by John Broich
‘IF IT PROVE LAWFUL PRIZE’
The grinding work of inspecting traders, and the question of prize money
THE DAILY LIVES of the squadron’s sailors typically were marked by scenes far less dramatic than those of Meara in Majunga. More often it was a matter of running the ship, cleaning, mustering, snatching a four-hour stretch of sleep. It was by turns grindingly laborious and boring. When there was action, as in the case of a white lateen sail appearing on the horizon, the vast majority of the time the target hove to, welcoming an inspection with coffee. In these circumstances of sweaty repetition and frustration, alcohol was a tempting palliative. Every seaman of age had the right to a daily tot of rum before noon, but some sailors secreted back-alley arrack on board or, when desperate enough, raided the metal-lined spirit room.
One night not long after Orton’s drowning, Sulivan found the first lieutenant, Gardner, drunk – drunk while officer of the watch. Drunkenness on any ship was no shock; Sulivan, who never used the lash, confined more than one seaman on the crossing from the Red Sea for drunkenness and other offences. But in the first lieutenant – on watch – who always, even before the captain, had responsibility for the fundamental details of sailing the ship? This was an enormity. Sulivan ordered his first officer confined to quarters for a whole week. At the end of that week, the captain threw his weight into a verbal lashing before releasing him.
Later Gardner was found too unsteady to stand his watch, seeking in drink a little freedom from the heat or confinement – perhaps escape from the abominations against humankind that they had all seen. Whatever it was, George Sulivan was convinced that Gardner was a hopeless alcoholic and arranged for him to be invalided and sent home from Bombay. Not disrated, not dismissed, but sent home, at least, and off his ship.
Then, as the Daphne’s crew were preparing their ship to depart Bombay for their patrolling grounds off Arabia – men with mallets and irons clicking and clacking as they drove long tendrils of jute into deck and hull seams, men with beeswaxed thread and iron barbs repairing sails – there was another drunken scene. Jim Richards, the ship’s carpenter who had leapt into the boat with George Sulivan to defy the pounding waves of the African shore and lifted doubled-up children out of the ruins of a dhow, crashed aboard, drunk beyond containing. The marines hurried to seize him, and the officer of the watch had him locked in the cabin appointed for the purpose. Weeks before, the gunner too had careened drunkenly onto the ship.
The next day at 10 o’clock George Sulivan released Richards. But on rousing him, the marine found him still drunk. A stalwart man, but could he have been so obliteratingly drunk that he remained so for almost a day? More likely a messmate had somehow secreted the carpenter some arrack in the night. George Sulivan confined him for another twenty-four hours until he finally emerged sober the next day.
In the absence of any pharmaceutical recourse, alcohol must have been an attractive option as a chemical respite. George Sulivan’s friend Dr Mortimer knew well that accidents and illness were a constant threat to sailors’ health and lives. Dysentery killed three of the Daphne’s crew in 1869, a hernia invalided another, and injuries sent two others back to England. With men constantly climbing in all weather, falls were frequent; with men shifting guns of immense weight, drilling with swords, working through intense heat there were always accidents. Before Daphne parted for her place in Heath’s trap, Dr Mortimer parted ways with Sulivan, his time up. One of his last duties as doctor was a desperate effort to save the life of a man whose leg had been seized by the diabolic engine’s pistons and rods. But in this the surgeon had failed. A new surgeon, Dillon, a tall young man from Dublin, joined to try to stand between the men and the constant threat of maiming or worse.
Beyond the frustration of coming up empty on patrols, there was the vexation of duplicity. Slavers caught in the spider’s web would often try to wriggle their way out. Colomb experienced it; so did Sulivan, as a story from early in the spider’s web campaign illustrates.
HMS Daphne, near the Gulf of Oman, March 1869
Stocked and renewed, Daphne and her squadmates eased out of Bombay harbour for the north-east Arabian coast. And then the repetition of the old work: out booms, down boats; sight sail, chase; point yards, trim sails; wash clothes, holystone decks. These things were broken up at regular intervals only by the beating of the drum, mustering at divisions, and readings of the Articles of War or Bible. Day and night, the unremitting heat persisted. Ten dhows inspected. No slavers. Twenty. Forty. Fifty. No slavers. Was it still too early in the monsoon season? Were slavers being somehow informed of the trap?
