DEAR READER,
I’m currently working on the Men of the Squadron series of historical romances based on the lives and adventures of the Royal Navy officers of the West Africa, Preventative Squadron. And the women who loved them, waited for them and kept their lives and families for them at home in England.
On March 16, 1807, the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. In the following year the Royal Navy’s African Squadron was formed, its mission to stop and search ships at sea suspected of carrying slaves from Africa to the Americas and the Middle East.
As audacious and amazing the intent of this small, special force, the real stories of the squadron’s crew and officers who endured unbearable conditions over nearly a hundred years are the stuff of hair-raising, swashbuckling tales.
Ships flying the flags of at least half a dozen countries were against them. The winds (or lack thereof) and heavy, perverse currents off the West Coast of Africa were against them. The mysterious source of tropical fever was against them. The estuary-pocked geography of the coast within the orders given the squadron, 12 degrees north to 15 degrees south (decreed by treaties with various countries), was against them.
And, by the way, that portion of the African coast is over 2,000 miles long: equivalent to the British coast from John o’ Groats through the Straits of Dover and up to Clyde, or the entire Atlantic coast of the United States, around the coast of Florida, and straight on to New Orleans.
When the ships headed northerly, they could count on some reasonable winds, but heading south was a slow slog. A drop down from Freetown to Lagos might take ten days or a fortnight. But in 1812, Captain Lloyd on the sloop Kangaroo took more than five weeks from April 7 through May 16 to make a non-stop return passage against wind and current from Whydah to Freetown. It was much easier to patrol farther out on the ocean where the winds were more favorable, but the slave ships stayed closer to the coast.
And finally, the devious international politics of their own country worked against them. Treaties with countries like Spain, Portugal, and France contained so many loopholes that many times courts ultimately denied them prize ships. In at least one instance, after the squadron freed slaves from a ship, courts ruled the British government had to reimburse the slaver for each human life saved.
Across an action spanning nearly 100 years, the men of the squadron also had to deal with the government influence of English slavers and plantation owners whose profits were threatened.
However, between 1808 and 1898, this small fleet within the Royal Navy liberated at least 150,000 documented Africans and lost 17,000 of its own men.
Were the men (all volunteers after the Napoleonic Wars ceased) in the service only for the promise of prize money? Who would join a cause where some ships experienced the loss of up to nearly half the crew? Or join an expedition where captains routinely encouraged their officers and crew to prepare their wills before setting off to sea?
How do we know this? The men’s letters, some diaries, ships’ logs, and surgeons’ logs have been digitized and made available online by the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth.
Sources: National Museum of the Royal Navy; “The Royal Navy and the Slavers,” by W.E.F. Ward; “Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808-1898,” by Bernard Edwards; and “Sweet Water and Bitter,” by Sian Rees
