From the boom in slave-trading in the 1820s until its slow decline in the 1850s and 1860s deadly games of cat and mouse were played off the coast of Africa, as both sides sought to refine their tactics and find new ways to achieve their ends. Slave ships learnt to loiter in the blockaded rivers and lagoons around the Bights of Benin and Biafra until the ships of the West Africa Squadron were forced to return to Freetown for supplies; only then would they make for the open sea. Slave captains would wait for moonless nights, then race to the river mouths and silently slip past the British
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