Chapter I. The Guinea Coast

The slave coast of West Africa lies between the river Senegal, just north of Cape Verde, and the Congo River country, six degrees south of the equator. It is a low-lying coast, with many sandy beaches, though much of it is bordered by delta-lands, covered with poisonous swamps, through which wind the uncounted channels of small rivers that penetrate the country. There are few harbors and the trader must find an anchorage inside the bar at the mouth of some river or lay offshore, at safe distance, while trade is carried on in canoes and boats that ride the long rollers pounding on the beach. A country well populated by negroes, it supplied for nearly four centuries the slave labor required by the West Indies and the two Americas,—a trade inseparable from cruelty, disease and death. Goree and Gambia,—the Gold Coast and the Tooth Coast,—Whidah, Old Calabar and Bonny, are some of the names that have a suggestive meaning in connection with the abhorrent trade in human flesh.

Not long after the gulf of Guinea was discovered by Portuguese navigators and at least two decades before Columbus sailed from Palos, a slave market was set up at Lisbon at which negroes from the Guinea coast were sold to any who would buy. It was the Moors who had told the Portuguese of the black-skinned people living in great numbers to the south of the great desert,—a race cursed of God and predestined as slaves.

By 1502, the first shipload of Africans had been landed at Hispaniola, to work in the mines, and the slave-bearing fleet plied to and from the Guinea coast very nearly up to the time of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, in 1888.

At first, the slave vessels bargained with the negroes in villages near the coast for such slaves, gold or wax as they might be able to supply. It usually followed that a ship must sail along the coast for some distance, picking up a few negroes at one place and a little ivory or gold at another. At some stops no slaves or ivory would be found and it required a long time to pick up a decent cargo. The coast was pestilential for the European and the trade with the treacherous negroes was exceedingly dangerous. Soon the plan was adopted of planting small settlements of Europeans at intervals along the slave coast, defended by forts, sometimes of considerable size and strength. These were called slave factories and it was the business of the factor or commander to negotiate with the negroes and stimulate them to activity in organizing slave-hunting expeditions. As the slaves were brought in from the back country, they would be purchased by barter and then housed and guarded in sheds or warehouses, known as barracoons, until the arrival of slave ships.

Factories of this kind were planted by the English, French, Dutch and Portuguese, all along the western coast, from Cape Verde to the Congo. The location usually chosen was near the mouth of some river, so as to tap easily the slave supply up country. Sometimes, however, a small island, offshore, was selected on which to build a factory, because it was cooler and a more healthful spot.

The walls of the larger forts enclosed a considerable space of ground, on which were built barracks, storehouses for merchandise and sheds for the slaves. The huts of the negroes employed in the service of the factory, would be outside the walls of the fort, but under the protection of its guns. The principal fort of the English was Cape Coast Castle, on the Gold Coast, and not far away was St. George del Mina, erected by the Portuguese, but later falling into the hands of the Dutch. The French built Fort Louis at the mouth of the Senegal and also a fort on Goree, an island near Cape Verde. Fort James was on the Gambia and there were important forts at Anamaboe, Accra and Whidah. Most of these forts mounted from fifty to sixty guns and were not only impregnable to the negroes, but capable of standing a regular siege by a European force.

Under the command of the governor or commandant were soldiers employed in the service of the company, and a number of clerks, mechanics and junior factors, the latter in charge of the traffic with the interior towns. These men would ascend the rivers in small sailing vessels or armed boats and exchange European manufactures for slaves, gold dust and ivory furnished by the negroes. Sometimes they would open a sort of shop or trading post in a populous town and remain there for several months at the pleasure of the local king or chief. Many of these men were outcasts at home or destitute of means and therefore willing to engage to go to the coast of Africa where they knew they could lead a life of comparative indolence, with little or no restraint. There they might indulge nearly every human passion with utter freedom, whether it be confirmed drunkenness or unrestrained intercourse with negro girls. They knew that the deadly climate was likely to claim them eventually, so it was “a short life, and a merry one” for many an outcast free of home ties.

The soldiers in the forts seldom were called upon for active duty and spent their time in smoking, drinking palm wine and gaming. In fact, much of the time they were physically unfit for any service and within two years after their arrival on the Coast, they would be carried off by fever or dissipation. A stranger, on visiting one of these African forts, felt that there was something both horrible and ludicrous in the appearance of its garrison, for the soldiers appeared ghastly, debilitated and diseased, and their tattered and soiled uniforms, resembling each other only in meanness and not in color, suggested the thought that these men were a band of drunken deserters or starved and maltreated prisoners of war.

Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman to transport slaves from the Guinea coast to America. This was in 1562, and his prosperous voyage which “brought great profit to the adventurers,” led to other similar ventures. In 1618, King James granted a charter to a stock company to trade with Guinea, but private adventurers and interlopers broke in upon the preserves of the company and forced the trade open.

In 1662, another exclusive company was chartered with the king’s brother, the Duke of York, at its head, and this company undertook to supply the English plantations with three thousand slaves annually. It was known as the “Company of Royal Adventurers of England for Carrying on a Trade to Africa,” and for a year or two traded successfully and brought gold dust to England in such quantity that King Charles II ordered the minting of a new gold coin, of the value of twenty-one shillings, to be known as a guinea. These coins, made of the gold imported by the African Company, had, in its honor, a small elephant under the bust of the King, as a mark of distinction, done, it is said, to encourage the importation of gold. In 1664, the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, captured the Guinea forts of the company, including Cormentyn Castle, and a number of ships, so that its losses amounted to over £200,000, which eventually forced the company to surrender its charter.

