by John Broich
The sultan refused to surrender his captive and the outraged Kirk had no recourse short of a violent international incident. Of course the Zanzibar slave market was full of East African girls intended for such purposes, but there was no outward sign that this raised the ire of the Doctor.2
HMS Daphne, Zanzibar harbour, September 1869
To visit that slave market and to visit the widow of his former interpreter Jumah, George Sulivan arrived the next day for what might be his last visit to Zanzibar. He was leaving Africa because recently on the Mozambique coast a passing Royal Navy ship had given him the news for which every midshipman yearned and lieutenant strained: he was promoted to captain. Even as a commander he had been called ‘captain’, as was anyone who led a Royal Navy ship; but, blessed was he among men, he was made post-captain. Through seniority, the mystery of luck, perhaps his successes against the slave trade the previous year, he had been picked from among the crowded list. He was a rare and glorious being, the envy of all lesser sea officers.
Soon after hearing the news, Sulivan’s thoughts turned to the journey to England promised by promotion to receive his outward marks of naval glory, the new star on his epaulette and another ring on his sleeve. Promotion meant England, and though he knew it might not have been the most heroic thought, he welcomed the break from the enervation, frustration and long stretches of monotony between desperate encounters that as often brought tragedy as triumph.
But first he had a debt to repay to his old shipmate Jumah. So the Daphne steamed slowly into Zanzibar harbour to form a mirror image to her black-hulled twin sister Nymphe moored there. And after learning of Meara’s chastisement in the British Residency, he left the ship with Abdallah, Jumah’s assistant, while the crew set to work with perennial cleaning and coaling. They worked their way through the narrow streets of the close-packed town until they came to the right house where they were met at the door by some men, kin of Jumah’s widow.
She was above, in mourning in her bed, they said. No, it would not be correct for the strangers to wait upon her, they said. Sulivan replied that unless he saw Mrs Jumah before departing this place, which he would do very soon, it would be far more difficult to make arrangements for her to receive his pay and prize money. Discussion, then, among the men as Abdallah translated bits for Sulivan. They argued about the appropriateness of such a visit.
Finally the men ushered the captain and Abdallah into the shade of the house, up stone steps, and to her room. Entering, Sulivan saw a long couch to the right, women seated there, an older lady among them apparently Jumah’s mother. They lifted their hands and spoke, distraught, Sulivan catching Jumah’s name repeated. A voice from the other side of the room took up the lament, too, coming from a bed with curtains drawn. One of the menfolk offered him a seat in a chair close to the head of the bed and Sulivan sat beside the curtain.
When the lament ceased, the captain introduced himself, Abdallah repeating. A woman’s voice greeted him with grateful words and asked about Jumah and the circumstances of her husband’s death. Sulivan told her that in time the Consul John Kirk would supply her with the funds owed to Jumah and explained how to receive them. She seemed to know a bit of English, but did not attempt to speak it. At one point she drew the curtain back a bit to see this man who took Jumah to his fate on a black ship.
Leaving the house, George Sulivan decided to have what might be his last look at the slave market of Zanzibar, for he was bound for Bombay to hand over the Daphne to her new commander and he might never serve again in these waters. He wound his way through shady narrow streets, open shops lining them. These were usually tended by turbaned Indians, sitting cross-legged. There were shops selling weapons, Birmingham and Sheffield tin goods, sometimes slave food – rank shark meat, rotting vegetables. There was a constant exchange for ivory, Zanzibar and Pemba cloves, and copal to be turned into varnish. Here piles of tusks, numbered and separated by size and quality; there, Indians cleaning and sorting copal.
Captain Sulivan found the narrow lane that led to the place, then followed to where it opened on a square. In one corner East Africans were lined in a semi-circle, most standing, some sitting, some seeming too weak to stand. Within the semi-circle stood perhaps half a dozen men examining the East Africans, speaking, scrutinising some more. Like farmers valuing cattle at an English fair, thought Sulivan; and, indeed, sometimes the slave dealers herded the slaves with shepherds’ crooks.
