Predator of the Seas: A History of the Slaveship that Fought for Emancipation

by Stephen Taylor

The dramatic biography of a slaveship turned freedom-fighter—which brings new insights into Britain’s involvement in the end of the trade in enslaved people

In 1827 the Royal Navy purchased a Baltimore clipper and renamed her the Black Joke. Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, she patrolled the west coast of Africa and freed 3,692 captives from enslavement. Beloved by seafarers and celebrated by the public, the Black Joke would become the most famous weapon in the campaign for abolition.

But in her previous life as the Henriqueta, the Black Joke had been a slave ship.

Through the experiences of slavers and abolitionists, captives and crew, Stephen Taylor charts the vessel’s extraordinary double life. As the Henriqueta she operated as an engine of atrocity, trafficking over 3,000 captives to plantations in Brazil. But subsequently manned by British seamen and Liberian Kru, the Black Joke became the scourge of Spanish and Brazilian slavers. She did so despite limited resources, neglect, and even obstruction by the authorities at home.

Taylor offers a gripping account of the world of the transatlantic trade, through the eyes of its perpetrators—and those who sought its end.

Genres: Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 24, 2024

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Reviews

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history of the “Atlantic slave trade” told through the story of a single sailing vessel. The two-masted “brig”, the Henriqueta, was a gem of a fast sailing ship created at a boatworks in Baltimore, USA. It was able to sail close-in to the shore (which was important for pick up its “cargo”). It was able to be conformed into tiny 3 foot high cells (for its slave cargo). And, it was speedy (in order to assure that most of its “cargo” would survive the journey across the Atlantic and that the ship would be able to outrun the British Navy that intended to “prevent” the continuing slave trade.

England made the international trade of slaves illegal in 1807 (more about that later). The British Navy was tasked with enforcing certain treaties relating to slavery, which the Navy delegated to its “Preventative Squadron.” Patrolling the west coast of Africa was a human health nightmare. “In a single year in the 1820s, more than a quarter of the Preventative Squadron’s nearly 800 officers and men died from yellow fever alone.” Ill-financed and equipped, its crews became discouraged until, in 1827, the Royal Navy purchased the Henriqueta and renamed her the Black Joke.

Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, it was successful in freeing several thousand slaves. Here is a distillation of the “facts.” The Black Joke was able to function in the Navy’s service for about 5 years in which it seized 13 slaver vessels and liberated over 3,500 captives. It marked an improvement in the Preventive Squadron’s ability to impact the slave trade, perhaps rescuing over 150,000 headed to Western Hemisphere slavery. This may have been significant but, as Taylor documents, it did not have the substantial impact that would have eliminated those “entrepreneurs.”

In addition to the specifics of this ship’s adventures we get the historical perspective of the “Atlantic slave trade” that had been going on for well over 200 years by the time the Henriqueta left on her first voyage. Be forewarned: This is not a real-life “Hornblower adventure story.” The details about pursuit and capture are secondary to the historical, financial, and political elements. If your tendencies are to empathize with the human conditions, even the most basic descriptions of the voyages, not to mention the destruction of families will hit you hard.

The narration by Mike Cooper provides a clear and entertaining rendition of this very interesting book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book uses the biography of one particular ship as a hook to illustrate how the slave trade operated during the 1820s. While the narrative would have benefitted from better editing of some of the duplicative passages, it is in the main a highly readable account from which most readers will not fail to learn more about the realities of this inhuman trade.

A post-Napoleonic-War Britain repurposed some of its old ships and discharged sailors into the Preventive Squadron that was to spend 60 years roaming the coast of West Africa trying to put a stop to the same transatlantic slave trade that Britain had previously participated in .... while "West Indian plantation owners continued to supply British consumers with the fruits of enslaved labour until the 1830s" (Author's Note). [In 1836-7 Britain spent 3% of GDP to buy out the slave traders [see Mitchell & Deane (1962) and Broadberry, van Leeuwen et al (2015)].

During the 1820s the slave carrying ships were either French (out of bounds for the Preventive Squadron) or (predominantly) from Bahia and the eastern tip pf Brazil and picking up slaves from various ports in the Bight of Benin and Bight of Biafra (Gulf of Guinea) sold to them with the connivance of local potentates. These Brazilian slave traders were able to convert their ill-gotten gains into ships that were faster and more agile than those used by the British Royal Navy (whose admiralty is portrayed as sitting on their post-Napoleonic laurels and dogmatically sticking to older designs).

But the Preventive Squadron was manned by a number of officers who were reformers by personal conviction (or became so after observing the dreadful treatment of slaves on captured boats) and in 1827 their frustration led a commodore of the Royal Navy to purchase one of the slavers' sleek Baltimore clippers that had been repossessed. Previously named the Henriqueta after a relative of its slave trading owner, it was renamed the Black Joke, and proved to be so successful as capturing illegal slave ships that she became an icon of pride for alll British reformers both at sea and back home.