In 1672, the Royal African Company was chartered and for over a century conducted a more or less successful trade with the Guinea coast. It encouraged the English manufacture of several kinds of woolen and cotton goods and opened up a considerable market for Sheffield wares. The importations were elephant’s teeth, dye woods, wax and gold dust, the latter reaching England in such quantity that forty or fifty thousand guineas would be minted at a time. But the dominating feature of the trading operations of the company was the advantageous purchase of negroes in Guinea, to be carried to the American colonies and there sold into slavery, the return cargo being muscovado sugar to supply the expanding English market.

In 1790, the number of forts and factories established on the coast was about forty; fourteen belonging to the English, fifteen to the Dutch, three to the French, four to the Portuguese and four to the Danes; and it has been estimated that the number of negroes sold or kidnapped into slavery, annually, about that time, could not fall far short of one hundred thousand, while an estimate of the total number carried away into slavery, previous to the year 1800, shows that African mothers provided about thirty million victims for the slave ships.

The ship trading on the slave coast discovered that the manner of trade varied with the locality. On coming to anchor in the river Gambia, opposite James Fort, a boat was sent ashore to announce the arrival to the alkaide or chief of the town, who at once came aboard to receive the anchorage money. This was ten gallons of liquor for the king, two iron bars for the alkaide and perhaps a few bottles of wine, beer or cider for presents. After a detention of four to seven days, the king would send his people to receive his custom, amounting to the value of 140 iron bars in merchandise. Later, the ship was supplied with a first and second linguist, two messengers and six or more butlers. The first linguist served as interpreter between the broker, who sold the slaves for the owner, and the factor, trader or master of the ship. The second linguist acted as interpreter for an officer of the ship, either in the tender, long-boat or factory on shore. The messengers were employed in looking out for trade on shore,—slaves, ivory, gold, provisions, etc. and for carrying letters to and from vessels, factories, etc. The butlers were employed to row in boats, cut wood, water the ship, in fact, were hired to preserve the health of the ship’s crew, by saving them from exposure to the sun on board and the damps on shore.

Thus provided, the ship proceeded up river for about one hundred leagues to Yanamaroo, in the kingdom of Yancy, where more liquor was supplied for an anchorage and then the messengers were sent out to the principal people, for twenty or thirty miles around, soliciting slaves and trade. The tender or long-boat would also be dispatched farther up the river with merchandise for trade. It was at this port that ships generally began and finished their trading.

The slaves sold by these blacks were for the most part prisoners of war. But not infrequently men would sell their own children or the children of neighbors, that they had kidnapped,—stolen is perhaps a better word. Some slaves were also brought from a distance but usually when offered were in poor and weak condition.

The linguist would bring the slave broker on board or to the factory, who would inquire what price the master of the ship was willing to pay for a slave and the commission he was to receive and this was never settled until the broker had visited all the factories and every ship in port. Having no better offer, the broker would then bring on board the owner of the slaves, who examined the merchandise offered, agreed upon the articles and then sent for the slaves, who would be examined by the ship’s surgeon. If approved, the owner would then be paid the merchandise he had selected, less one bar of iron, duty for the king. Men slaves would then be put in irons on the main deck; boys on the main deck, not ironed; and women and girls, not ironed, on the quarter deck. The broker was then given his commission, which completed the transaction.

Much of the ivory obtained there had been picked up in the woods and having laid out in the rain and wind for some time was for the most part scurfy and hollow.

The northern coast of the gulf of Guinea is divided into particular sections which, in order, have been named the “Grain Coast,” extending from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas, a country producing much rice and maize (Indian corn); the “Ivory or Tooth Coast,” extending from Cape Palmas to the river Lagos, and formerly having a considerable trade in elephant ivory; the “Gold Coast,” between Assinee and the river Volta, so named for the large amounts of gold dust obtained there, which came from the mountains and streams at the north; and lastly, the “Bight of Benin,” lying between Cape St. Paul’s and Cape Formosa, which clasps within its curve, the “Slave Coast” and the coast of Whidah and Lagos, in former times much resorted to by slavers and pirates.

Cape Coast Castle, the principal English fort in slaving days, guarded a part of the Gold Coast and behind it was the Fantee and Ashantee country, which supplied great numbers of slaves for the American market. The castle was built near the sea and not only was dominated by three hills, not far behind it, but its location was only nine miles from the Castle of St. George at Mina, belonging to the Dutch, and only a short mile distant was Fredericksburg, a Danish fort. The only landing place was a small sandy flat just under the castle, on which the blacks could run their canoes without danger of splitting. The agent general of the “Royal Company of Africa,” who spent much time at Cape Coast Castle, remarked upon the unhealthfulness of the place notwithstanding the rocky shore and the surrounding high land. He wrote:

“Their fondness for their beloved liquor punch, is so great, even among the officers and factors, that, whatever comes of it, there must be a bowl upon all occasions, which causes the death of many of them.... I have often represented to some of the principal men how to live more regularly, viz., to abstain from the black women, whose natural hot and lewd temper soon wastes their bodies, to drink moderately, especially of brandy, rum, and punch; and to avoid sleeping in the open air at night, as many, when heated with debauchery, do, having nothing on but a shirt, thinking thus to keep cool, but, on the contrary, they murder themselves; for nothing is more pernicious to the constitution of Europeans, than to lie in the open air, as I have been sufficiently convinced by experience. I always kept to my bed, as well as I could well bear it, and both night and day wore a dressed hare’s skin next to my bare stomach, for above two years together, which kept it in good disposition and helped digestion very much; though I must say it was sometimes, and especially in the excessive hot nights, very troublesome and occasioned much sweating. The air, though not so cold, is much thinner and more piercing than in England, and corrodes iron much faster.

