The East Africa Squadron’s operational task was to intercept Arab dhows carrying enslaved Africans across the Indian Ocean to markets on the Arabian Peninsula, in Persia, and across the wider Muslim world. The practical difficulties were considerable.
The squadron operated across thousands of miles of coastline, from the Mozambique Channel in the south to the waters off Oman in the north. Dhows were small, fast, shallow-drafted vessels that could disappear into river mouths, mangrove creeks, and coastal shallows where larger warships could not follow. Slavers operated at night and in bad weather. They knew the coastline far better than the British crews pursuing them.
The solution was a mothership model. HMS London served as the central depot and command vessel, anchored off Zanzibar, supporting a flotilla of 13 smaller patrol craft capable of operating in inshore waters. This allowed the squadron to combine the command and supply functions of a larger vessel with the shallow-water reach of smaller boats. It was an operationally practical response to a difficult environment.
The legal basis for the operation also required sustained diplomatic effort. Britain had to negotiate treaty rights with the Sultan of Zanzibar and the Sultan of Muscat before it could lawfully intercept dhows flying their flags. Those treaties, secured largely through the diplomat Bartle Frere in 1873, were the foundation on which the permanent squadron was built. Where diplomacy was insufficient, the Navy applied harder pressure: when the fort at Mombasa resisted British authority, the squadron reduced it to rubble and installed a compliant administration.
The captured dhows were brought before courts and condemned. Freed enslaved people were resettled, principally on the East African coast and at Zanzibar itself, which by the late nineteenth century had a substantial population of liberated Africans.
