Soon after the stranger anchored, she was boarded by the port boat, and the captain of her, who spoke English, said that he was in want of water and refreshments, that he had a cargo of rum, and was bound from Havannah to Madagascar. The vessel appeared to be very light, and some of the crew said that she was in ballast. On the Coxswain of the port boat remarking that the vessel had a large crew, the Captain replied that he had been fortunate in picking up the crew of a vessel, who had abandoned their ship when she was sinking.
The crew of the port boat were permitted to ascend her side; and the pilot who went to her in the port boat had some questions put to him which made the Natalians acquainted with the voyage upon which the stranger was bound.
It appears that a boat, with six men in her, had left the vessel on the previous evening, when off the Umlazi, and the captain of the Slaver was anxious to know if they would succeed in attaining the object they had gone in search of, namely, the purchase of a cargo of the natives.
No sooner was this question put to the pilot, than he became greatly alarmed; the chest lying open on the deck of the stranger immediately came to his remembrance; glancing round the cabin, he observed it full of arms, in good condition; and, hurrying on deck, he observed preparations making for placing guns in the portholes, with which the vessel was pierced.
The pilot, unfortunately for the cause of humanity, instead of using a ruse to entrap the man-stealer, thought only of his personal safety, and therefore stated that there was a British sloop of war in the Harbour of Natal. This was enough to alarm the Slaver; the port boat was immediately ordered off; the sails were let fall from the topsails yards, which had been at the mast head during the whole time that she remained at anchor; and while the topsails were being sheeted home, the small warp with which she had brought up was slipped, and, two minutes after hearing that Natal was a British colony, and that there was a vessel of war at anchor there, the stranger was off to the northward.
The port boat had hardly arrived in the harbour with the astounding intelligence that there had been a large slaver at anchor off the port, endeavouring to obtain some of the natives by purchase, when six Spaniards made their appearance in D’Urban.
On the morning of the following day, Tuesday, they were examined relative to the stranger. They denied all knowledge of the vessel being a slaver, but said that they shipped at Havannah on the 5th of April, the day she sailed; that they never signed or saw any articles; that they never saw the hold of the vessel, the hatches having been battened down during the whole voyage; that the Captain was an American, and the vessel a large three-masted American clipper; that they were not acquainted with the name of the Captain, nor that of the owners of the vessel; and that even the name of the vessel was unknown to them. They declared themselves to be all Spaniards; that they had been sent on shore with twenty-eight dollars, to buy provisions; and that, when landing at the mouth of the Umlazi, their boat was capsized, and with difficulty they reached the shore. They further stated that, when the Captain saw the boat was swamped, he approached the surf in another boat, and directed them to walk round to Natal, and stated that he would call for them there.
The magistrate ordered them rations and lodgings, as shipwrecked seamen, and directed the Mate to see to their good behaviour, until they could be forwarded to the Cape.
When the Mate really found that the Slaver had gone, and that there was no hope of her return, he communicated the fact that the vessel was a Slaver in ballast, from Havannah, bound to Cape Corrientes for a cargo of slaves; and having on board 70,000 dollars for the purchase of her cargo. It appears that the Captain was an American, of the name of John Ward, and that the vessel’s name was the “Minnetonka.” The Mate, who was a Spaniard, and the Captain had a quarrel on the passage, and the former imagined that landing him in the Umlazi was a trick to get rid of him.
By degrees it was learned that twenty-one slavers had been towed out of the Havannah, in open day, during the space of one month. These vessels left Cuba openly, with the declared intention of proceeding to Africa for cargoes of slaves. Fourteen of these vessels were going to make a run to the West Coast; and the remaining seven, being larger, were going to the East Coast, to obtain their cargoes in the Mozambique Channel, where the Emperor of the French had established the Slave Trade, under the denomination of Free Labour Emigration.