“The Castle has a lofty wall around it and had no fresh water except what is saved in a very large cistern, during the rains, which supplies both the garrison and shipping. In order to destroy Guinea worms, ship masters are accustomed to put two or three spoonsful of quick lime into each water cask filled from the cistern.”

The inland negroes supplied the market with fruit, corn and palm wine, the maize or Indian wheat being produced in such quantity that much was sold to shipping and to blacks from other parts. The country was also very rich in gold and slaves, many of the latter coming from a considerable distance in the interior. The Fantees and Ashantees were esteemed most highly and were more hardy than the inland blacks.

Anamaboe, an important roadstead, lies a few leagues to the east of Cape Coast Castle. It was formerly a point at which slaves were to be had in considerable number and the road was generally full of shipping. The blacks were a clever and villainous people and frequently adulterated their gold so the trader must narrowly watch all transactions. The town was located on a sandy beach, strewn with rocks, close to the sea, the surf being so heavy that ships’ boats could not land and all trade was carried on in the canoes of the natives.

At Accra, further to the eastward, the coast is bolder, with a good landing and plentiful supplies of provisions, and gold of the purest refinement. This country usually was at war with neighboring nations and accordingly had many prisoners to sell into slavery, so that sometimes a ship happening on the coast at just the right time, could obtain a lading of slaves in a fortnight and at a very low cost.

The use made by the natives of European manufactures obtained in trade is interestingly described by John Barbot, in his account of Guinea.

“The broad linen serves to adorn themselves, and their dead men’s sepulchers within; they also make clouts thereof. The narrow cloth to press palm-oil; in old sheets they wrap themselves at night from head to foot. The copper basins to wash and shave, the Scotch pans serve in lieu of butcher’s tubs, when they kill hogs or sheep; from the iron bars the smiths forge out all their weapons and country and household tools and utensils. Of friezes and perpetuanas they make girts four fingers broad, to wear about the waist, and hang their sword, dagger, knife, and purse of money or gold, which they commonly thrust between the girdle and their body. They break Venice coral into four or five parts, which afterwards they mould into any form, on whetstones, and make strings or necklaces, which yield a considerable profit. Of four or five ells of English or Leyden serges they make a kind of cloth to wrap about their shoulders and stomach. Of chintzes, perpetuanas, printed calicoes, tapseils and nicanees, are made clouts to wear round their middles. The wrought pewter, such as dishes, basons, porringers, &c. serve to eat their victuals out of. Muskets, firelocks, and cutlaces they use in war. Brandy is most commonly spent at their feasts. Knives to the same purposes as we use them. With tallow they anoint their bodies from head to toe, and even use it to shave their beards, instead of soap. Venice bugles, glass beads and contacarbe serve all ages and sexes, to adorn their heads, necks, arms and legs, and sarsaparilla is used by such as are infected with the venereal disease.”

Lying to the eastward of the Gold Coast is a stretch of country known as the Slave Coast, because the whole trade there was confined to slaves, there being very little gold. It extends from the river Volta to Jackin. The country is flat and low, rising gradually as it runs up inland, and landing along the coast is difficult, not to say dangerous, because of the terrible surf, which at nearly all times of the year cannot be passed without great hazard. From April to July, which is the rainy season, the waves run so high that whoever ventures to land should mind the saying “he ought to have two lives who ventures.” The bar-canoes, however well manned, were frequently overset with loss of goods and also lives, for the waters swarm with monstrous sharks, sometimes thirty feet long, that soon make way with any man who happens to fall near them. These sharks usually swim in company and when a dead slave was thrown overboard, one shark would bite off a leg, another an arm, while others would sink down with the body; and all this happened in much less time than it takes to describe the gruesome feast. Great numbers of sharks always followed the course of slave ships, as if they knew that one or more bodies would be thrown, daily, to their ravenous jaws.

As the slaves came down to the coast from Dahomey and the inland country, they were put into a large shed, built for that purpose, near the beach, and when brought out for sale, the ship’s surgeons would carefully examine every bit of their anatomy down to the smallest member, men and women alike being stark naked. Those found to be sound would be set aside and soon after be branded, with a hot iron, on the breast (later it was more customary to brand on the shoulder) with the mark of the company or the individual trader, so as to prevent the natives from substituting slaves in poorer condition. Care was usually taken that the women should not be burned as deeply as the men. The branded slaves would then be returned to the shed and sometimes it would be two or more weeks before the surf would be low enough to make it safe to send them off to the slave ships anchored in the roadstead. They were always stripped of every rag of clothing before they entered the bar-canoes and as they stepped into the canoe, a native priest standing by would strew sand over their heads to exorcise the evil spirit and preserve them from being overset in the passing through the rollers.

To trade on the Slave Coast, particularly after the king of Dahomey had subjugated the coast tribes, necessitated much ceremony and many presents, to say nothing of the employment of numerous retainers and servants. The king must be paid his customs at the outset. Then came the hire of the factory house and the canoes and canoemen and it was customary to hire a conductor to take care of the goods brought up from the beach and also the slaves going down to the canoes. Two brokers or interpreters were required; two boys for servants; a doorkeeper and a boy, to serve at the tent on the beach; a messenger to carry to the king the news of the ship’s arrival and the captain’s compliments; a gong beater, to announce the opening of trade; a trunk keeper, to take care of the slaves while on shore; six water rollers; a woman to bring water; and a washer-woman.

Fees must also be paid to the viceroy, who came with his people to receive the captain and conduct him to the fort,—usually a Spanish hat, a piece of silk, a cask of flour and another of beef or pork. The captain of the waterside, at the ship’s departure, was given a piece of cloth and an anker of brandy; and there was a fee for putting up a tent on the beach. Porters had to be hired and there were other expenses for entertainment, so that the preliminary costs of lading a slave ship, on this coast, about the year 1790, amounted to a value of about £368; and about the same time slaves were costing five ounces of gold, or £10, apiece.

