Sulivan, Meara and Heath work to expose hypocrisy, and Daphne tries to outrun a curse
FRANCE ABOLISHED the slave trading in its empire between 1818 and 1826 and outlawed the institution itself in 1848. First the ban on trafficking, and then elimination of the status itself, left French colonies in the Indian Ocean short of labour to work their sugar operations. Thus, one day in spring 1843 a French captain crossed from the Isle de Réunion, just east of Madagascar, to Zanzibar bearing a letter to the sultan from the French colony’s governor. He asked that the French be permitted to seek indentured labourers, or engagés, on Zanzibar and the sultan’s coastal territory from among the free African population there. These ‘contract labourers’ would owe their employers fourteen years of work in exchange for their passage across the Mozambique Channel to the expanding sphere of influence in the southern Indian Ocean: the islands of Réunion, Mayotta and Nosi Be. The sultan agreed, and so began a new kind of slave trade by another name.
There were very few free Africans on Zanzibar; instead, dealers in engagés bought slaves, both at the Zanzibar market and at coastal depots. This was carried on under the conceit that the dealers were in fact freeing the captives and offering them an opportunity for work. Yet David Livingstone reported seeing a boatload of ‘free’ engagés in chains as they awaited passage to a French colony. Others reported a scene of unctuous theatre that occurred each time engagés dealers forced their ‘clients’ on board their ships for passage: a colonial official would meet the Africans as they boarded and ask them in French whether they came of their own volition. An interpreter would then purport to translate the question into Arabic or Swahili for those boarding. There is no recorded instance of the ‘free labourers’ ever responding negatively.
The French soon made arrangements, too, with Portuguese to the south of the sultan’s dominion. It was a lucrative scheme for them: a person exchanged for the price of a length of cotton in the interior by the likes of Matekenya was sold at the coast to a middleman for about 20 silver dollars; the coastal Portuguese officials collected as much as 12–18 dollars in finding fees when the engagés dealer bought them for 35–45. Roughly 2,500–3,000 East Africans were carried to the French colonies from the Mozambique coast annually under this falsehood.1
HMS Daphne, Mafamede Island, south of Mozambique, July 1869
Before departing Mozambique Island with the refugees who had swum aboard Daphne, George Sulivan received word that there was a ship flying French colours gathering slaves at the mouth of River Antonio not far to the south on the coast. If Sulivan could take her and, as reported, she truly did not have documents showing that she was a ‘legal’ carrier of engagée labour, it would show that the direct slave trade itself was carried on under the French flag. Such proof would be an international thunderclap. Sulivan would have to be careful, sending out boats to investigate, staying out of sight of the coast by day; he lacked the advantage of a spider’s trap. His lunge at such a French dhow would have to be decisive and overwhelming.
So Sulivan needed a place to lie in wait. He remembered a coral island on this part of the coast he had seen as a youngster in the Castor covered with tall wispy pines. Daphne’s masts would blend in with them. Seven miles from the mouth of the River Antonio, the ship should be under the horizon from the shore.
Picking carefully through a coral halo that surrounded the low island, the Daphne arrived there from Mozambique Island and Sulivan sent the crew ashore in groups. They had not had leave in the disturbed Portuguese capital, and besides, he wanted to give some of the men target practice – no idle pastime since more than one boat crew on the squadron had come under fire from slavers in recent months and many slavers carried significant arsenals. Under floating white clouds Sulivan too crossed to the island where he soon saw three figures in the distance. He and his men approached them until the strangers made a noise as if startled, one of them suddenly heading for the water. Sulivan saw, then, that it was a seal. The others were two eagles, huge things with wings spreading almost six feet. This he should take as a specimen and he levelled his rifle and shot.
In the dark the next morning came the moment to send two boats across the seven miles to the river’s mouth in the hope of catching the French slaver in the act. A large party filled the white whaler and cutter and the moved off into the blackness. This was dangerous work. Boat work could always end in disaster: sailors were exposed and often outnumbered by those they encountered. Not far from this very spot, during Sulivan’s last mission on this coast, a boat crew from HMS Lyra disappeared. And this coast was in turmoil with the Portuguese accusing the Arab settlements here of treason and with the conflict between Bonga, the Marianno strongman, and his supposed Portuguese masters still smouldering.
