The West Africa Squadron’s record over sixty years of operation is documented in Admiralty records that have been extensively studied by historians. The scale of its achievement is considerable.
Between 1808 and 1867, the Squadron intercepted approximately 1,600 slave ships. Around 150,000 enslaved Africans were freed as a result of these interceptions, people who would otherwise have completed the Middle Passage and spent the rest of their lives in slavery in the Americas.
Many freed individuals were resettled in Sierra Leone, which had been established partly for this purpose. The colony at Freetown became home to a diverse community of freed enslaved people from across West Africa, speaking dozens of languages and coming from many different cultures. Their descendants, known as Krio, are still a distinct community in Sierra Leone today.
The Squadron also had a significant deterrent effect beyond the ships it actually caught. The knowledge that Royal Navy ships were patrolling the routes made slave trading riskier and more expensive. Insurance costs for illegal slave voyages rose. Some traders abandoned the trade rather than face the prospect of interception, condemnation, and imprisonment.
The numbers are not the full measure of the Squadron’s significance. The political statement it represented, that Britain was prepared to back its moral position on slavery with real resources and real lives over a sustained period, was itself meaningful. It demonstrated to other nations that British opposition to the slave trade was not merely rhetorical.
