N. T. Porter's miraculous divine preservation and provision during his banishment from Gibraltar
Published October 12, 2026 at 5:27 AM
Contributed by
Millennial Star Research
In 1853, Latter-day Saint missionaries N. T. Porter and Edward Stevenson were serving on the Rock of Gibraltar. Porter was officially banished by the police magistrate, Stewart Henry Paget, and ordered to leave the fortress by the first available steamer. Lacking the nine-pound fare required for the voyage, Porter approached the shipping agent, who initially spoke to him quite gruffly and refused to help. Porter turned away, but shortly after, the agent called him back and, following an apology for his rudeness, offered to send Porter for five pounds—four pounds less than the regular fare. After paying this reduced sum, Porter boarded the steamer but faced the prospect of a difficult voyage without bedding or money for meals. Feeling that the Lord would provide, he approached the ship’s cook and asked if he could have the leavings from the table. The cook instead invited him to eat with the crew in the cabin. Porter then spoke to the chief steward, who provided him with a good bed in the cabin. Porter recounted that he was treated with the greatest kindness by everyone on board for the duration of the voyage. Before sleeping in his comfortable berth, he thanked the Lord for softening the hearts of the shipping agent, the cook, and the chief steward. Edward Stevenson, who remained in Gibraltar, later corroborated that the hearts of the ship’s officers were softened, which resulted in Porter being upgraded to second cabin fare, though Stevenson specified the cost of the deck passage was twenty dollars.
In Their Own Words
“I went to the shipping agent, and told him my situation, and asked him if he could not send me for less. He spoke to me very gruffly, and told me he could do nothing for me. I turned sadly away, but had gone only a few steps, when I heard a voice speaking in the kindest manner, asking me to return... I retraced my steps and received from him an apology for his rudeness. He then asked me to take a seat... He then said he would send me for five pounds... I went to the cook and told him my situation, and asked him if he would let me have some of the leavings of the table. He said he would do better than that, and told me to come to the cabin and eat with the crew. I then went to the chief steward and told him my situation, and asked him if he could let me have a bed. He said he would, and he gave me a good bed in the cabin. — N. T. Porter, The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star”
Sources & References
The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star (Manchester, later Liverpool, England, May 1840–1970), 3 January 1895 (Vol. 57, No. 1). https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1895-01-03_57_1 (account extracted verbatim from the issue's Internet Archive OCR text; research confidence: high) Full first-person account: The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 57, No. 1, 3 January 1895 https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_the-latter-day-saints-millennial-star_1895-01-03_57_1 Additional sources (periodical research): Reid L. Neilson and R. Mark Melville, eds., The Saints Abroad: Missionaries Who Answered Brigham Young's 1852 Call to the Nations of the World (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2019), 69–106. https://rsc.byu.edu/saints-abroad/edward-stevenson-gibraltar-mission. Reid L. Neilson, "Proselyting on the Rock of Gibraltar, 1853–1855: The Letters of Edward Stevenson to the Juvenile Instructor in 1885," BYU Studies 55, no. 1 (2016): 94–119. https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/proselyting-on-the-rock-of-gibraltar-1853-1855-the-letters-of-edward-stevenson-to-the-juvenile-instructor-in-1885
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