Peter Fitzgerald was a British Royal Navy officer.
Biography[]
Peter Fitzgerald served as a captain in the Royal Navy, and he was a staunch abolitionist. Fitzgerald was dispatched to West Africa to hunt down illegal slave traders, and, in 1840, he was called to testify in the Amistad case in Connecticut as an expert witness for the defendants. Fitzgerald testified that illegal slave trading was a lucrative business, and, when William S. Holabird questioned as to why a slave ship captain would have 50 of his slaves thrown overboard, Fitzgerald opined that, in his experience, slaves were thrown overboard by captains who were in danger of interception by the Royal Navy in order to mask their crimes. He also offered the explanation that the captain of the Tecora had 50 slaves thrown overboard after realizing that his provisions could not feed all the Africans, thereby creating fewer mouths to feed. Holabird questioned the existence of the Lomboko slave fortress, which Cinque and the captives had been sold from, but Fitzgerald confirmed that there was overwhelming evidence of its existence. In 1849, Fitzgerald commanded the expedition that would destroy the fortress after the liberation of its slaves.