Squadron

by John Broich

  Pelly wrote to his superiors in Bombay to ask that if any of Heath’s squadron should enter the Gulf in pursuit of slavers that they first call at a Persian port to allow a Persian official to come on board to oversee things. Persia had outlawed the overseas slave trade in 1848, but the Royal Navy had no right to search for slaves in Persian waters. Only if Heath’s ships carried the right Persian official would it be legal for them to board and seize a slaver. Furthermore, Pelly should be informed of her sailing orders should any of Heath’s ships come hunting in the Gulf.3

  HMS Dryad, Trincomalee harbour, Ceylon, June 1869

  The alarmed Bombay government wrote to Heath who was giving the crew of the Forte some rest at Ceylon in company with Colomb and the Dryad.

  Philip Colomb had not seen such living greenness as Ceylon’s in about four months. On the coasts of Arabia and Persia he and the crew had seen little more than some stunted palms; but when they steamed slowly into Trincomalee harbour, they saw carpeted layers of the colour, with trees over-hanging still waters multiplying the effect. Colomb had last visited the place as a boy on one of his first ships and this, he felt, was something like coming home again. He sensed happiness spreading aboard Dryad.

  The crew needed it – crew and ship, both. Tropic-worn, both, with rotting ropes and sun-blasted canvas, empty storerooms, and withering men. The hands seemed harried and exhausted with ten men in the sick berth. Colomb himself had not felt whole for a long time.

  And so followed a month of recovery, restocking and restoring; leaves for the crew, welcomed quiet for Colomb who a year before had agonised from boredom on a P&O steamer. The naval dockyard at Trincomalee was small, but neat, well-built, well-stocked. Homely, thought Colomb. There was special lodging for officers, but the commander-in-chief of the dockyard made his sprawling bungalow available to visiting captains when he could. The house was laid out like a man of war, with a captain’s great cabin, a ward room, a line of lesser cabins and a stern gallery overlooking the harbour. Here Colomb spent many nights talking with the commodore and other officers on the station.

  There were rides in the country, hunting, cricket, rockets on Coronation Day. It was hot here – the highlight of one hunting trip was long hours spent cooling in a clear stream – but the heat was less brutalising here where at least there was shadow to be seen. Philip Colomb visited some of the ancient irrigation works of the island; some of their reservoirs drew wild menageries, and he saw elephant, boar, buffalo, apes, pelicans and cranes.

  But with the complaints of the Persian Gulf diplomat and Bombay, Colomb could not rest the entire time; Heath ordered him to draw up a formal response to the Persian charges. Colomb wrote a statement explaining that there had been a boy obviously trafficked for sale on the ship in question. And that ship, in fact, flew no colours – Persian or otherwise – and had no papers. It was taken three miles from shore, not close to Persian territorial waters. It was burned, but its burning was judged legal after the fact by the Vice-Admiralty court in Aden. He drew a chart showing the location of the capture, collected affidavits from his officers testifying the same, and swore a statement before the Trincomalee justice of the peace. He collected all of these and delivered them to Heath, who dictated his own backing of Colomb and sent the packet on.

  Weeks passed and between leaves the hands cleared, cleaned, whitewashed, restored and stowed. Rattled down and re-rigged; caulked, scraped, painted, watered and coaled. After these weeks, Colomb received orders from the flagship. You are to proceed to Tamatave and place yourself in communication with Mr. Pakenham, Her Majesty’s Consul for Madagascar. It appears from a communication from that gentleman that there has been some misunderstanding between Commander Meara of the ‘Nymphe’ and the Commandant at Majunga.

