The War on the West

by Douglas Murray

If Britain’s decision to abolish slavery in 1807 was unusual, more unusual by far was her decision to send the Royal Navy around the world, establish the West Africa Squadron based at Freetown, and grow the fleet until a sixth of the ships and seamen of the Royal Navy were employed in the fight against the slave trade. The cost of this extraordinary decision was not only financial. It was paid for in British lives as well. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 African slaves. They also lost a huge number of personnel themselves. More than 1,500 men of the Royal Navy were killed in action during this period, and the acts of bravery and selfless heroism of those men is worthy of some note, surely? Anthony Sullivan’s recent history of the operations of the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron is one rare work to highlight the extraordinary bravery of these British sailors, chasing boats across the oceans, boarding them, and fighting for their own lives and for the lives of the slaves that they invariably found stowed away in the holds of ships bound for a wide variety of countries.56 It was a game of cat and mouse across the high seas, with standoffs and guessing games about slave ships trying to pass themselves off as other vessels. Until the British sailors boarded the ships and searched for themselves, they never had any certainty that they were right in this high-risk strategy. It is a tale of great heroism that carried ...