In another corner were children who sat until it was time to be inspected. Some appeared to be around five, but they looked much older already. Sulivan had seen children of the East African coast in their homes; there they played like all children with any simple toy that came to hand, chattering and sprightly, but here it was as if these children had passed from one world into another. Their parents and friends were gone, and now they saw only what was new and strange and cruel. The saw only slaves and masters. Now they sat silent and appeared unseeing and unfeeling. But unlike Colomb, Sulivan knew that this was not their natural state.
In another portion of the market were the young women and girls in different lots; one group intended for work, another for sex. Some appeared about twelve years old, with faces painted and some cloth around the hips.
It had been years since he had first seen the market, but he remembered the crashing sensations that he had felt then. He had experienced almost more sorrow and empathy than he could stand, then sickness, then rage, then hate that he felt was not right in a Christian like himself. But he could not deny that he failed this test of loving his enemy. He wanted to beat the man with a shepherd’s crook, then hang the dealers and buyers.
He still fought the urge to violence now, even after years of visits to the place. But he admitted to himself that after all this time, after all his experiences, the feeling of desperate pity was callousing, while rage still burned as hotly as ever. It was as if it were easier to feel anger than gutting empathy.3
HMS Nymphe, Zanzibar harbour, October 1869
It was October now, and it would soon be time for Nymphe to point towards Bombay for the squadron’s late season rendezvous. But before going to Bombay, her captain had to decide whether to obey the order of Consul Dr Kirk to return Hamid bin Sahel’s slaves to him.
The former slaves were in the Seychelles, and before Meara could visit there he had work to do. Just before leaving Zanzibar, Dr Kirk sent Meara some intelligence: there were rumours of a large gathering of slavers at the coastal island of Lamu at the northern edge of the sultan of Zanzibar’s dominions, the edge of the zone in which the slave trade was legal according to the treaty with Britain. Perhaps they were preparing a joint run north against the blockade. It being well known that our cruisers are well to the south, Dr Kirk wrote in his alert, I have no doubt that the slavers will make a rush from the Somali ports at the earliest possible time. It was a kind of peace offering to Meara, perhaps, or a token that he was still an opponent of the slave trade, whatever the appearances.
So the Nymphe parted from the Daphne and Zanzibar to hurry to the north and set a trap for the rumoured slaver flotilla. There she waited. One pre-dawn morning, as the ship lurked under coastal cliffs, a lookout saw a lateen sail on the horizon. As he had so often before, Lieutenant Clarke climbed down to the cutter with his boarding party. As he had so often before he found an innocent trader. And so routine continued. The heat of the day mounted as the riflemen took target practice and sailmakers Ed Fretter and George Hill made repairs to a mainsail, while Mason and Staunton, carpenters, worked on a new rack for rope. The days repeated themselves with the monotonous pattern varying only in the details.
Either Kirk’s slavers had eluded him or the whispers he had heard were false or misleading. The cutter crews boarded only eight ships over as many days, while he met many French-flagged dhows, untouchable unless there was indisputable evidence that they were engaged in slave trading. The season for running slaves up the East African coast was over, and Heath’s squadron would regroup in Bombay.
Meara would soon be out of time to point towards the Seychelles.
One morning, breakfast completed, the night’s haze cleared from the surface and the men saw creatures rolling out of the sea. It was a large pod of whales, breathing as they arched up to roll over the sea. Later three whalers appeared in chase, hunting them down.
No, Edward Meara would not go to the Seychelles and hunt down former slaves to deliver them to Dr Kirk and the aggrieved dhow-owner. It was simple enough to his mind: those people had said that they had been enslaved and they had wished to get away to the Seychelles. The question ended there for Meara. He would not deliver them and he would refuse to pay for them as well, though he paid for the goods sold out of the dhow.