This entire coast from the river Sherboro, just south of Sierre Leone, to the river Benin, at New Calabar (which is the part of Africa with which Europeans were best acquainted previous to the year 1800),—in all this tract of at least fifteen hundred miles of seacoast, there is not one navigable river, bay or harbor, into which a ship can enter; nor is there one river or creek into which a sailing boat can go above ten miles from the sea. Very few creeks will even admit a boat and not one on the Gold Coast, except at Chama and Mines. The entire shoreline, almost in every part, is difficult of access, because of the heavy surf that breaks upon the beach and it is only possible to land in a light canoe and even in that way it is frequently impracticable for many days together. In many places near the shore there is scarcely water enough for even a canoe and the waves break so fiercely and there is so wide a stretch of broken water, that all communication between shipping and the shore is frequently interrupted for weeks at a time, and seldom can a landing be effected with safety. At the easterly end of the Bight of Benin, the entire coast is inhospitable and very little frequented and for the most part is drowned occasionally by the sea or the heavy rains in August and September.

A very important part of the coast, in old slaving days, was Calabar, Old and New, and the Bonny River. Ships of considerable burden could anchor on the hard, sandy ground, in eight fathoms, in the river at New Calabar and also at Bonny and as these towns tapped an extensive back-country, they traded in slaves in large numbers. As New Calabar was badly afflicted with mosquitoes, shipping usually lay at anchor near Foko Point. The blacks living there, through frequent contact with Europeans, were of a more civilized sort than elsewhere along the coast, and half a dozen vessels would sometimes lie at anchor in the river at one time. From 12,000 to 15,000 slaves were exported annually from this locality, during a long period of years, the English, French and Dutch participating in the trade. These slaves were brought down the rivers from market towns, a hundred and more miles away, having originally come from a considerable distance in the interior. Some of them undoubtedly were prisoners of war, but many were kidnapped by raiding parties or sold into slavery because of crime or the necessity of relatives, and not infrequently in consequence of debt.

The black traders of Calabar and Bonny came down the rivers with slaves about once a fortnight. There would be twenty or thirty canoes come down at a time, and sometimes even more, and each canoe would carry twenty to thirty slaves. The arms of some of the men would be tied with grass rope and a man who happened to be stronger than common might also be pinioned above the knee. In this condition the slaves would be thrown into the bottom of the canoes, where they would lie, able to move but slightly, sometimes in great pain and often almost covered with water. On landing, they would be taken to the trader’s sheds, where they would be fed, rubbed down with palm oil and made up for sale.

“Bonny River is a noble stream, spacious and deep and wider than the Thames in Sea Reach. The land is low and covered with lofty cocoanut, palm tree, pine, plantain and banana trees. On the north side is the kingdom of Benin and on the south, Bonny, independent of each other. New Calabar can be seen here at the distance to the northwest. Plenty of palm wine is made (or rather got) here, for they have only to make an incision in the top of a tree in the evening, hang a calabash under it, and in the morning it will be full. It is of a whitish color and tastes like cider.

“Our slaves had two meals a day, one in the morning consisting of boiled yams and the other in the afternoon of boiled horse-beans and slabber sauce poured over each. This sauce was made of chunks of old Irish beef and rotten salt fish stewed to rags and well seasoned with cayenne pepper. The negroes were so fond of it that they would pick out the little bits and share them out; but they didn’t like the horse-beans.

“The brandy that we brought out for trade was very good but the darkies thought it was not hot enough and didn’t bite—as they called it; therefore, out of every puncheon we pumped out a third of the brandy, put in half a bucketful of cayenne pepper, then filled it up with water and in a few days it was hot enough for Old Nick, himself, and when they came to taste it, thinking that it was from another cask, they would say ‘Ah, he bite.’”

In some of the following chapters will be found detailed accounts of trading at Calabar and Bonny, the procuring of slaves and what happened during the voyage to the West Indies.

About twenty-five leagues to the east of Bonny River is Old Calabar, where ships formerly made fast to large trees on the river bank and traded for provisions and slaves. The climate is very unhealthy and as trade there went on very slowly in time it came to be a place to avoid.

About ten leagues farther to the eastward is the Rio del Rey, which formerly supplied many slaves and some fine, large elephant’s tusks. But the country has no fresh water except what the blacks collect from the tops of their houses when it rains and the river has much thick, foggy weather. An old English pilot wrote of this river:

“Here an European must look out for himself, for the inhabitants are so subtly mischievous that you’ll be betrayed before you are aware; and they are so barbarously cruel, that the parents sell their children, the husband his wife, one brother and sister the other, and in decency and order are scarce a degree above the beasts. This description was written in the last century and we don’t find that the inhabitants are altered in the least since that time.”

South of the Rio del Rey lies the country of the Cameroons, a tall, lusty people, who carried on some trade with Europeans; the Gaboon River, a good place for trade and also for cleaning and refitting vessels; Loango, a rich and important kingdom, whose people worked in metal and were more civilized than the nations to the north of them; and lastly, the great region about the Congo River, its trade, in former times, largely controlled by the Portuguese.

The slave trade was abolished by law by Great Britain in 1807; by Denmark in 1812; by Holland in 1814; by France in 1818; and by Spain in 1820, after the receipt of a subsidy of £400,000 from Great Britain, but the prohibition was a farce as far as the Spanish authorities were concerned, and the trade in slaves from West Africa to Cuba and Porto Rico was only checked by the vigilance of British and French cruisers. The United States, in its southern part, was vitally interested in slavery, but the slave trade with the African Coast was abolished in 1807. Portugal abolished the slave trade in 1830 and received therefor a subsidy from Great Britain, but as a matter of fact, the export of slaves from Portuguese Africa did not really come to an end until Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

To enforce the suppression of the African slave trade Great Britain sent her war vessels to the West Coast and later, as treaties were entered into with other countries, the activities of her blockading vessels did much to lessen the number of negroes carried overseas.

