The cost of the West Africa Squadron in human and financial terms was substantial, and it was borne voluntarily by Britain in pursuit of the goal of ending the slave trade.
Over a thousand British sailors died on the West Africa Station, the great majority from tropical disease. Malaria and yellow fever were endemic along the coast, and the medical understanding of the time offered no effective protection or treatment. Some ships lost a quarter or more of their crew to disease during a single deployment. The mortality rate for the Squadron was several times higher than for ships serving in home waters or other stations.
The financial cost was also significant. Maintaining a permanent squadron at sea required ships, crews, supplies, and shore facilities. The Vice-Admiralty Court at Freetown and the infrastructure for receiving and resettling freed enslaved people added further costs. Estimates of the total financial cost to Britain of suppressing the slave trade over the period have varied, but run into the tens of millions of pounds at contemporary values.
This expenditure was contested. Some in Britain argued that the cost was too high and the results too limited. The economist and polemicist Nassau Senior argued in the 1850s that it would be cheaper simply to compensate slave owners in remaining slave-holding nations to free their slaves than to continue the naval campaign. Others maintained that any cost was justified by the moral imperative.
The fact that the cost was contested makes the commitment more significant, not less. Britain continued the Squadron’s operations for sixty years in the face of persistent questions about their cost-effectiveness. That sustained commitment represents a genuine moral investment that has no parallel in any other nation’s response to the slave trade.
