The #West Africa Squadron was formed in 1808 after Parliament passed the #Slave Trade Act 1807 ex Wiki. It was part of the Royal Navy. Its function was to suppress the slave trade and was successful; capturing capturing 1,600 slave ships and freeing 150,000 Africans shows that.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807
Slave Trade Act of 1807. The National Archives take a position on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It names various activists. William Wilberforce does not rate a mention; he was just another self-righteous bore. The Americans caught up later. Their Civil War I, which ended in 1865 was about slavery or not, as the case may be.
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https://military.wikia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
Slave Trade Act 1807 - search
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery-idUSL1561464920070322
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
West Africa Squadron ex Wiki
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West Africa Squadron
This article is about the period from 1808–1856, 1866. For the succeeding article Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station (1857–1865, 1867–1920), see Cape of Good Hope Station. For the succeeding article (1942–1945), see Flag Officer, West Africa. Further information on diplomatic efforts by the United Kingdom to end the slave trade: Blockade of AfricaThe Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, an Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The squadron's task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa.[1] With a home base at Portsmouth,[2] it began with two small ships, the 32-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Solebay and the Cruizer-class brig-sloop HMS Derwent. At the height of its operations, the squadron employed a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and marines.[citation needed] In 1819 the Royal Navy established a West Coast of Africa Station and the West Africa Squadron became known as the Preventative Squadron.[3] It remained an independent command until 1856 and then again 1866 to 1867.
Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.[1] It is considered the most costly international moral action in modern history.
History
On 25 March 1807 Britain formally abolished the Slave Trade, prohibiting British subjects from trading in slaves, crewing slave ships, sponsoring slave ships, or fitting out slave ships. The Act also included a clause allowing the seizure of ships without slave cargoes on board but equipped to trade in slaves. The task of enforcing the act was huge and challenging. In order to enforce this ruling in 1808 the Admiralty dispatched two vessels to police the African Coast. The small British force was empowered, in the context of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, to stop any ship bearing the flag of an enemy nation, making suppression activities much easier. Portugal, however, was one of the largest slave trading nations and Britain's ally against France. In February 1810, under diplomatic pressure, Portugal signed a convention that allowed British ships to police Portuguese shipping, meaning Portugal could only trade in slaves from its own African possessions.The privateer Dart, a private vessel operating under a letter of marque, chasing slavers to profit from the bounties set by the British government, made the first captures under the 1810 convention. Dart, and in 1813 another privateer, (Kitty), were the only two vessels to pursue slavers for profit, and thus augment the efforts of the West Africa Squadron. The lack of private initiatives, and their short duration, suggest that they were not profitable.
With the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, Viscount Castlereagh had ensured a declaration against slavery appeared in the text of the Congress of Vienna, committing all signatories to the eventual abolition of the trade. In 1814, France agreed to cease trading, and Spain in 1817 agreed to cease North of the equator, adding to the mandate of the squadron. Unfortunately, early treaties against slave trading with foreign powers were often very weak and in practice meant that until 1835 the squadron could seize vessels only if slaves were found on board at the time of capture. This meant the squadron could not interfere with vessels clearly equipped for the trade but without a cargo.[5] Occasionally, slavers being pursued would throw their captives overboard in an attempt to avoid prosecution.[6]
In order to prosecute captured vessels and thereby allow the Navy to claim its prizes, a series of courts were established along the African Coast. In 1807, a Vice Admiralty Court was established in Freetown, Sierra Leone. In 1817, several Mixed Commission Courts were established, replacing the Vice Admiralty Court in Freetown. These Mixed Commission Courts had officials from both Britain and foreign powers, with Anglo-Portuguese, Anglo-Spanish, and Anglo-Dutch courts being established in Sierra Leone.
Far from the Pax Britannica style policing of the 1840s and 1850s, early efforts to suppress the slave trade were often ineffectual due to a desire to keep on good terms with other European powers. The actions of the West Africa Squadron were "strictly Governed"[7] by the treaties, and officers could be punished for overstepping their authority.
Commodore Sir George Ralph Collier, with the 36-gun HMS Creole as his flagship, was the first Commodore of the West Africa Squadron. On 19 September 1818, the navy sent him to the Gulf of Guinea with the orders: "You are to use every means in your power to prevent a continuance of the traffic in slaves."[8] However, he had only six ships with which to patrol over 5,000 kilometres (3,000 mi) of coast. He served from 1818 to 1821.
In 1819, the Royal Navy created a naval station in West Africa at Freetown. This was the capital of the first British colony in West Africa, Sierra Leone. Most of the enslaved Africans freed by the squadron chose to settle in Sierra Leone, for fear of being re-enslaved if they were simply landed on the coast among strangers.[1] From 1821, the squadron also used Ascension Island as a supply depot,[9] before this moved to Cape Town in 1832.[10]
As the Royal Navy began interdicting slave ships, the slavers responded by adopting faster ships, particularly Baltimore clippers. At first, the Royal Navy was often unable to catch these ships. However, when the Royal Navy started to use captured slaver clippers and new faster ships from Britain the Royal Navy regained the upper hand. One of the most successful ships of the West Africa Squadron was such a captured ship, renamed HMS Black Joke. She successfully caught 11 slavers in one year.
By the 1840s, the West Africa Squadron had begun receiving paddle steamers such as HMS Hydra, which proved superior in many ways to the sailing ships they replaced. The steamers were independent of the wind and their shallow draughts meant they could patrol the shallow shores and rivers. In the middle of the 19th century, there were around 25 vessels and 2,000 personnel with a further 1,000 local sailors involved in the effort.[11]
The Royal Navy considered the West Africa Station one of the worst postings due to the high levels of tropical disease.
Britain pressed other nations into treaties that gave the Royal Navy the right to search their ships for slaves.[12][13] As the 19th century wore on, the Royal Navy also began interdicting slave trading in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean.
The United States Navy assisted the West Africa Squadron, starting in 1820 with HMS Cyane, which the US had captured from the Royal Navy in 1815. Initially the US contribution consisted of a few ships, but eventually the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 formalised the US contribution into the Africa Squadron.[14][15]
In 1867, the Cape of Good Hope Station absorbed the West Coast of Africa Station.[16] In 1942 during World War II the West Africa Station was revived as an independent command until 1945.
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Do the Mainstream Media tell us about this? No! They have an agenda of Anti-White Racism.
Slave Trade Act of 1794 ex Wiki
The Slave Trade Act of 1794 was a law passed by the United States Congress that prohibited American ships from engaging the international slave trade. It was signed into law by President George Washington on March 22, 1794. This was the first of several anti-slavery trade-acts of Congress. In 1800, Congress strengthened it by sharply raising the fines and awarding informants the entire value of any ship seized.[1]Federal outlawing of importation of slaves to the United States was enacted in 1807. The domestic trade and owning of slaves became illegal in the entire U.S. with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
Slave Trade Act 1807 ex Wiki
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,[1] was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it did encourage British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades.Many of the supporters thought the Act would lead to the end of slavery.[2] Slavery on English soil was unsupported in English law and that position was confirmed in Somerset's case in 1772, but it remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
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