In 1820, the United States sent three war vessels to the African coast to aid in the suppression of the slave trade; but the appropriation of $100,000 made by Congress in 1819, for enforcing the Act, was reduced to $50,000 in 1823, and soon after was reduced to a few ineffective thousands.

In 1842, by the Ashburton treaty with Great Britain, the United States engaged to keep on the Coast of Africa a “sufficient and adequate” naval force for the suppression of the slave trade, and after that a small squadron was kept on the African station.

The blockading fleets had a long coastline to cover. One by one the well-known slave factories were destroyed and one by one the slaving fleet grew smaller. The gulf of Guinea, because of the character of its coastline, was soon free of traders, and debarred from using the Spanish settlements on or off the Cameroons coast, the slave traders of nineteenth-century Cuba and Brazil established themselves on the Rio Pongo, a no-man’s land northwest of Sierra Leone. There came the Fulah traders from the Mandingo and upper Niger countries; the adjoining rivers and islands of Portuguese Guinea also fed a similar slave trade, and it was some time before the slave depots at Rio Pongo and Bobama were broken up by the joint action of British and French gunboats.

The Cuban ships then found their way to the eastern side of the Sierra Leone colony, to the Gallinas lagoon and the river Sulima, along the unclaimed “Grain Coast,” now Liberia, and from 1822 to 1839 an average of five thousand slaves were shipped annually to Cuba, Porto Rico, South Carolina, Georgia and Brazil, from this one locality alone. Pedro Blanco, a native of Malaga, was the leading spirit of this slaving factory and one of his principal lieutenants was Theodore Canot, a French seaman. Blanco lived near the Gallinas lagoon, with a large harem, surrounded by every luxury that money could buy in Europe or America. His drafts were as promptly cashed in Cuba, London or Paris as on the West African coast. He employed large numbers of negroes as paid watchers or spies, and from a hundred lookouts along the beach and on the islands of the lagoon, they scanned the horizon for the approach of British cruisers. By their signals they saved incoming or outgoing slave ships from capture. In 1839, Blanco retired from the trade with a fortune of nearly a million sterling and at last ended his days quite pleasantly on the Italian Riviera.

The slave-trading factories on the coasts of Sierra Leone and Liberia had all been destroyed by about 1847, but slave smuggling was carried on from inland stations, by prearranged connections, for long years after, although not on so large a scale as before. A lading of negroes, from the interior, would be brought to the coast and concealed at a place agreed upon. On a certain day or not long after, a vessel would appear off the beach and display a recognized signal. Immediately the negroes would be rushed to the shore and carried aboard in canoes and the ship’s boats and four hours later a distant sail on the horizon was the only visible reminder of another trade in human flesh.

Cruisers were active and so were the slave smugglers, for the profits were enormous. In 1858, a citizen of Savannah, Georgia, proposed an expedition to the coast of Africa, for “a cargo of African apprentices to be bound for the term of their natural lives,” and estimated the costs at $300,000 and the net profits at $480,000, which did not include the value of the steamer, already paid for. It is a significant fact that during the year 1859, only two years before the Civil War, according to the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy, eleven slavers were captured by United States war vessels.

Chapter II. Sir John Hawkins, Slave Trader

The first Englishman to engage in the slave trade between the Guinea coast and America was Capt. John Hawkins, a younger son of Capt. William Hawkins of Plymouth, who was trading on the coast of Brazil as early as 1630, “in a tall and goodlie ship of his owne.” Young Hawkins was born in 1532 and also followed the sea. He made several voyages to the Canary Isles and while there formed a trade alliance with a Spanish merchant, Pedro de Ponte, of Teneriffe, who suggested to him the feasibility of a trade in negro slaves to be obtained in the gulf of Guinea and sold to the sugar planters in the Spanish West Indies. Between voyages Hawkins made inquiry of his father and others as to the conditions existing in the West Indies, but his principal source of information was found among the traders in the Canaries. He was assured that negroes were greatly desired in Hispaniola (Haiti) and that they might easily be had on the African coast. Pedro de Ponte agreed to furnish a pilot familiar with Spanish America and the state of the trade there and Hawkins finally decided to make a trial of the venture.

He returned to London from his last Canary voyage, in the summer of 1562, and at once laid the project before his father-in-law, Benjamin Gonson, the Treasurer of the Admiralty, who thought so well of it that Thomas Lodge, the governor of the Russia Company and a member of the Grocer’s Company; Alderman Lionel Ducket, an enterprising merchant who afterwards became Lord Mayor of London; Sir William Winter, and several others were interested and “became liberal contributors and adventurers in the action.” These men were venturers in the full meaning of the word, for no English fleet had yet entered into the commercial field in the New World long monopolized by Spain. Any prudent Englishman could easily forecast trouble with that mighty power in case the proposed voyage was carried out to a conclusion.

Forty-five years before this date, Charles V had formally licensed the importation of negro slaves into the West Indies. In 1551, 17,000 licenses for slave importation from Africa to the West Indies were offered for sale by the Spanish government and two years later a monopoly of the African slave trade was granted for seven years obligating an importation of 23,000 negroes. It was this monopoly that Captain Hawkins proposed to break and only bold men became shareholders in his venture.

