Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Illegal Slave Trade After 1808: Smugglers and the African Squadron
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've covered a lot of ground in this series, from the forts on the Gold Coast to the revolts in the Americas. But one thing that's easy to overlook is that the slave trade didn't actually stop in 1808, when both the United States and Britain banned the importation of enslaved people. Luna: Right, I think a lot of people assume that once it was outlawed, it just ended. Lucas: Exactly. But in reality, the trade continued for another fifty years, and it was brutal. In fact, the last known American slave ship, the Clotilda, didn't arrive in Mobile Bay until 1860—fifty-two years after the ban. So today I want to talk about that illegal era: the smugglers, the patrols, the cat-and-mouse game on the high seas. Luna: How did they get away with it for so long? Lucas: Well, a few factors. First, the demand didn't vanish. In Cuba and Brazil, sugar and coffee plantations were booming. Planters were willing to pay premium prices for enslaved Africans, and they had plenty of capital to bribe officials and finance voyages. Second, the ships themselves got faster. American shipbuilders, especially in Baltimore, started building these sleek, fast schooners called Baltimore clippers. They were designed for speed, not cargo, and they could outrun almost anything the British navy had. Luna: So they were built specifically for smuggling? Lucas: In many cases, yes. They were advertised as 'coastal traders' or 'packet ships,' but their real purpose was to get from Africa to Cuba in three weeks instead of six. And they were small, too—usually under 200 tons, so they could slip into shallow harbors and evade patrols. The slavers would also use false papers, flying the flag of a country that still allowed the trade, like Spain or Portugal, even if the ship was American-owned. Luna: What about the British navy? I've heard of the West Africa Squadron. Lucas: Yes, the Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron in 1808, right after Britain banned the trade. At its peak, it had about a dozen ships patrolling thousands of miles of coastline from Senegal to Angola. They captured over 1,600 slave ships and freed some 150,000 Africans over the years. But it was an uphill battle. The squadron was chronically underfunded, and the sailors suffered terribly from malaria and yellow fever. In fact, the mortality rate on those patrols was higher than on most slaving voyages. Luna: That's grim irony. Lucas: It really is. And the slavers had no qualms about throwing captives overboard if they thought they were about to be caught. They'd say the ship was 'flying light'—meaning they'd ditch the evidence. The British would then find an empty ship with bloodstains and chains, but no Africans to free. The slavers knew that without captives on board, they could claim they were just transporting palm oil or something. Luna: Were there any international courts that dealt with this? Lucas: Yes, the Mixed Commissions. These were courts established by treaties between Britain and other nations—Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil later on—where captured slave ships would be adjudicated. The main ones were in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Havana, Cuba, and later in Rio de Janeiro. If a captured ship was condemned, the Africans on board would be freed and resettled in Sierra Leone or, later, in Liberia. Between these courts and the squadron, about 80,000 Africans were liberated during the nineteenth century. Luna: Eighty thousand—that's a lot, but a fraction of the millions who were still taken illegally. Lucas: Exactly. Estimates vary, but something like 1.8 million Africans were transported illegally after 1808. The trade actually peaked in the 1820s and 1830s, especially to Brazil and Cuba. The Mixed Commissions had a big problem: they could only judge ships captured by their own nation's navy. And the United States, for a long time, refused to let the Royal Navy search American-flagged ships. So slavers would simply claim American registry, and the British couldn't touch them. Luna: Wait, the U.S. didn't cooperate? Lucas: Not for decades. There was intense resentment of British interference, and the U.S. government was reluctant to commit its own navy to the effort. The U.S. had its own small squadron on the African coast from 1820, but it was never very effective. And American courts were notoriously lenient. In one famous case, the schooner Wanderer—a racing yacht—landed over 400 Africans in Georgia in 1858, and the crew was prosecuted but acquitted. The Clotilda's captain, William Foster, boasted about it afterwards. Luna: So the Clotilda was the last, but not the only one. Lucas: No, not at all. The Clotilda is just the most famous because its story ended in Africatown, Alabama, and some of the survivors lived into the twentieth century. But before it, there were dozens of ships running the blockade. The trade only really ended in the 1860s, when Brazil finally cracked down after 1850, and then the American Civil War stopped the demand in the U.S. Cuba held out until the 1860s, but by then the British had secured a 'right of search' treaty with Spain in 1835, and enforcement got tougher. Luna: I remember from the Clotilda episode that the ship was burned and sunk to hide the evidence. Lucas: Exactly. Foster sank the Clotilda in the Mobile River and told the crew to keep quiet. But the survivors—the 110 or so Yoruba people who had been smuggled in—they were hidden in the swamps for weeks before being distributed to plantations. And they never forgot. After emancipation, they pooled their money and founded their own community, Africatown, which still exists today. Their story is a testament to resilience, but it also shows how close the illegal trade came to the Civil War. Luna: It's sobering to think that even as the abolition movement was gaining momentum, the trade was still thriving in the shadows. Lucas: It really is. And I think it's important to remember that the fight against the slave trade wasn't just a moral struggle—it was a practical, naval, and legal battle that took decades of persistence. The West Africa Squadron freed tens of thousands, but the system was rigged in favor of the slavers for a long time. It's a reminder that banning something doesn't make it disappear overnight. Luna: And that the global economy was deeply complicit. Lucas: Absolutely. The demand for sugar, coffee, and cotton—especially from the United States and Europe—kept the illegal trade alive. And while we often focus on the heroic abolitionists, the reality is that the slave trade ended only when it became too risky and too unprofitable, not just when people decided it was wrong. Luna: Thanks, Lucas. That's a really important piece of the puzzle. Lucas: My pleasure. It's a story that doesn't get told enough.