong figure linked to the Anna Pepple House. That fight was about who controlled trade, how power was shared among the Houses, and what a king was actually allowed to do.
Here is the first twist. Britain was on his side. By 1837, British naval intervention had helped Pepple beat back Alali. The people who would later throw him out started out propping him up.
Things soured over the next fifteen years. Pepple tried to hold on to royal power while House heads and European merchants kept getting stronger. He got into quarrels over trade, and over Bonny's dealings with its rival, New Calabar. Britain had set up a consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra, and the consul, John Beecroft, was very willing to step into local disputes when he thought British interests were at risk.
By the early 1850s, Pepple was under pressure from inside Bonny and from the British traders. Illness weakened his grip too. The Illustrated London News reported that fourteen British palm-oil ships were sitting idle at Bonny because of Pepple's "aggressions" and his plan to make war on New Calabar. On 12 December 1853 his chiefs revolted.
On 19 January 1854, HMS Antelope arrived with Beecroft on board. Pepple, the paper said, "was considered deposed", and his nephew Prince Dappo was elected in his place. The British traders and their Court of Equity were deep in it, alongside Bonny's own chiefs.
Then they took him away. Pepple was carried off by way of Fernando Po and Ascension, and ended up in England. He lived for a time in Tottenham. His son George went to school in England, and while there Pepple publicly became a Christian and made friends among British religious and political supporters. An African king living in Victorian England was a curiosity, and writers loved the story.
The new arrangement in Bonny did not work. Dappo died in 1855. A regency took over and fell into fighting between factions. The British merchants, who mostly wanted calm so they could trade, began to see the man they had helped remove as the answer to the mess they had helped make.
So Britain negotiated his return, and it was not cheap. According to Dike, Pepple received £4,520 in compensation and £3,003 for his legal expenses, £7,523 in all.
He sailed home on a chartered ship called the Bewley, which reached Bonny waters on 18 August 1861. And then he waited. He did not step ashore until 15 October, almost two months later. Bonny was still divided, and a king who had been gone seven years had good reason to be careful. When he did land, the old power was gone. House leaders were stronger than ever. Oko Jumbo had become a major figure, and a man called Jubo Jubogha, later famous as Jaja of Opobo, was on the rise. Pepple was king again, but a king who had to share the stage.
The thing that lasted from his second reign came out of his exile. In 1864 he wrote to the Bishop of London asking for missionaries to be sent to Bonny. The request found its way to the Church Missionary Society and to Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the newly consecrated African bishop. In 1865 a permanent mission site was chosen, schools started, and in February 1866 the foundation of a chapel was laid. Bonny went on to become one of the main centres from which Anglican Christianity spread through the Delta.
William Dappa Pepple died on 30 September 1866. His English-educated son George took the throne. In 1867, George and the leading chiefs publicly gave up the sacred status of the monitor lizard, the old protector of Bonny. The exile had come full circle.