In the fall of 1562, three “private” ships were fitted out,—the Solomon, of one hundred and twenty tons burden, the Swallow, of one hundred tons, and the Jonas, a bark of only forty tons. The vessels were manned by less than a hundred men, “for feare of” sickness and other “inconveniences, whereunto men in long voyages are commonly subject,” and with a cargo of English goods aboard, the little fleet set sail in October, 1562, and laid a course for the island of Teneriffe, where Captain Hawkins “received friendly intertainement” at the hands of Senor de Ponte and his friends.

“From thence hee passed to Sierra Leona, upon the coast of Guinea, which place by the people of the country is called Tagarin, where he stayed some good time, and got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other meanes, to the number of 300 negroes at the least, besides other merchandises, which that Country yeldeth. With this praye he sailed over the Ocean sea unto the Island of Hispaniola, and arrived first at the port of Isabella: and there hee had reasonable utterance of his English commodities, as also of some part of his Negroes, trusting the Spaniards no further than by his owne strength he was able still to master them. From the port of Isabella he went to Porte de Plata, where he made like sales, standing always upon his gard: from thence also hee sailed to Monte Christi; another port on the north side of Hispaniola, and the last place of his touching, where he had peaceable trafique and made vent of the whole nomber of his Negroes: for which he received in those 3 places, by way of exchange, such quantity of merchandise, that he did not onely lade his owne 3 shippes with hides, ginger, sugers, and some quantitie of pearles, but he fraighted also two other hulkes with hides and other like commodities, which he sent to Spaine. And thus leaving the Island, hee returned and disimboked, passing out by the Islands of the Caycos, without further entring into the Bay of Mexico, in this his first voyage to the West India, and so with prosperous successe and much gaine to himselfe and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home and arrived in the moneth of September 1563.”

In attempting to dispose of part of his gains in Spain, Hawkins displayed an almost incredible assurance. He professed to rely on old commercial treaties between the two countries, but when his second in command arrived in Cadiz, the cargoes were promptly seized and half of the profits of the venture were thus lost. Moreover, an order was at once dispatched to the West Indies absolutely forbidding any future trade with English vessels.

The success of Captain Hawkins’ first slaving voyage was so great that he had no difficulty in obtaining powerful backing for a second interloping venture. Even the queen became a shareholder and lent the expedition the Jesus of Lubeck, a vessel of seven hundred tons that had been bought for the English navy, by Henry VIII, from the Hanse traders of Lubeck. Elizabeth’s stake in the venture may be judged from the fact that the Jesus was valued at £4,000, about £40,000 in present day values.

The slaving fleet of four vessels, consisting of the Jesus, 700 tons; the ship Solomon, 140 tons; the bark Tiger, 50 tons; and the pinnace Swallow, 30 tons, supplied with ordnance and well victualled and manned by 170 men, sailed from Plymouth, Oct. 18, 1564, bound for Teneriffe and the information that Senor de Ponte might be able to furnish.

The sailing orders, governing the southerly voyage, were as follows:

“The small shippes to be always a head and a weather of the Jesus, and to speake, twise a day with the Jesus, at least.

“If in the day the Ensigne bee over the poope of the Jesus, or in the night two lights, then shall all the shippes speake with her.

“If there be three lights aboord the Jesus, then doth she cast about.

“If the weather be extreme, that the small shippes cannot keep companie with the Jesus, then all to keep companie with the Solomon, and foorthwith to repaire to the Island of Teneriffe, to the Northward of the road of Sirroes.

“If any happen to any misfortune, then to shewe two lights and to shoote off a piece of Ordnance.

“If any loose company, and come in sight again, to make three yawes [veerings of the ship] and strike [lower] the Myson [the mizzen sail] three times.

“Serve God daly [have daily prayers], love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie [the fleet keep together].”

When only three days out a great storm arose and continued for a day and a night so that the little fleet lost company and Hawkins put into the port of Ferrol, on the Spanish coast, to refit. While here, the brigantine Minion, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ships, came in with news of a disaster that a few days before had befallen her consort, the Merlin of London.

“Through the negligence of one of her gunners, the powder in the gunners’ roome was set on fire, which with the first blast struck out her poope, and therewithall lost three meen, besides many sore burned (which escaped by the Brigantine being at her sterne), and immediately, to the great losse of the owners and mose horrible sight to the beholders, she sanke before their eyes.”

Captain Hawkins’ fleet reached Teneriffe early in November and after coming to anchor in the port of Adecia he hoisted out his ship’s pinnace and went ashore proposing to send word of his arrival to Senor de Ponte, who lived at Santa Cruix, twenty leagues distant. As the boat neared the share, a company of some eighty men, armed with harquebusses, halberts, pikes, swords and targets, suddenly appeared and disputed his landing. Hawkins at once cried out that he was a friend of Senor de Ponte, to whom he desired to send a letter, and the commander “put his men aside.” Two days later Senor de Ponte arrived and “gave him as gentle entertainment as if he had been his own brother.”

The ships reached Alcatraz island, off the African coast and south of the river Gambia, early in December, after various adventures. One day, on the voyage down the coast, the ship’s pinnace, with two men in her, sailing beside the Jesus, by the neglect of the men was overset. The wind was high and before the ship could be brought about, the overturned pinnace was out of sight and there was small hope of her recovery. But Captain Hawkins, “having well marked which way the pinnesse was by the Sunne, appointed 24 of the lustiest rowers in the greate boat to rowe to windewards and so recovered, contrary to all men’s expectations, both the pinnesse and the men sitting upon the keele of her.”

While riding at anchor at Alcatraz island, the two barks went to another island and landed eighty men in armor for the purpose of capturing slaves. But the negroes were wary and fled into the woods “leaping and turning their tailes, that it was most strange to see and gave us great pleasure to behold them,” wrote John Sparke, a gentleman adventurer who accompanied Hawkins on this voyage.