When he wrote to explain himself to the Admiralty, Meara explained that he answered to the higher spirit of his orders, which he believed then and believed now he was following. And my orders, he thought, were in the cause of humanity. The next day he ordered a course set for Bombay.4
HMS Dryad, central eastern coast of Madagascar, October 1869
At about the same time as John Kirk was handing Edward Meara a defeat in favour of a slaveholder in autumn 1869, Philip Colomb was trying to relieve some of the political pressure on Meara for his confrontation with the Malagasy at Majunga that March – undiplomatic at best, threatening at worst. Colomb tried to prove that the Malagasy were indeed deeply implicated in the slave trade – and poor liars besides.
First, the thorough Colomb wanted to be get official sanction for taking the five men who’d swum aboard at Majunga to Mauritius. So the Dryad arched over the top of the island of Madagascar to its east side and the village of Tamatave where the British consul was stationed. With about 5,000 inhabitants, it crowded on a point with the sea at both shoulders, with blue mountains rising toward the interior beyond.
The ship moored and in drizzling rain with squalls running past, Philip Colomb and the five African men were pulled from the Dryad to the shore. The group made its way to the consul’s house, a small place with a veranda. They entered, and Colomb and the men came before Consul Conolly Pakenham. A large deputation from the court of the Queen and Tamatave officials were there too. After the five East Africans swore an oath to speak the truth, it did not take much interviewing to establish the backgrounds of four of them, named Morjakibo, Sabouri, Semaquail and Majan. They were clearly Mozambicans, and had been in Madagascar no longer than a few months before they ran for Dryad. But the fifth man, it became clear in time, was born in Madagascar, and the British could not legally remove him from the place. He was enslaved, but slavery was perfectly legal in Madagascar and Britain’s treaty with Madagascar certainly did not give them the power to carry him off. As Dr Kirk did to Meara, Consul Pakenham ordered Colomb to return the enslaved man to these Malagasy officials; Colomb would comply.
The next day the four Mozambican men were escorted to an English merchant barque, Perseverance, in the harbour, which would take them to Mauritius. The fifth man was already back in the hands of the Malagasy.
Armed with the ruling from the Vice-Admiralty court, and certain that the certified testimony of the four Mozambicans proved that the Malagasy authorities had lied to him about the origins of the East Africans recently landed there, Philip Colomb set a course back to Majunga. He had several aims in mind: first, he knew that the Majunga authorities had made complaints about Edward Meara’s conduct that spring, calling him rageful and intimidating, so Colomb wanted to catch the Majunga authorities in the wrong, and give Commodore Heath ammunition to defend Meara and the Nymphe. Colomb also wanted to rattle the nerves of his hosts there. Thinking again about the operations of the market, he wanted to shake it up, wanted a scene to be spoken of for years to come. Yes, he wanted to free illegally held slaves there too, but he never felt much hope of that.
A week later Dryad anchored at Majunga on the opposite side of the great island and Colomb, Saleh bin Moosa, and a group of officers made the usual parade of palanquins up to the fort, ending in pomp and courtesies. In the great hall Philip Colomb presented Governor Ramasy with a bottle of quinine, cologne and boots purchased at Mauritius, in honour of his ‘helpfulness’ in the affair of the 140 illegally landed Mozambicans. Then, breaking the customary flow of diplomatic banter, Colomb suddenly declared his intention to speak with the governor alone. It was as if he had thrown a wine glass in the middle of a chamber concert, the music of polite chitchat quickly wandering into discordant strains and breaking altogether. The company unsure, Governor Ramasy visibly flustered, the captain was secretly delighted. He had spent hard months under a blasting equatorial sun hunting down this trade, always reacting, reacting – often too late; but now he was not the one waiting. Rather he had all the knowledge he needed, and could lead his victim into a trap by his nose.
When the governor collected himself, he and his secretary and translator led Colomb, Lieutenant Henry Walker and Saleh bin Moosa into a dusty side-chamber. Colomb reported the release of the four former slaves at Tamatave. Now he asked whether the governor understood why they had been released.