  Not long after, late on a warm afternoon with rumbles of thunder and threats of squalls, the Dryad steamed out of Trincomalee harbour pointed south for Madagascar at the other end of the ocean. Philip Colomb would see what his old shipmate Edward Meara had stirred up in Madagascar.4

  HMS Forte, Trincomalee harbour, Ceylon, July 1869

  In these same weeks, in green Ceylon, Leopold Heath received a folder from the Zanzibar Residency. The ally of the squadron, Consul Henry Churchill, was in England recuperating from a tropical ailment. His temporary replacement was Dr John Kirk, a physician, botanist and explorer well-known as a long-time companion of Dr Livingstone. He had more knowledge of the interior of this coast than nearly any other Englishman (or, as he was, Scotsman). Kirk worried for his colleague Dr Livingstone, still somewhere in East Africa looking for the source of the Nile. Rumoured to be murdered, rumoured to be found, supposedly murdered again. Kirk and Livingstone shared a faith: they believed that the slave trade could be ended, and all East Africans uplifted, through commerce. The Nile or another great African river must be mapped and commercial ports planted. This would tie East Africa into the market of the British empire, a market that demanded ivory, maize and cotton, not slaves. So went the hymn of Free Trade. Onward, Christian soldiers.

  In the packet was a copy of a complaint from Dr Kirk to the Bombay government about the interpreters sailing with the squadron. They were incompetent, he said, at best; scoundrels at worst. Kirk claimed an incompetent, perhaps even illiterate, interpreter on board Nymphe led Commander Meara to burn an innocent dhow at Keonga on the east coast. The interpreter, Kirk wrote, could not have made out the dhow’s papers. The Indian authorities agreed with Kirk.

  Then a complaint had arrived from the chief British representative at Madagascar, Conolly Pakenham. Again, a charge of over-zealousness, a threat to Britain’s relationships with Indian Ocean kingdoms. The consul relayed Malagasy authorities’ complaints that Edward Meara and the Nymphe had more or less made personal war on the town of Majunga, even raided the town for slaves, hurried them on board, and fired a shot at it. The diplomat was not ready to believe such a tale in its details, he wrote; but he insisted that the captains of the squadron should appeal to him if they thought a treaty was being violated before jumping headlong into the middle of international relationships.

  Such a tale Heath had to investigate. If true, if Meara really had fired upon the town, the diplomatic consequences would be dire, could easily lead to the French stealing a diplomatic march on the British there.

  First Heath ordered Colomb and the Dryad to Madagascar to ascertain things. Heath sent along a message for the consul: whatever his complaints of overstepping, Pakenham could not deny that the illegal trade in his sphere of responsibility was as active as ever. And it was only Commander Meara acting on duty and conscience that led to the discovery of the illegal importation of Mozambicans, and decidedly not the conscience of authorities at Majunga who never mentioned it to Meara until he discovered it himself on the information of two runaway slaves.

  Then Heath ordered Forte to ready for sea. He would go to the Seychelles to speak to the escapees from Madagascar whom Meara had landed. On the flagship’s broad quarterdeck the officer of the watch directed Forte’s departure from Trincomalee. In mid-afternoon the men turned the capstan as a wind began picking up which would hurry their way. But on the wind came clouds.5

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘SWELL HIS SAIL WITH THINE OWN POWERFUL BREATH’

  Sulivan, Meara and Heath work to expose hypocrisy, and Daphne tries to outrun a curse

  FRANCE ABOLISHED the slave trading in its empire between 1818 and 1826 and outlawed the institution itself in 1848. First the ban on trafficking, and then elimination of the status itself, left French colonies in the Indian Ocean short of labour to work their sugar operations. Thus, one day in spring 1843 a French captain crossed from the Isle de Réunion, just east of Madagascar, to Zanzibar bearing a letter to the sultan from the French colony’s governor. He asked that the French be permitted to seek indentured labourers, or engagés, on Zanzibar and the sultan’s coastal territory from among the free African population there. These ‘contract labourers’ would owe their employers fourteen years
of work in exchange for their passage across the Mozambique Channel to the expanding sphere of influence in the southern Indian Ocean: the islands of Réunion, Mayotta and Nosi Be. The sultan agreed, and so began a new kind of slave trade by another name.

  There were very few free Africans on Zanzibar; instead, dealers in engagés bought slaves, both at the Zanzibar market and at coastal depots. This was carried on under the conceit that the dealers were in fact freeing the captives and offering them an opportunity for work. Yet David Livingstone reported seeing a boatload of ‘free’ engagés in chains as they awaited passage to a French colony. Others reported a scene of unctuous theatre that occurred each time engagés dealers forced their ‘clients’ on board their ships for passage: a colonial official would meet the Africans as they boarded and ask them in French whether they came of their own volition. An interpreter would then purport to translate the question into Arabic or Swahili for those boarding. There is no recorded instance of the ‘free labourers’ ever responding negatively.

