A WEAPON FOR ABOLITION

Stephen Taylor recounts the story of HMS Black Joke and the West Africa Squadron's fight to stop slavery

- Jonathan Gordon

In 1807, after many years of campaigning by an ever-growing abolitionist movement, the British Parliament passed the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. While this did not free people who were already enslaved, it was the beginning of a process that would bring to an end Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. British enslavers didn't necessarily end their involvement immediately, however, so the Royal Navy was drafted in to hunt down ships still being used to transport this grim human cargo.

Released from their commitments in the Napoleonic Wars, these navy ships gradually began to intercept vessels of all nations who were kidnapping men and women from West Africa and shipping them under horrific conditions to the Americas. These Royal Navy vessels became known as the West Africa Squadron.

“Royal Navy ships started intercepting and capturing transatlantic slavers soon after the 1807 Act of Abolition,” explains Stephen Taylor, author of Predator of the Seas (Yale University Press), a new book that focuses on one of the important ships in that mission. “But their numbers and activity were limited by the Napoleonic Wars and it was only in 1819 that the West Africa Squadron - or the Preventative Squadron as it was officially known - was permanently stationed at Freetown in Sierra Leone.”