As his men were unable to find the towns where these negroes lived, Hawkins continued his southerly course and three days later, on the 12th of December, 1564, came to anchor at an island called Sambula. The negroes living there were Sapies, and three years before they had been conquered by the Samboses (the modern Sambos), a tribe that lived beyond Sierra Leone. The men of the fleet were kept busy going ashore every day to capture the negroes, burning and spoiling their towns, and many were taken, none of whom, however, turned out to be of the Sambos tribe. They had fled to the mainland at the first alarm.

On the beach were found about fifty canoes,—dugouts about twenty-four feet long and three feet wide, having a beak head and carved sides painted in red and blue. These were able to carry twenty to thirty men, the rowers standing upright. Sparke comments that four rowers and a steersman, in one of these canoes, could make as good time as a pair of oars in a wherry, in the Thames at London.

By the 21st of December, the raiding parties had taken all the negroes they could find and had also carried on board as much fruit, rice and other food as they could stow, so on that day the fleet made sail for the river called Callowsa, the Portuguese being located there about twenty leagues from the sea. Hawkins left his two ships at the mouth of the river and going up trafficked with the Portuguese and three days later started on his return with two caravels loaded with negroes.

Misfortune befell him, however, on the way down the river, for the Portuguese had told him of a negro town called Bimba, located near the river bank, where there was a great quantity of gold and only forty men and a hundred women and children. Captain Hawkins and his men were in high spirits over their success thus far and sighting an easy capture of an additional hundred slaves, to say nothing of the gold known to be in the village, forty armed men, with Portuguese guides, were landed at the indicated point. The men had been ordered to keep together for mutual protection and offense, but on reaching the negro village the company broke up into ones and twos in a mad search for the gold. In the midst of the ransacking of the houses some two hundred negroes fell upon them and many of Hawkins’ men were wounded and all driven back to the boats in confusion, where several were drowned and others perished in the deep ooze.

“Thus wee returned backe,” wrote Sparke, “somewhat discomforted, although the Captaine in a singular wise manner, with countenance very cheerful outwardly, as though he did little weigh the death of his men, nor yet the great hurt of the rest, although his heart inwardly was broken in pieces for it, done to this ende, that the Portingals, being with him, should not presume to resist against him, or take ocasion to put him to further displeasure or hindrance, for the death of our men: having gotten by our going ten Negroes and lost seven of our best men, whereof Master Field, Captaine of the Solomon, was one, and we had 27 of our men hurt.”

The barks and the caravels reached the ships at the mouth of the river on the 28th of December and two days later the fleet set sail for Taggarin, across the river from where now stands Freetown, the capital of the Sierra Leone, where a colony of liberated slaves was founded in 1791 by Englishmen. From here the two barks and both the boats went into a river called the Casseroes and brought back negroes. The Swallow also went up the river “about her traffik, where they saw great townes of the Negroes, and Canoes that had three score men in a peece: there they understood of the Portingals, of a great battell, betweene them of the Sierra Leona side, and them of Taggarin: they of Sierra Leona had prepared 300 canoes to invade the other. The time was appointed not past 6 daies after our departure from thence, which we would have seene, to the intent we might have taken some of them, had it not been for the death and sickness of our men, which came by the contagiousness of the place, which made us to haste away.”

The ships had difficulty in watering while lying here. Soon after anchoring, the empty water casks were put ashore and filled with water to season them, intending afterwards to fill with fresh water. While the men were ashore, some of them at their boats, they were set upon by negroes and a number were wounded. The negroes also cut the hoops from twelve of the water butts, which was a serious loss considering the water supply required for so many people during the voyage to the West Indies. Again, just before sailing, some of the Solomon’s men went ashore at night to fill water casks and just as they were ready to leap on land they espied a negro standing on a rock with nine or ten others behind him, who immediately disappeared among the rocks. This put fear into the hearts of the sailors and they returned at once to the ship. The next day it was learned from the Portuguese, that the king of Sierra Leone had designed to capture some of the sailors. “But God, who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by him wee escaped without danger, his name bee praysed for it,” afterwards wrote John Sparke.

The slaving fleet set sail for the West Indies on Jan. 19, 1565, and during the voyage was becalmed for twenty-eight days, to say nothing of experiencing contrary winds and a tornado or two. As the store of fresh water was none too great, before long both Englishmen and negroes were pinched “and that which was worst, put us in such feare that many never thought to have reached to the Indies, without great death of Negroes and of ourselves; but Almightie God, who never suffereth his elect to perish, sent us the sixteenth of Februarie, the ordinarie Breese, which is the Northwest wind, which never left us till we came to an Island of the Cannybals, called Sancta Dominica, where we arrived the ninth of March.” They came to a desolate part of the island where the men were unable to find fresh water, save some rain water that remained in a puddle in a dale, “whereof we filled for our Negroes.”

A week later, Margarite, an island off the coast of Venezuela, was reached, where they obtained meat and supplies from the alcade, but the Spanish governor would have nothing to do with them and sent a caravel to the viceroy with news of their arrival. Word came back forbidding all traffic and soon all the inhabitants of the town, including the governor, abandoned their homes and fled to the mountains. With plenty of fresh supplies and a full cargo of negro slaves aboard, the fleet set sail for Cumana, on the Spanish main, where they found soldiers newly arrived and so were not able to sell a negro. “A marvelous goodly watering place,” was found about two leagues from Cumana, where fresh water came into the sea and where black-haired Indians, wearing no beards, came aboard bringing cakes made of a “kinde of corne called Maize, in bigness of a pease, the eare whereof is much like to a teasell, but a span in length, having thereon a number of graines.” They also brought hens, potatoes and pineapples which were traded for beads, pewter, whistles, glasses, knives and other trifles.

