Squadron: Ending the African Slave Trade

by John Broich

Despite the British being early abolitionists, a significant slave trade remained down the east coast of Africa through the mid-1800s, even after the Civil War ended it in the United States. What further undermined the British Empire was that many of the vessels involved in the trade were themselves British ships.


The Royal Navy’s response was to dispatch a squadron to patrol Africa’s coast. Following what began as a simple policing action, this is the story of the four Royal Naval officers who witnessed how rampant the slave trade remained and made it their personal mission to end it. When the disruption in trade ships started to step on toes within the wealthy merchant class, the campaign was cancelled. However, in the end a coalition of naval officers and abolitionists forced the British government’s hand into eradicating the slave trade entirely.


Squadron grew from historian John Broich’s passion to hunt down firsthand accounts of this untold story. Through research from archives throughout the U.K., Broich tells a tale of defiance in the face of political corruption, while delivering thrills in the tradition of high seas heroism. If it weren’t a true story, Squadron would be right at home alongside Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series. 

Genres: History, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2017

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Squadron is a very readable account of a little-known facet of the trade in African slaves in the Indian Ocean. Long after the trade was made illegal in the British Empire in 1807, followed by the USA in 1809 and most other European countries in the next ten years, the ownership of slaves remained legal in many countries for decades. Illegal traders in captured Africans continued to operate. The trans-Atlantic trade had effectively been stopped by the middle of the century, largely by the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron. In East African countries it was still legal to own, buy and sell slaves within the country and John Broich's interesting book gives us an insight into the effort of a few Royal Navy officers, based in Bombay, to end the illegal transport of African slaves to be sold in many countries around the Indian Ocean and beyond.

Broich's book presents the personal background and beliefs, ethical principles and work of four naval officers, three of whom had served in ships of the West Africa Squadron. He has drawn his material from a very large body of published and archival material (there are over forty pages of notes at the end of the book). The beliefs and motivation of each of these men varied. Some were aware of the dilemma facing the captain of a naval ship chasing a slaver - the latter would often be deliberately driven ashore and although the slavers would escape many of the slaves drowned in the wreck. It sometimes seemed that in attempting to rescue the African slaves, the end result was worse than slavery. British seamen would also be badly wounded or killed in fights with the slavers.

The book covers just a few years: 1868 to about 1874. In this short time Commodore Leopold Heath and his three RN captains determined to end the slave trade out of East Africa. In fascinating detail we read of their difficulties and successes. In 1869 over a thousand slaves were freed. Then the reaction set in, from merchants, traders, officials and rulers whose wealth was partly dependent upon the profitable slave trade. The whole economy of countries around the Indian Ocean, including India, Madagascar and the Gulf States was sustained in considerable measure by slavery. Influential men put a lot of pressure on the British government to restrict the operations of the squadron. Heath and his officers were censured by the Foreign Office and the Treasury. The Admiralty was forced to give them instructions that effectively crippled their anti-slavery patrols. Fortunately, British public opinion sided strongly with Commodore Heath and his squadron and the book ends on a more positive note.

Broich writes in an easy informal style. Sometimes he decorates his text with a nautical word or expression. He does explain some specific ones such as 'stunsail' and 'tonnage', but others such as 'weather gauge' are unexplained. Occasionally nautical terms are wrongly used eg: 'rattled down', 'careened'. These and other errors are minor irritations to the pedantic. They detract little from this important contribution to an understanding of East African slavery. The book has extensive Notes, several helpful maps, a few illustrations, glossaries of important people and of the various ranks and ratings in the navy of that period, and an index.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unlikely book for me to pick up. Yet I did. And I read it through. Fascinating, thorough look at the British Navy's effort to eliminate or at least slow the trade in human beings in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia in the mid-19th century. The author uses a myriad of primary sources, including court records, ships' logs, diaries, books by the ship captains themselves, etc. His detailed research allows him to insert facts such as the weather on a specific day, a person's thoughts about a certain situation, or a description of a location in Zanzibar or Mozambique. One take-away from this work is how deeply entrenched slavery was in the 19th century economy of the area, including Great Britain, and the unabashed racism of the era, even among the most dedicated anti-slave Navy personnel.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am indebted to Somali Bookaholic who recommended this book to me in conversation about my review of Petals of Blood. It’s a very interesting book about four British naval captains who in the mid 18th century undertook anti-slavery activity off the African coast without always having had official authority to do so.
Britain had abolished slavery, but still, there was significant trade even after the end of the American Civil War. Some of the ships involved were British operating illegally and some were French operating legally, and the persisting trade was done in collusion with African rulers and traders themselves. These local ‘diplomatic’ issues made Britain reluctant to interfere with ongoing slavery as practised in Africa and also in what was then British India, and in the Jamaican plantations. And the French involvement, whose position on slavery vacillated according to its latest revolution, was additionally complicated because interfering with their ships or local ships flown under their flag, meant at times the risk of provoking war with Napoleon.
As I recorded on my travel blog in 2010, according to a timeline at the slavery exhibit in the Musee d’Aquitaine in Bordeaux, the first attempt to end the French slave trade came shortly after the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 but it was brought back under Napoleon, and then abolished again in 1848, 15 years after Britain passed its Abolition Act in 1833. The photo shows a model of a French slave ship and you can just see on the far wall, a diagram of how the slaves were packed in like sardines, sometimes packed in so tightly that they were paralysed from lack of mobility during the voyage. They died in their hundreds at sea.
To read the rest of m review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/07/15/s...

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

First, the writing was excellent. Details and events were felt natural and part of the whole narrative rather than a break in the writing.

Two, this was a biography of Meara, Heath, Colomb, and Sulivan more than history but not by much.

Three, I wish the author had started the book with a general overview of slavery, the slave trade from Africa, who took part in that trade, and what happened to support and/or stop the slave trade prior to the squadron starting their work. I felt that I had ended up in the middle of a book series and felt a little lost.

Overall, a good book.

[Michael Heath-Caldwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Broich's book looks at one of the last great endeavours to end the slave trade off the east coast of Africa, as carried out by four British naval officers. This book explains some of the other naval officers who appear in Sir Leopold Heath's photo albums so I suppose I should write them up.

[Dave Clarke · Rating 2 out of 5]

An amazing and thoroughly well researched tale, let down by exceptionally poor writing, confused chronology, disjointed chapters and sub-sections and a desperate need of a good editor ...

[Catherine]

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