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(More customer reviews)In 1807 Britain abolished the Slave Trade and in 1808 the Royal Navy formed it's African Squadron. Their task was to seek out those ships suspected of carrying slaves from Africa to the Americas and elsewhere. In true Nelsonian style, the Royal Navy took the fight to the enemy and sailed their ships right into the heartland through un-chartered rivers in order to destroy the slave ships at close quarters. But the enemy fought back.
For ninety years the Royal Navy fought alone and forgotten. They fought against African chiefs who sold their own people into slavery and against powerful Arabs who made great fortunes. They also fought against well armed and well trained private warships sent to deal with this self-appointed British force. This was a time when masters of slave ships would so arrange the chaining of the slaves below decks that, should a British warship approach, they would open a hatch on the blind side of their ship and drop a heavy weight attached to those shackles sending hundreds of slaves to a watery grave below at a stroke - just so that they could deny having had slaves on board.
It was a long and hard war which cost the British many men and ships until, eventually, Empires within Africa changed over to the export of locally grown produce. Only then had this war been won.
In a thrilling, yet often disturbing account of the final years of the slave trade, author Bernard Edwards provides the reader with a well-balanced account of this little-known period from British naval history.
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Click Here to see more reviews about: ROYAL NAVY VERSUS THE SLAVE TRADERS: Enforcing Abolition at Sea 1808-1898
On March 16, 1807, the British Parliament passed The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. In the following year the Royal Navy's African Squadron was formed, its mission to stop and search ships at sea suspected of carrying slaves from Africa to the Americas and the Middle East.
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