So came a morning that promised nothing new, sun lighting the east over the Indian Ocean and illuminating the tall black side of the Daphne. Though it was already 80 degrees at dawn, at least there was more than the usual insipid, dribbling wind leaking out of the Persian Gulf: today it moved with intent out of the south-west. Daphne soon worked to stay at her station in the wind, dropping anchor and watching the south-west horizon for dhows coming up from Zanzibar or a coastal slave pen. Then there were three large triangular dhows’ sails close together. The signal flashed to the boiler room below: up steam. Orders to the men at the capstan: weigh anchor.
So the chase began. It would take an hour – two? – to catch the dhows. On seeing what Daphne really was, the dhows scattered. They appeared to be working together to maximise the chance of escape, but two of the Daphne’s boats were out, and she and the boats coordinated their movements so as to keep the dhows from running ashore.
It took two hours of hard work in a wind that grew harder, though the sky never darkened. Daphne overtook one dhow, and the long white whaler and cutter each brought in one. One of these three was a slaver; but it was not the floating nightmare of crushed captives, but another sort common on these seas, a slaver with just a few abductees aboard. A Zanzibari slaveholder might want to rid him or herself of a disobedient slave, or a dhow captain who had unloaded a cargo from the north and was returning there with little else might invest in a few victims as his own side-business. Sometimes a dhow captain might not have the money to buy a slave for resale at a northern market, instead simply kidnapping someone, often a child for ease and the high price she would catch, on the eve of sailing.
Sulivan and Jumah interviewed the East Africans. Among them were a man and a child, a father and his son. The man said that they had been slaves in a house on Zanzibar, but were one day taken to the slave market where these men had purchased them not long ago. He understood that he and his child were being taken to another market. Could he have dared to hope that he and his son would remain together through another sale? These men, Sulivan thought, don’t just steal souls and bodies, but hope.
Darkness fell quickly and the wind shifting to come off of Arabia was hot. Stars appearing above the blast were unobscured, but it was very dark. Sulivan summoned the captain of the dhow that had carried the handful of captives. The man’s ship was forfeit, he told him, but he would land him and his crew at a convenient place. Sulivan thought hanging a better fate for this man and all slavers, but the choice was not his, nor his commodore’s, nor that of the Lords of the Admiralty. It was written somewhere else; in a treaty or in some book – on a piece of paper that stated that pirates should be hanged but slavers carried to a nearby port. Stealing property from a ship meant death; yet making property of a human being did not.
Later in the darkness came a report: the slave dhow was gone. It had cut lose in the night, quietly. The other two, it seemed, had been trying to draw Daphne away from the real slaver. The dhow captain still on the Daphne was not the dhow’s captain. He was a crewmember pretending. Another decoy.1
Given the boredom, danger and frustration experienced by men on this station, what motivated them? For ordinary seamen it probably was not a question of motivation; hard work and frequently misery was the simple reality of their lives. Besides, running and risking the lash or worse was not a good option 4,000 miles from home, though some took that ri
sk. And yet there was some attraction to this duty: the bounties they received for each slave ship caught and each African saved.
Bounties, or ‘head money’, meant as a special reward for gruelling service in malarial waters, were a holdover from the previous generation of suppression efforts on the west coast of Africa. The British government credited a Royal Navy crew £5 for every liberated African out of a budget set aside for that purpose, plus about £1 per ton of the ship (‘tonnage’ was actually a measure of the ship’s volume). Alternatively, if a ship carried few or no slaves but was otherwise implicated in the trade by carrying slave trade supplies and gear or on the basis of testimony, the crew received £4 per ton. In both cases, the capturing crew might keep the proceeds of the sale of other goods the slaver carried. A proven slave ship must always be burnt or broken up – in past years slave ships, once sold, were often put right back into the slave trade only to be re-captured.
