After all she was not the ship for which Captain Arabin had been looking out, but she was full of slaves. “Behind her foremast was an enormous gun, turning on a broad circle of iron, and enabling her to act as a pirate if her slaving speculation had failed. She had taken in on the coast of Africa five hundred and sixty-two slaves, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty-five.
“The slaves were all inclosed under grated hatchways between decks. The space was so low that they sat between each other’s legs, and stowed so close together that there was no possibility of their lying down or at all changing their position, by night or day. As they belonged to, or were shipped on account of, different individuals, they were all branded like sheep, with the owners’ marks, of different forms. These were impressed under their hearts, or on their arms, and as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, “burnt with the red-hot iron.” Over the hatchways stood a ferocious-looking fellow, with a scourge of many-twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave-driver of the ship; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. I was quite pleased to take this hateful badge out of his hand; and I have kept it ever since as a horrid memorial of the reality, should I ever be disposed to forget the scene I witnessed.
“As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks, which they had not been accustomed to; and feeling instinctively that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, Viva! viva! The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms, and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight: they endeavored to scramble up on their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands, and we understood they knew we were coming to liberate them. Some, however, hung their heads in apparently hopeless dejection; some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, were shut out from light and air; and this, when the thermometer, exposed to open sky, was standing in the shade on our deck at 89°. The space between decks, divided into two compartments, was three feet three inches high; the size of one was 16 feet by 18, and of the other 40 by 21; into the first were crammed the women and the girls, into the second the men and boys. Two hundred and twenty-six fellow-creatures were thus thrust into one space of 288 square feet, and three hundred and thirty into another space of 800 square feet, giving the whole an average of 23 inches; and to each of the women not more than 13 inches. We also found manacles and fetters of different kinds; but it appeared that they all had been taken off before we boarded. The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odor so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck, to get air and water.... On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from air and light; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death; and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying, for a short time, the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows could restrain them; they shrieked, and struggled and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, in the mid-passage, suffer from so much as want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt-water. All the slaves on board perished.”
At the time of this seizure, Brazil was precluded from the slave-trade north of the equator; but the period had not arrived when, by treaty, the southern trade was to be extinguished. “The captain of this slaver was provided with papers, which exhibited an apparent conformity to the law, and which, false as they may have been, yet could in no way be absolutely disproved. The accounts of the slaves themselves, who stated they had originally come from parts of Africa north of the line—the course which the slaver was steering—her flight from the English cruiser—were circumstances raising suspicion the most violent; but the reader will be not a little disappointed to learn, that, with all this, the case was deemed too doubtful, in point of legal proof, to bear out a legal detention; and the slaver therefore, after nine hours of close investigation, was finally set at liberty, and suffered to proceed.... It was dark when we separated, and the last parting sounds we heard from the unhallowed ship, were the cries and shrieks of slaves, suffering under some bodily infliction.”—Walsh, vol. ii. pp. 474-484.
The question arises, ought not humanity to have overcome all these considerations, and led to the deliverance of the victims? If one death in such circumstances had occurred, ought not a sense of justice to have led to the detention of the slaver, and the conveyance of the captain to his own government, to be tried for murder?
The traders of France were nearly in the same position with those of the United States, and there was the same necessity for guarding against the abuse of their flag. Before proceeding to the proper history of the American squadron in its efforts for the great purposes it had in view, it may be advisable briefly to notice that France, in 1845, had formed with England a treaty under which both parties engaged to keep a squadron of not less than twenty-six cruisers on the coast. The number was afterwards, by a separate agreement, reduced on the part of France to twelve vessels.
The reasons for this, and the few captures made by French vessels, apply as well to the American cruisers, and account for the nature of the stipulation in the treaty of Washington, that the United States should only employ on the African coast a squadron of eighty guns. These two nations have not, as England has, the right by treaty with other powers, to interfere with any vessels except their own. Hence the captures made by English cruisers necessarily outnumbered greatly the captures made by both the other powers.
The duty of the American and French squadron was in fact restrictive in respect to their own citizens alone; and while indispensable for the general success of these operations, they could not exhibit any thing like the same amount of result in captures, whatever might be the zeal and activity of the cruisers. Several slavers, however, have been captured by this squadron; and its presence has restrained the employment of the French flag in that traffic.
[4] Parliamentary papers, presented 1832, B., pp. 170, 171.