On March 28, 1565, the fleet again set sail and the next day passed near the island of Tortuga and two days later Captain Hawkins, sailing near the coast in the pinnace belonging to the Jesus, saw many Caribs on the shore and made in to trade with them, narrowly escaped capture—“as God would have it.” On April 3d, he reached Burboroata, near the present town of La Guaira, in Venezuela, where by a show of strength and persuasive guile he was permitted to bring his ships into the harbor and also to obtain from the Spanish officials a license to sell thirty “lean and sicke Negroes which he had on his shippe like[ly] to die upon his hands, having little or no refreshing for them.”

The sale of these negroes went on slowly. The Spaniards claimed that the price asked was too high, and Hawkins “shewed his writings what he paid for his Negroes, declaring also the great charge he was at in his shipping and men’s wages.” Another grievance was the customs charge amounting to thirty ducats on each slave (about £66, in modern money). The governor would not abate this amount so Hawkins showed his teeth and with “one hundred men well armed with bowes, arrowes, harquebusses and pikes, hee marched to the towne wardes, and beying perceived by the Governor, hee straight with all expedition sent messengers to know his request.” When told that 7½ per cent duty was enough and if it was not granted that Hawkins and his men “would displease” them, the governor quickly sent word that “all things should bee to his content.”

While at anchor here a French slaver, the Green Dragon of Havre, Captain Bontemps, arrived from the Guinea coast with news that he had been driven off by Portuguese galleys before completing his cargo of slaves; that Capt. David Carlet with his supercargo and a dozen sailors had been taken prisoners and accounts of other misadventures, of loss of men and great lack of fresh water that had occurred, “which was most sorrowful for us to understand,” wrote Master Sparke.

Curaçao was reached on the 6th of May, where they had difficulty in finding an anchorage. Here they trafficked for hides “and found great refreshing both of beefe, mutton and lambes,” the flesh being so abundant that when they brought the hides the flesh was given to them so that “the worst in the ship thought scorn not onely of mutton, but also of sodden lambe, which they disdained to eate unrosted.”

Rio Hache, on the coast of what is now Bolivia, was reached on the nineteenth and the Spanish authorities denying Hawkins a license to trade he replied, that “seeing that they had sent him this for his supper, hee would in the morning bring them as good a breakfast.” When morning came he shot off a whole-culverin, to summon the town, and with a hundred men in armor, rowed towards the shore. In his great boat were two brass falcons and in the bow of each of the other boats were small cannon called “double-bases.” Drawn up on the beach were thirty horsemen and about one hundred and fifty foot soldiers “making great bragges with their cries,” but a round from the two falcons “put them in no small feare,” so that “they broke their arraie and fell flatte to the grounde,” and then “dispersed themselves.” Hawkins landed his men and began marching on the town, which brought out the Spanish treasurer, in great fear, who granted all demands and “so we made our traffique quietly with them,” continues the narrative.

While lying in the river they saw many “crocodiles” and lost a negro who was carried away by one as he was filling water casks by the river bank. “His nature is ever when he would have his praie, to crie and sobbe like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to him and then he snatcheth at them, and thereupon came this proverbe that is applied unto women when they weepe, Lachryma Crocodili, the meaning whereof is, that as the Crocodile when he crieth, goeth about most to deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth.”

Having disposed of his entire cargo of negroes, Captain Hawkins set sail on May 31st for the island of Jamaica, proposing there to complete his cargo of hides, but mistaking the island for Hispaniola he ran by to the leeward and was unable to get up again by reason of the force of the current, so the little fleet made for Santa Cruz on the island of Cuba, which also was overpassed and thereby was lost a rich profit on a great store of hides to be had at either place. Storms and contrary winds in time brought on great want of fresh water. On the 16th of June, the Isle of Pines was reached, where they “reasonably watered” from brackish pools of rainwater found near the shore and made haste to get away from the exposed anchorage. Scarcely were the anchors weighed and foresails set than a storm swept down on them and one of the barks was obliged to cut her cable in hawse in order to save herself.

After passing Cape St. Antonio, at the westerly end of Cuba, they sailed to the westward, “to fetch the wind,” and also to take advantage of the current which brought them in sight of the Dry Tortugas on July 5th, where they loaded a pinnace with birds and took many turtles; also finding many turtle’s eggs which “they did eat very sweetly.” An effort was then made to reach the harbor at Havana, but it was passed in the night and with a short store of water, so that “every man was contented to pinch his own bellie,” a course was set for the Florida coast. The little fleet, swept along by the Gulf Stream, made rapid northing and after one or two mishaps reached the river of May, now the St. Johns, where a Huguenot colony had been established three years before. Captain Hawkins found the settlement greatly weakened and with only a small supply of food. He sold them twenty barrels of meal, four pipes of beans and other necessaries and also the fifty-ton bark, for which he received seven hundred crowns.

The homeward voyage was continued on July 28, 1565, and was prolonged by contrary winds, so that victuals were scanted. On August 23d they were on the bank off Newfoundland, in one hundred and thirty fathoms. A great many cod were caught here, which relieved their distress. A week later two French fisherman were spoken and more fish were obtained in exchange for Spanish gold and silver; “but they, not looking for anything at all, were glad in themselves to meete with such goode intertainement at sea, as they had at our handes. After which departure from them, with a good large winde the 20 of September we came to Padstow in Cornewall, God be thanked, in safetie, with the losse of 20 persons in all the voyage, and profitable to the venturers of the said voyage, as also to the whole Realme, in bringing home both golde, silver, pearles and other jewels great store. His name therefore be praised for evermore, Amen.”