The way a ship’s crew actually received their reward – eventually – was like this: first the senior officer on the spot must judge whether the ship was truly a slaver, not always easy if a ship was not carrying victims at the moment (a story from Colomb’s work will illustrate this). Then, along with a senior officer, he must calculate the volume of the slave ship, also not easy when dhows were not simple rectangular shapes. The slaver was then usually burnt because dhows were hard for the inexperienced to handle and because towing a condemned ship – bound to be destroyed anyway – into port in Zanzibar or Aden or Cape Town would have meant the slaver-hunter abandoned the hunt. Then the captain and officers must get an official decree from a senior official in the nearest British community – often the consul at Zanzibar or Aden – that the condemnation was justified (this was called a Vice-Admiralty court). Then a captain sent receipts, certificates and accounts by any available ship to London, to the office of a professional ship’s agent.
This agent wrote a claim against the bounty budget, handled on behalf of the British government by the Treasury. The Treasury, by ancient custom, sought to limit the ebb from Britain’s coffers by seeking any errors, irregularities, or extravagances in the claim; the agent earned his commission by anticipating and fighting this. Capturing crews sometimes tried to plump up the volume of their capture by around 10% because it was an article of faith that the Treasury regularly deleted 10% of a slaver’s volume (a charge for which there is some evidence).
If the ship’s agent successfully advocated his clients’ claim, the spoils were widely distributed. First the agent extracted his costs for making the case before the Treasury. Then he took a 2.5% commission; then 5% went to an Admiralty budget for expenses; then 5% went to the Greenwich hospital for sailors. After these were paid, 3% went to the station’s commodore or admiral and 10% to the ship’s captain. The remaining money for a ship like the Amazons with a crew of 130–140 was divided into 1,000 shares. The lowest ranking member of the crew, the lowly ship’s boy, received one share; servants and ordinary seamen received two; the able seaman received four. The lowest level officers received 7–12 and highest 20–45.
What amounts did crewmembers in the spider squadron actually receive in this campaign? A lucky ship in 1868–1869 might earn £2,000, with the captain taking home £170 and the crew sharing £1,500. The ship’s boys received £1.5 and the ordinary seaman who did the real toiling, £3. But what did £3 signify in 1869? A trained worker in London might make £25–75 per year in that period. A post-apprenticeship ironworker in a London workshop, for example, might make 30 shillings a week; a worker in a textile factory 10 shillings plus lodging.
So £3 for an ordinary seaman and £6 for able bodied was no doubt a delightful thing, but not life-changing, and not obviously worth risking one’s life for. For some, the attractions of the many ports between Zanzibar and London probably coaxed away their rewards rather quickly.
Even with the bounties, it seems slaver-hunting did not have a reputation within the Royal Navy as a way to get rich quick. With its hardships and frustrations, the difficulties in extracting rewards, and the danger of liability, most captains on the duty found the bounties welcome but not a significant inducement. The £170 a captain might earn in an extraordinary year was far more significant, but he also incurred a lot of risk. If he authorised the burning of a suspected slaver or the sale of its goods and later the Vice-Admiralty court or Treasury denied his claim he was personally liable for paying back the ship’s owner, sometimes at great expense.2
HMS Nymphe, east coast of Africa south of Zanzibar, March 1869
This was something that happened to one of Heath’s captains, though at the moment of the capture he did not suspect he would later incur the wrath of the squadron’s civilian overseers.
Forced to leave hundreds of Mozambican victims in the hands of slaveholders in Madagascar, Edward Meara and the Nymphe crossed the Mozambique Channel to Africa and now moved up the coast followed by a light but reliable south and south-westerly breeze. As always, it was already hot at sunrise. The crew spread canvas high – mainsails, topsails, topgallant sails – to try to catch the entire breeze and leave the engines cool to preserve coal.
The Nymphe’s navigating lieutenant aimed her for the mouth of the wide Rovuma River whose length spread deep into unknown parts of Africa, and on whose back slavers carried their captures to the coast. Mid-morning, the ship arrived at a Mozambican bay south of the Rovuma called Keonga. It was small, but relatively deep and fractured, and lined with overgrown islands, places shadowy and secret. This was a favoured landscape of slavers, where they could lie in dark places while deals were made, their victims smothered in dark places, awaiting a crossing to a market. Nymphe hove to and the watch swung out the cutter and the whaler. Meara made Lieutenant Norman Clarke – a slaver-hunter of solid experience, though young – captain of this two-boat team.
