Africa and the American Flag

by Andrew H. Foote

In 1720, Roberts, a hero of the same class, anchored in Sierra Leone, and sent a message to Plunket, the commander of the English fort, with a request for some gold dust and ammunition. The commander of the fort replied that he had no gold dust for them, but that he would serve them with a good allowance of shot if they ventured within the range of his guns; whereupon Roberts opened his fire upon the fort. Plunket soon expended all his ammunition, and abandoned his position. Being made prisoner he was taken before Roberts: the pirate assailed the poor commander with the most outrageous execrations for his audacity in resisting him. To his astonishment Plunket retorted upon him with oaths and execrations yet more tremendous. This was quite to the taste of the scoundrels around them, who, with shouts of laughter, told their captain that he was only second best at that business, and Plunket, in consideration of his victory, was allowed to escape with life.

In 1721, England dispatched two men-of-war to the Gulf of Guinea for the purpose of exterminating the pirates who had there reached a formidable degree of power, and sometimes, as in the instance noted above, assailed the establishments on shore. They found that Roberts was in command of a squadron of three vessels, with about four hundred men under his command, and had been particularly active and successful in outrage. After cruising about the northern coast, and learning that Roberts had plundered many vessels, and that sailors were flocking to him from all quarters, they found him on the evening of the third of February, anchored with his three vessels in the bay north of Cape Lopez.

When entering the bay, light enough remained to let them see that they had caught the miscreants in their lair. Closing in with the land the cruisers quietly ran in and anchored close aboard the outer vessel belonging to the pirates. Having ascertained the character of the visitors, the pirate slipped his cables, and proceeded to make sail, but was boarded and secured just as the rapid blackness of a tropical night buried every thing in obscurity. Every sound was watched during the darkness of the night, with scarcely the hope that the other two pirates would not take advantage of it to make their escape; but the short gray dawn showed them still at their anchors. The cruisers getting under way and closing in with the pirates produced no movement on their part, and some scheme of cunning or desperate resistance was prepared for. They had in fact made a draft from one vessel to man the other fully for defence. Into this vessel the smaller of the cruisers, the Swallow, threw her broadside, which was feebly returned. A grape-shot in the head had killed Roberts. This and the slaughter of the cruiser’s fire prepared the way for the boarders, without much further resistance, to take possession of the pirate. The third vessel was easily captured.

The cruisers suffered no loss in the fight, but had been fatally reduced by sickness. The larger vessel, the Weymouth, which left England with a crew of two hundred and forty men, had previously been reduced so greatly as scarcely to be able to weigh her anchors; and, although recruited often from merchant vessels, landed but one hundred and eighty men in England. This rendered the charge of their prisoners somewhat hazardous, and taking them as far as Cape Coast Castle, they there executed such justice as the place could afford, or the demerits of their prey deserved. A great number of them ornamented the shore on gibbets—the well-known signs of civilization in that era—as long as the climate and the vultures would permit them to hang.

Consequent on these events such order was established as circumstances would admit, or rather the progress of maritime intercourse and naval power put an end to the system of daring and regulated piracy by which the tropical shores of Africa and the West Indies had been laid waste. This, however, was slight relief for Africa. It was to secure and systematize trade that piracy had been suppressed, and the slave-trade became accordingly cruelly and murderously systematic.

The question what nation should be most enriched by the guilty traffic was a subject of diplomacy. England secured the greater share of the criminality and of the profit, by gaining from her other competitors the right by contract to supply the colonies of Spain with negroes.

Men forget what they ought not to forget; and however startling, disgusting, and oppressive to the mind of man the horrors are which characterized that trade, it is well that since they did exist the memory of them should not perish. It is a fearfully dark chapter in the history of the world, but although terrific it has its value. It is more worthy of being remembered than the historical routine of wars, defeats, or victories; for it is more illustrative of man’s proper history, and of a strange era in that history. The evidence taken by the Committee of the English House of Lords in 1850, has again thrust the subject into daylight.

The slave-trade is now carried on by comparatively small and ill-found vessels, watched by the cruisers incessantly. They are therefore induced, at any risk of loss by death, to crowd and pack their cargoes, so that a successful voyage may compensate for many captures. In olden times, there were vessels fitted expressly for the purpose—large Indiamen or whalers. It has been objected to the employment of squadrons to exterminate that trade, that their interference has increased its enormity. This, however, is doing honor to the old Guineamen, such as they by no means deserve. It is, in fact, an inference in favor of human nature, implying that a man who has impunity and leisure to do evil, cannot, in the nature of things, be so dreadfully heartless in doing it, as those in whose track the avenger follows to seize and punish. The fact, however, does not justify this surmise in favor of impunity and leisure. If ever there was any thing on earth which, for revolting, filthy, heartless atrocity, might make the devil wonder and hell recognize its own likeness, then it was on any one of the decks of an old slaver. The sordid cupidity of the older, as it is meaner, was also more callous than the hurried ruffianism of the present age. In fact, a slaver now has but one deck; in the last century they had two or three. Any one of the decks of the larger vessels was rather worse, if this could be, than the single deck of the brigs and schooners now employed in the trade. Then, the number of decks rendered the suffocating and pestilential hold a scene of unparalleled wretchedness. Here are some instances of this, collected from evidence taken by the British House of Commons in 1792.

James Morley, gunner of the Medway, states: “He has seen them under great difficulty of breathing; the women, particularly, often got upon the beams, where the gratings are often raised with banisters, about four feet above the combings, to give air, but they are generally driven down, because they take the air from the rest. He has known rice held in the mouths of sea-sick slaves until they were almost strangled; he has seen the surgeon’s mate force the panniken between their teeth, and throw the medicine over them, so that not half of it went into their mouths—the poor wretches wallowing in their blood, hardly having life, and this with blows of the cat.”