In this study, it has been shown that seafarers of the African Diaspora have served British interests from at least the reign of the Tudors up to the present day. After the independence of Britain's colonies and dependencies, their legacy has continued in the form of British-born Black seamen, now happily beginning to achieve higher rank. Britain's black seafarers have not only served, but have often carried out their duties with bravery and stoicism as a ubiquitous and often seemingly invisible presence on British ships.

Throughout the colonial period, the African continent gave the United Kingdom its gold, bauxite, diamonds, copper, tin, rubber, timber, dyes, palm oil and other foodstuffs. Africa's most valuable donation was a gift that should never have been given or taken, its ‘black gold’, the loss of human resources during the slave trade bleeding the continent of its youth and vigour. The gift of manpower to Britain's ventures over the past centuries cannot be better exemplified than by the role played by African seamen, including their transatlantic descendants. The relationship between Great Britain and seafarers of African descent has left as great a legacy as seafaring itself has upon the English language. In our time all sections of British society freely use the terminology of the sea: ‘ship-shape’, ‘above board’, ‘bearing’, ‘bitter end’ (the last part of a rope or cable), ‘first rate’, ‘garbled’ (the illegal practice of mixing cargo with garbage), to name but a few examples. This process has by no means been restricted to the English language; the varied tongues of the African continent have also assimilated the language of the sea. Among the Efik people of south-western Nigeria, the upper floor of any two-storied Efik house is still called a dek, though spelt without the ‘c’. This word is derived from what early local rulers saw in captains’ cabins, the original wooden two-storied houses built with materials that wealthy Efiks ordered to comply with what they saw as ideas of European elegance. Often furnishings, crockery and accessories would be brought all the way from Liverpool and carpenters and joiners from the ships would help put the houses together in the sandy marshes of the Cross River settlements coast.