Clarke received the usual orders: inspect all dhows and if they are suspicious, take the opinion of the interpreter, the midshipman. If agreed it is a slaver, condemn and tow it to the ship forty miles to the north, while the slave dhows’ crew may come to the ship or land immediately. If wind, current, or condition of the dhow prevent towing in time to make the rendezvous with the Nymphe the next day, burn it. The Nymphe set her sails and pointed north, leaving Clarke’s raiding party to begin its search. It was Good Friday, and on the last leg to the Rovuma Edward Meara spoke the old words for the Christian calendar from the quarterdeck. The old story: a man was seized, marched, bound, and spent his last moments in agony.
The next afternoon, Nymphe stalking the coast around the mouth of the Rovuma River, the cutter and whaler returned from the south. The crews came up the side and soon afterwards Norman Clarke reported on their work in Keonga Bay. Yesterday they had come upon a Portuguese ship and boarded as usual with no problem. She was an innocent Bombay trader, but her crew told of slavers operating in the nearby bay. One had passed out from it yesterday full of slaves, but another was awaiting a shipment and was there still. Clarke and his boats hurried to the spot and a dhow was indeed anchored near the shore. Men moved about, some work was going on, a sail was being mended or was drying on land nearby, while a canoe moved between the beach and ship.
Clarke approached and boarded with Midshipman Reynard, the coxswain, and interpreter Ali. On seeing them, a man on board drew a dagger. Through Ali, Clarke managed to talk the man out of making a try with his blade; he proved to be the captain’s brother. The ship had four enslaved men on board who appeared to be serving as crew. The sailors managed to have a look at the dhow’s papers. It was a slaver – a legal slaver – licensed to traffic humans between the mainland and the market at Zanzibar; but the licence was out of date. Clarke made further inquiries through Ali, speaking to the dhow’s captain, who gave some inconsistent replies to questions. He claimed that at the moment they were merely fishing, not transporting slaves. For the next two hours Clarke surveyed the ship. Given the expired pass and the presence of four slaves, plus the discovery of large pots and large
water tanks on board – typical of slavers – Clarke felt confident in condemning the dhow. He received a confirming nod from the midshipman, then declared the dhow forfeit.
The dhow captain begged Clarke not to burn the dhow. It was not his; it belonged to a rich man at a distant port. But the judgment had been made and Clarke believed that the crews of his two boats were not fit to sail the dhow up the coast. The freed Africans climbed down in the Royal Navy boats, while the dhow’s crew descended into their canoes, carrying their things, and Clarke told the coxswain Allen to set fire to the dhow. But as the flames built, the captain’s brother remained on deck clutching his dagger and refused to move. Allen finally managed to wrestle the man into the sea before he could be overcome by smoke and flame. A scramble, clutching, and he was lifted out of the water and placed in a canoe with the rest of his crew. And the dhow was consumed.
Four men were released from slavery, but time would show this to be an ill-fated episode.
The Nymphe then continued up the coast slowly heading for Zanzibar, hunting all the way. Most of her officers manned the boat fleet, going in and out, peering up rivers and creeks, creeping around mangroves. Meara joined the work on one of the boats, though it was the work of younger men. Younger, as Meara had been when he had ascended the rivers of West Africa, always exposed to the sun, or constant wet, exposed to mosquitos which sometimes descended on these rivers in clouds on the evening land breeze. Some of the men on the station fashioned themselves jumpers with hoods and long sleeves and hid within them from sundown to sunrise while in the boats. A little barrel was modified by the blacksmith for a stove to cook on – perhaps some fish – and they had ship’s biscuit, quinine and sherry or rum. Each man had his canvas ditty bag for a pillow and a boat’s plank seat for a bed since sleeping on shore risked fever and other dangers. Meanwhile, an unexpected wave might overturn the boat or an unexpected skirmish with surprised villagers might end in blood.