  The French soon made arrangements, too, with Portuguese to the south of the sultan’s dominion. It was a lucrative scheme for them: a person exchanged for the price of a length of cotton in the interior by the likes of Matekenya was sold at the coast to a middleman for about 20 silver dollars; the coastal Portuguese officials collected as much as 12–18 dollars in finding fees when the engagés dealer bought them for 35–45. Roughly 2,500–3,000 East Africans were carried to the French colonies from the Mozambique coast annually under this falsehood.1

  HMS Daphne, Mafamede Island, south of Mozambique, July 1869

  Before departing Mozambique Island with the refugees who had swum aboard Daphne, George Sulivan received word that there was a ship flying French colours gathering slaves at the mouth of River Antonio not far to the south on the coast. If Sulivan could take her and, as reported, she truly did not have documents showing that she was a ‘legal’ carrier of engagée labour, it would show that the direct slave trade itself was carried on under the French flag. Such proof would be an international thunderclap. Sulivan would have to be careful, sending out boats to investigate, staying out of sight of the coast by day; he lacked the advantage of a spider’s trap. His lunge at such a French dhow would have to be decisive and overwhelming.

  So Sulivan needed a place to lie in wait. He remembered a coral island on this part of the coast he had seen as a youngster in the Castor covered with tall wispy pines. Daphne’s masts would blend in with them. Seven miles from the mouth of the River Antonio, the ship should be under the horizon from the shore.

  Picking carefully through a coral halo that surrounded the low island, the Daphne arrived there from Mozambique Island and Sulivan sent the crew ashore in groups. They had not had leave in the disturbed Portuguese capital, and besides, he wanted to give some of the men target practice – no idle pastime since more than one boat crew on the squadron had come under fire from slavers in recent months and many slavers carried significant arsenals. Under floating white clouds Sulivan too crossed to the island where he soon saw three figures in the distance. He and his men approached them until the strangers made a noise as if startled, one of them suddenly heading for the water. Sulivan saw, then, that it was a seal. The others were two eagles, huge things with wings spreading almost six feet. This he should take as a specimen and he levelled his rifle and shot.

  In the dark the next morning came the moment to send two boats across the seven miles to the river’s mouth in the hope of catching the French slaver in the act. A large party filled the white whaler and cutter and the moved off into the blackness. This was dangerous work. Boat work could always end in disaster: sailors were exposed and often outnumbered by those they encountered. Not far from this very spot, during Sulivan’s last mission on this coast, a boat crew from HMS Lyra disappeared. And this coast was in turmoil with the Portuguese accusing the Arab settlements here of treason and with the conflict between Bonga, the Marianno strongman, and his supposed Portuguese masters still smouldering.

  After a tense day of waiting, Sulivan keeping himself and the crew busy with a long list of chores, the boats returned at dusk, working against the wind. The landing party reported that they had heard that the supposed slaver was said to be upriver and would run for Madagascar either tomorrow or the next day. Its destination was supposed to be Cape St Andrew, a point on Madagascar’s west coast that jutted into the Mozambique Channel. Running for Madagascar – the rumours appeared true. Could Sulivan capture the slaver and implicate the French?

  So followed two days of hunting, with Daphne hung off the coast, for she must not take the slaver within gunshot of the shore or risk political complications with the Portuguese. East and west, off and on, up sail and down. More than one watch sighted sails, but never one likely to be the slaver under French colours.

  The captain ordered a course set for Madagascar and Daphne hurried. There she stalked off Cape St Andrew and boat parties boarded several dhows, but none were slavers. Some ships both here and on the African coast escaped close inspection altogether by virtue of a French flag at the mast, but from their looks they were not candidates as slavers.