‘No, not at all,’ said the Malagasy translator.
‘They were released because they had not been two months in Madagascar.’
‘Governor say he know nothing about it,’ said the translator.
‘Does not the governor remember that his officers saw and spoke to every one of these men on board the Dryad, and that when he says he knows nothing of it he says that which is not true?’
The governor fell silent. Colomb thought it had been a misstep on the part of the governor and his officers to inspect the runaways, for now they could not deny knowing the truth. He moved on, politely suggesting that the entire town was full of people illegally enslaved from across the Mozambique Channel, and that that there was no way that the governor did not know this.
Governor Ramasy, animated, denied it. Why should the captain believe him now?
‘Well … it might be,’ fumbled the governor’s translator, ‘… possible that there were newly imported Mozambiques in the town, but the matter was not before him officially … so to speak.’
Leading him further into the trap, Columb asked, ‘Was it not his duty, this being the case, to afford the illegally held slaves an opportunity for escape?’
‘Well, yes. It was the Queen’s orders that no slaves were to be landed. If any were landed he did not know, but of course they had no business in the country.’
Columb closed the trap: ‘Then no obstacles would be put in their way to escape to our boats?’
The governor hesitated before finally he agreed that there should be no one on the island brought there as slaves since the treaty of 1865, and there could be no cause to stop them leaving.
‘If, then, on a certain morning our boats were to lie off the shore,’ said Colomb, his entire manoeuvre revealed, they ‘would not prevent such slaves from escaping to them if they could?’
Now the governor and his secretary spoke at length, agitated. At length they stated that they would not.
‘But illegally held slaves could not know what the boats were near the shore for, unless it were announced. The governor must therefore, at a given hour next morning, send round the town and proclaim liberty for the illegally held slaves, who might thereupon be off to the boats before their masters could stop them.’
The governor and his secretary again spoke agitatedly until the secretary translated that the governor would make the proclamation at the appointed hour, would make sure no slave was held back, and would guide the captain around the town afterwards to assure him that all were delivered.
And, Colomb said, until the appointed hour – eight o’clock the next morning – everyone in the room would keep the plan perfectly secret. The Malagasy men agreed.
After that, the five men returned to the others. Diplomatic decorum resumed until the officers took their leave of their hosts. The captain and the others made their way back down the road to the shore and boat, but not all of the party r
eturned to the Daphne; Philip Colomb told Saleh bin Moosa to find a place in town to watch events overnight.
The next morning at eight o’clock there were no East Africans on the shore, nor were there any visible in the town. Soldiers from the fort appeared, though, apparently in case any Africans did emerge from the shadows to make a run for the boats. Still, Philip Colomb sent boats near the beach. At one point there was some agitation when it seemed that some Mozambicans had tried to run for the boats, but they were caught by the Malagasy guards.
Soon Bin Moosa appeared and, returned on board, made his way to the captain and reported that around midnight commotion had spread through town. It seemed that word had come from the fort that any illegal slaves found tomorrow – any Africans landed in the town since 1865 – must be given up. For the townspeople, the answer was simply not to allow their illegal slaves to be found. Bustle and hurry spread through the town and the roads soon jammed with slaves being driven into the bush. By daylight the town seemed empty.
It was what Philip Colomb had expected. He had forced the governor to promise justice and faithfulness and the man could provide neither. Colomb chalked it up partly to an inherent deficiency in the Malagasy race; but also to the fact that, whatever the lofty words of the Madagascar government, there were formidable interests there invested in the slave trade and its great profits.
But in a way Colomb was satisfied, having further undermined the security of the market in slaves. The slaveholders of Majunga, he reflected, now look on their property as very insecure. He could, with what he considered proof, report to his commodore and home government that the Malagasy on this coast were directly complicit in the overseas slave trade. And he had thereby lent a hand to his old shipmate and brother spider, Meara.5
PART III
‘Sold to slavery, of my redemption thence’
