It is impossible to give here even a brief sketch of the work done during the years after the signing of that treaty, but enough may be told to well illustrate its character.
As already intimated, Americans were the most persistent and ingenious promoters of the trade. This was chiefly due to two causes. The first was that the American flag was prima facie evidence that a vessel was an honest trader and it preserved the ship from search by any other cruiser than an American man-of-war. In the next place, the Yankees could build the swiftest and cheapest ships afloat.
To the honor of the Anglo-Saxon race be it said that the British Government led in the attempts to down the damnable traffic, but in the face of the American flag the British cruiser was powerless. And the American cruisers were quite as anxious to see that the American flag was respected, even when displayed on a most suspicious craft, as they were to capture slavers. No one can find fault with this keen desire to protect the honor of the flag, but if the American Government had been in the hands of men who were not slave-owners, a way would have been found by which the honor of the flag could have been preserved and yet permit a British captain to search all suspicious vessels within certain limits along the African coast.
The Yankee slavers built their vessels, at the last, especially for the traffic. In the usual course, they fitted out the craft as an honest trader. They took on as passengers certain Portuguese, Italian, or Brazilian men. They sailed to the coast of Africa, and there the American crew went ashore and the passengers took possession.
It was recorded that the appearance of a British cruiser stopped such a transaction midway. The Yankee crew, while en route ashore, saw the cruiser and hastened back on board to hoist the Stars and Stripes and resume the guise of honest traders. To ferret out these rascals was the task of the American naval officers.
But in many cases the slavers depended on eluding the cruisers altogether. The vessels were built with leaner models than even the Yankee privateers had boasted, and they were sparred to carry a tremendous spread of canvas. In the later years of the traffic the hunt was so close that a resort was had to smaller craft—vessels that could even take down both sails and spars when the royals of a cruiser were seen, and then, by the use of oars, crawl away out of the cruiser’s course. The lateen rig of the Mediterranean usually served these little slavers. It was easily hidden, and on occasion would give good speed to a small boat. They were most picturesque boats, especially when seen under full chase running from a cruiser. But other small boats were used, and there was one case on record where a common long-boat from an old-fashioned merchant-ship was seen in mid-Atlantic with a single lug sail set and thirty slaves on board.
It was in the torrid zone. The coast was full of malaria. Sleepless vigilance was required. Boat expeditions into such streams as the Congo in search of concealed slavers of the smaller kind were frequently required. In the language of Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Andrew Hull Foote, “the matured villainy of the world” gathered on the coast of Africa, and no labor or vigilance could be spared in pursuing it.
Foote was stationed on the coast two years, and his experience will serve to illustrate that of all others. He reached Porto Praya on December 21, 1849, in the brig Perry, and was sent by the Commodore south along the coast to examine such slave-stations as Salinas, Benguela, Loanda, Ambriz, and so on. He reached Benguela after a passage of forty-one days, and found there a brig which the British had captured with eight hundred slaves on board. The brig had come from Rio Janeiro under the American flag, and so had easily passed the British cruiser. But when she tried to get away, the cruiser found in some way that she really had slaves on board and took her.
Foote was cordially welcomed by the British officers, and there is no doubt of his sincere desire to stop the slave traffic. Certainly no American did more than he in this work. But his first task was to look after the rights of an American brigantine, the Louisa Beaton. She had been overhauled by the British cruiser Dolphin and detained, for a time, seventy miles off land. She had the papers of an honest trader, and after a prolonged correspondence Foote secured a disavowal from the British commander together with an offer of indemnity to the brigantine. And yet that brigantine was a slaver, and her adroit captain got away at last with a full cargo of blacks.
However, Foote made up somewhat for the failure to capture this vessel flagrante delictu by taking the Martha. She was overhauled on June 7, 1850, between Ambriz and Loanda. She was a big ship, and as the American cruiser came near, the Martha hoisted the American flag and hove to. Foote’s first lieutenant put off to examine her. As he rounded her stern he saw her name painted there and that her home port was New York. Nevertheless, as soon as her crew recognized the uniform of the lieutenant as of the American Navy, they hauled down the American flag and raised that of Brazil. When the lieutenant reached her deck her captain claimed that she could not be lawfully searched when under the Brazilian flag, and denied having papers of any kind. This gave the lieutenant a hold on the ship, for he declared that if she had no papers she must be a pirate.