  After a few days of frustration, Daphne pointed back towards Africa and crossed the Mozambique Channel with a heavy swell from the south rolling under her awkwardly. There George Sulivan ordered the two cutters lowered, armed, men chosen. They were to head back up the River Antonio to investigate. At dusk, after a day of passing showers, they made the crossing from the island to the coast. Another expedition sent into the volatile land, another long wait for those remaining on the Daphne.

  After dark, finally, an intense blue pyrotechnic light shone on the horizon. Quickly, Daphne lit one in response. Then two lights from shore: both cutters signalled home. Only after midnight did both boats find their mother Daphne and the officer of the expedition give his report. The boats had made the crossing without incident and moved up the River Antonio to make inquiries. But upon approaching a settlement, they were surprised by a well-armed force of the local population on the banks. Things might have gone very badly, but the interpreter Jumah had managed to communicate with the strangers. The local men had thought them a Portuguese force, expecting that they brought retribution for the Arab ‘revolt’ or were hunting for the rebel Bonga. The townspeople had seen Portuguese troops passing this way in recent times. Once they were established as Englishmen, the leaders of the band relaxed, talked, even came aboard the boats. But there was no word of the French slaver that had loaded on the river.

  George Sulivan finally conceded, then, that the French ship had somehow skirted his blockade in the dark or passed under his nose under the French flag in a ship that looked nothing like a slaver, and so an unknown number had been delivered into slavery.

  The next day dawned perfectly clear, cloud and thunder having passed away in the night, with the air warm but not hot. George Sulivan read the Bible and led prayers, a quiet beginning to Sunday. But all was not well in the sick berth. Dr Dillon reported that he now had fifteen men under his care, many with the same dysentery that had killed Hurrex a few weeks before. The multiplication of cases meant that his usual medicine against flux was dwindling. George Sulivan wasted no time, immediately deciding to head for the French colony on the island of Mayotta, a far more healthful place than this coast, where they would have the medicine the doctor needed and some fresh food. Sulivan remembered all too well how, based at almost this exact spot as a young officer in 1850, dysentery had completely overpowered his ship with 113 men entering the sick list and many dying. The greatest danger to his ship’s crew – to any Royal Navy crew – was still sickness.

  Daphne turned north-east toward the island that sat astride the north end of the Mozambique Channel. A providential wind blew almost directly over her beam and Sulivan ordered a mass of sail. When the wind backed a little astern of the ship, Sulivan had the stunsails set, sails set on extended spars that hung far out over the sea. So now Daphne appeared to throw out wings, tyi
ng to out-sail the sickness in her own belly.2

  The wind was light but steady and coming neatly abeam, gathered by sails reaching to the topgallants. The captain led the men in extra prayers as Daphne hurried to Mayotta for medicine. But sickness outran her. On a cloudy morning, two hours after sunrise, Jumah died. The squadron’s most veteran interpreter, he had served Sulivan on the Pantaloon, worked on the gunboat Star, and had rejoined Sulivan, whom he called ‘master’, on the new Daphne. A favourite among the men, he was known in the squadron and among Vice-Admiralty courts for his skill and honesty.

  The law of the Muslim devout and the Royal Navy were of one mind in burying the body as soon as possible. So before noon, wrapped in white sailcloth with a 64-pound shell at his feet, Jumah was committed to the deep. Above him, as he sunk in the quiet, his messmates glided onward without him, pointed north-east, their paths forever diverging.

  A few days later, at dusk, the Daphne arrived at the French sugar island of Mayotta. She was welcomed by banging salute, but immediately placed in quarantine. The next day was Assumption Day, an important holiday in Catholic France, and the ecumenical Sulivan ordered the ship draped with signal flags, the French tricolour at the mainmast.

  After that, the French governor released Daphne from quarantine. The commissary-general laid his bounteous blessings upon them and Dr Dillon, with a fresh supply of medicine, went to work. Fresh food was taken on and bullocks hoisted over the side, along with extra coal. George Sulivan entertained the captain of a French gunboat also in port, and received a brief visit on board from the governor of the island, General Columb, with whom Sulivan diplomatically broached the matter of the multiplication of French flags flying over dhows in the Mozambique Channel – a flag that, he felt certain but did not charge out loud, protected the slave trade in those waters. The governor evaded.