Alfred Saker 

Alfred Saker (1814-1880) worked as a draughtsman in the Admiralty dockyard at Devonport and was a member of Thomas Horton’s congregation. He answered the call to the African Mission after hearing John Clarke and Dr. Prince speak at Horton’s church during their tour of England in 1842-1843. In June, Saker wrote to the BMS Committee recommending a Mr. Benson, “a coloured man” from America, as a sailor for the new Mission vessel to be employed in Africa. In late July, Saker and Thompson were asked to meet with the Committee in London, with Saker being required to pass a physical examination. Saker did so and sailed for Jamaica and then Africa, along with John Clarke, on the Chilmark the next month. Saker and his family sailed, along with Clarke and several other missionaries, on board the Chilmark in July 1843, stopping first in Jamaica before reaching their final destination at Fernando Po. Saker would become one of the BMS’s more celebrated missionaries of the nineteenth century. He died at Peckham, near London, in 1880. See See BMS Committee Minutes, Vol. I (Jan. 1843-May 1844), ff. 36, 40, 89, 98, 101, 107, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; Ernest A. Payne, The First Generation: Early Leaders of the Baptist Missionary Society in England and India (London: Carey Press, [1936], 76-78; Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792–1992 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1992), 106.