The story of Silas Told is rarely told. He was an indentured servant who lived for many years as a sailor. As a sailor in the eighteenth century, he experienced the very worst of humanity. Yet, when he was redeemed by the hand of God, he discovered that true liberty consists of being a servant of God and of his fellow men. His life was filled with adventures, trials, and triumphs, and he gave all the glory to his Master, Jesus Christ.

Silas Told was born on April 3, 1711, in the English city of Bristol, in the southwest of England on the Bristol Channel. He was born into a respectable family. His grandfather had been a noted physician in London. Likewise, his father was a doctor in the city of Bristol. However, Silas Told’s father made some unwise business decisions and lost the family wealth to foolish investments. When his father tried to recoup his losses, he died at sea, leaving the family almost destitute.

As a very young boy still “in petticoats”—a generic white garment worn by all young children in the eighteenth century—Told and his sister would wander off into the woods. On these occasionable rambles, they would often converse about God and His goodness displayed in creation. On one particular occasion, however, they became lost, unable to find their way back home. Later in life, Told marveled to think of the peril that they as two young children were in, lost in the woods. God, in His mercy, had sent a large dog to attend to them until they were safe and out of danger.

Silas Told recounts in his autobiography that he had good, pious influences upon his life as a boy. His meager education was provided by a charity school where he and his brother and sister were taught by a lady that Silas described as “the most tender-hearted woman I ever met with.” Each week he attended services and was instructed in the Word of God.

With no hope of a college education or a respectable career, Told did what many poor young men did in eighteenth century England in a coastal city such as Bristol. He bound himself as an indentured servant to serve aboard a merchant ship. An indentured servant would sign a paper that bound him to serve a specified number of years as he learned a trade or paid off a debt. After his period of service was over, he would become a free man.

Silas Told indentured, or bound, himself to Captain Moses Lilly on his sailing vessel, the Prince of Wales. Told did this in July 1725, when he was only fourteen years old! His first voyage was to Cork, Ireland, and then onward to Jamaica. In his autobiography, Told recounts, “Here my sufferings began: being wrought on by the Spirit of God.”

Having been raised in a Christian charity school, Told noted that “a sea life was very disagreeable to me.” He found himself surrounded by impious men. Often he heard vile swearing, blasphemy, unclean language, and saw the vices of drunkenness and immorality. On top of these exposures, Silas Told suffered dreadfully from seasickness on his first voyage. He offended his master, Captain Lilly, when he ate a plate of food that was cooked for the captain himself. In a rage, Captain Lilly shouted a string of profanities and then knocked the youth down!

Thus began a dark period of eleven long years at sea. Silas Told became an experienced sailor and learned the ways of the sea, including all its vices. He learned to drink and curse like his companions. Yet, God did not forsake him. The young sinner was often smitten by conviction, although he always managed to push it away and drown his sorrows.

Silas Told saw firsthand the cruelties of the slave trade. He witnessed the hopelessness of African men and women who were captured by other tribal leaders on the coast of Africa and sold to the captains of slave ships. These ships would then transport their human cargo to the shores of Jamaica and other Caribbean islands where the African slaves would be put to work on sugar plantations and farms that raised commodities, such as indigo and coffee.

His autobiography recounts many of his adventures and narrow escapes. On one occasion, he was almost killed in a violent hurricane. On another, he was smitten with one of the tropical diseases that left him hovering between life and death under the grip of a high fever that lasted for months. During Told’s illness and recovery, a black man brought him food every day. Told realized that the kind slave who served was better than the cruel master who only demanded service.

One of Silas Told’s worst memories was when he was savagely beaten by a ship captain named Timothy Tucker. Told described the man, writing, “a greater villain, I firmly believe, never existed.” Captain Tucker had thought, wrongly, that Told had been stealing bread from the ship’s storage casks. As a result, the captain, using his horse whip, flogged Silas Told so unmercifully that the other sailors could see his ribs peeking out through the tattered skin and muscles of his back! The captain ended his fit of rage by stomping on the beaten man’s stomach as he lay in a bloody heap.

Along the way, Silas Told did come into contact with good, Godly men. He spoke with the utmost respect of Captain Trivil Caley, captain of the Phoenix, describing him as “a gentleman and a Christian.” Told noted that this captain was truly respected by his men that he commanded. Thus, Told learned that the greatest and best leaders were men who served others. 

When Told had completed his indenture, he was released from his commitment and returned to England. Although he was still a young man, his body was weakened by tropical diseases and afflicted with rheumatism. Although he had resisted God’s grace for many years, the seed of truth planted in his heart as a boy took root and flourished. Broken by the effects of sin, he was driven to the feet of the Savior. It was through contact with the Methodists, and with John Wesley in particular, that after many months of doubt and darkness, Silas Told became a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

His first wife, Mary Verney, resisted his conversion and viewed all Dissenters with disdain. This was a great sorrow to Told. He was often in conflict with his wife, but he sought to love her, even as Christ loved the Church. His wife eventually died, and he remarried, this time to a Godly lady who shared his love for the Lord Jesus and desire to serve others.

One day in 1744, Silas heard a sermon from John Wesley. The sermon was about the need to serve “the least of these.” The text was Matthew 25:42–45, “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” 

Upon hearing this sermon, Silas Told resolved that he would spend the rest of his life visiting “the least of these.” He went into the halls of Newgate Gaol, one of London’s most famous and notorious prisons, and served the prisoners there who were condemned to the gallows. By personal experience, he knew what a life of crime was like. He had seen misery and slavery in all its ugly forms. Having once been a slave, he knew that Christ alone could set free any prisoner, any slave, or even a sick man.

Silas Told saw much fruit for his labor. In his personal autobiography, he tells many heartwarming stories of deliverance. In December 1779, he died at the age of sixty-eight. Having experienced the misery of being a slave to sin, he had found abounding joy in being a slave of Christ. He helped many men and women, even those condemned to death, find the joy and blessing of true liberty that no man can give and that no man can take away!

Sources and Further Reference:

Told, Silas. The Life of Mr. Silas Told: Written by Himself. London, UK: Hayman Brothers, 1789.