SUBJECT AND ARRANGEMENT—AREA OF CRUISING-GROUND—DISTRIBUTION OF SUBJECTS.
On the 28th of November, 1849, the U. S. brig “Perry” sailed for the west coast of Africa, to join the American squadron there stationed.
A treaty with Great Britain, signed at Washington in the year 1842, stipulates that each nation shall maintain on the coast of Africa, a force of naval vessels “of suitable numbers and description, to carry in all not less than eighty guns, to enforce separately and respectively, the laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two countries, for the suppression of the slave-trade.”
Although this stipulation was limited to the term of five years from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty, “and afterwards until one or the other party shall signify a wish to terminate it;” the United States have continued to maintain a squadron on that coast for the protection of its commerce, and for the suppression of the slave-trade, so far as it might be carried on in American vessels, or by American citizens.
To illustrate the importance of this squadron, the relations which its operations bear to American interests, and to the rights of the American flag; its effects upon the condition of Africa in checking crime, and preparing the way for the introduction of peace, prosperity, and civilization, is the primary object of this work.
A general view of the continent of Africa, comprising the past and present condition of its inhabitants; slavery in Africa and its foreign slave-trade; the piracies upon the coast before it was guarded and protected by naval squadrons; the geological structure of the country; its natural history, languages, and people; and the progress of colonization by the negro race returning to their own land with the light of religion, of sound policy, and of modern arts, will also be introduced as subjects appropriate to the general design.
If a chart of the Atlantic is spread out, and a line drawn from the Cape Verde Islands towards the southeastern coast of Brazil; if we then pass to the Cape of Good Hope and draw another from that point by the island of St. Helena, crossing the former north of the equator, the great tracks of commerce will be traced. Vessels outward bound follow the track towards the South American shore, and the homeward bound are found on the other. Thus vessels often meet in the centre of the Atlantic; and the crossing of these lines off the projecting shores of central Africa renders the coasts of that region of great naval importance.
The wide triangular space of sea between the homeward bound line and the retiring African seaboard around the Gulf of Guinea, constituted the area on which the vigilance of the squadron was to be exercised. Here is the region of crime, suffering, cruelty and death, from the slave-trade; and here has been at different ages, when the police of the sea happened to be little cared for, the scene of the worst piracies which have ever disgraced human nature.
Vessels running out from the African coast fall here and there into these lines traced on the chart, or sometimes cross them. No one can tell what they contain from the graceful hull, well-proportioned masts, neatly trimmed yards, and gallant bearing of the vessel. This deceitful beauty may conceal wrong, violence, and crime—the theft of living men, the foulness and corruption of the steaming slave-deck, and the charnel-house of wretchedness and despair.
It is difficult in looking over the ship’s side to conceive the transparency of the sea. The reflection of the blue sky in these tropic regions colors it like an opaque sapphire, till some fish startles one by suddenly appearing far beneath, seeming to carry daylight down with him into the depths below. One is then reminded that the vessel is suspended over a transparent abyss. There for ages has sunk the dark-skinned sufferer from “the horrors of the middle passage,” carrying that ghastly daylight down with him, to rest until “the sea shall give up its dead,” and the slaver and his merchant come from their places to be confronted with their victim.
The relation of the western nations to these shores present themselves under three phases, which claim more or less attention in order to a full understanding of the subject. These are,
I. Period of Discovery, Piracy and Slaving.
II. Period of Colonizing.
III. Period of Naval Cruising.