Africa Squadron

The Africa Squadron was a unit of the United States Navy that operated from 1843 to 1859 to suppress the slave trade along the coast of West Africa.

The squadron was an outgrowth of the 1819 treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom that was an early step in stopping the trade, and further defined by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Although technically coordinated with a British squadron based in Sierra Leone, in practice the American contingent worked on its own. The squadron also lacked from the Navy itself; secretary Abel B. Upshur was a Southerner, and assigned only a handful of ships mounting a total of 80 guns between them.

Matthew Perry was the first commander of the squadron, and based himself in Cape Verde.

The squadron was generally ineffective, since the ships were too few, and since much of the trading activity had shifted to the Niger River delta area (present-day Nigeria), which was not being covered. In the two years of Perry's leadership, only one slaver was reported to be captured, and that ship was later acquitted by a New Orleans court, and in the 16 years of squadron operation, only 19 slave ships ever went to trial, and they were acquitted or only lightly fined.

Reference

• Richard Andrew Lobban, Jr. and Peter Karibe Mendy, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, 3rd ed. (Scarecrow Press, 1997 ISBN 0-8108-3226-7) pp. 66-68