After a tense day of waiting, Sulivan keeping himself and the crew busy with a long list of chores, the boats returned at dusk, working against the wind. The landing party reported that they had heard that the supposed slaver was said to be upriver and would run for Madagascar either tomorrow or the next day. Its destination was supposed to be Cape St Andrew, a point on Madagascar’s west coast that jutted into the Mozambique Channel. Running for Madagascar – the rumours appeared true. Could Sulivan capture the slaver and implicate the French?
So followed two days of hunting, with Daphne hung off the coast, for she must not take the slaver within gunshot of the shore or risk political complications with the Portuguese. East and west, off and on, up sail and down. More than one watch sighted sails, but never one likely to be the slaver under French colours.
The captain ordered a course set for Madagascar and Daphne hurried. There she stalked off Cape St Andrew and boat parties boarded several dhows, but none were slavers. Some ships both here and on the African coast escaped close inspection altogether by virtue of a French flag at the mast, but from their looks they were not candidates as slavers.
After a few days of frustration, Daphne pointed back towards Africa and crossed the Mozambique Channel with a heavy swell from the south rolling under her awkwardly. There George Sulivan ordered the two cutters lowered, armed, men chosen. They were to head back up the River Antonio to investigate. At dusk, after a day of passing showers, they made the crossing from the island to the coast. Another expedition sent into the volatile land, another long wait for those remaining on the Daphne.
After dark, finally, an intense blue pyrotechnic light shone on the horizon. Quickly, Daphne lit one in response. Then two lights from shore: both cutters signalled home. Only after midnight did both boats find their mother Daphne and the officer of the expedition give his report. The boats had made the crossing without incident and moved up the River Antonio to make inquiries. But upon approaching a settlement, they were surprised by a well-armed force of the local population on the banks. Things might have gone very badly, but the interpreter Jumah had managed to communicate with the strangers. The local men had thought them a Portuguese force, expecting that they brought retribution for the Arab ‘revolt’ or were hunting for the rebel Bonga. The townspeople had seen Portuguese troops passing this way in recent times. Once they were established as Englishmen, the leaders of the band relaxed, talked, even came aboard the boats. But there was no word of the French slaver that had loaded on the river.
George Sulivan finally conceded, then, that the French ship had somehow skirted his blockade in the dark or passed under his nose under the French flag in a ship that looked nothing like a slaver, and so an unknown number had been delivered into slavery.
The next day dawned perfectly clear, cloud and thunder having passed away in the night, with the air warm but not hot. George Sulivan read the Bible and led prayers, a quiet beginning to Sunday. But all was not well in the sick berth. Dr Dillon reported that he now had fifteen men under his care, many with the same dysentery that had killed Hurrex a few weeks before. The multiplication of cases meant that his usual medicine against flux was dwindling. George Sulivan wasted no time, immediately deciding to head for the French colony on the island of Mayotta, a far more healthful place than this coast, where they would have the medicine the doctor needed and some fresh food. Sulivan remembered all too well how, based at almost this exact spot as a young officer in 1850, dysentery had completely overpowered his ship with 113 men entering the sick list and many dying. The greatest danger to his ship’s crew – to any Royal Navy crew – was still sickness.
Daphne turned north-east toward the island that sat astride the north end of the Mozambique Channel. A providential wind blew almost directly over her beam and Sulivan ordered a mass of sail. When the wind backed a little astern of the ship, Sulivan had the stunsails set, sails set on extended spars that hung far out over the sea. So now Daphne appeared to throw out wings, tying to out-sail the sickness in her own belly.2
The wind was light but steady and coming neatly abeam, gathered by sails reaching to the topgallants. The captain led the men in extra prayers as Daphne hurried to Mayotta for medicine. But sickness outran her. On a cloudy morning, two hours after sunrise, Jumah died. The squadron’s most veteran interpreter, he had served Sulivan on the Pantaloon, worked on the gunboat Star, and had rejoined Sulivan, whom he called ‘master’, on the new Daphne. A favourite among the men, he was known in the squadron and among Vice-Admiralty courts for his skill and honesty.
The law of the Muslim devout and the Royal Navy were of one mind in burying the body as soon as possible. So before noon, wrapped in white sailcloth with a 64-pound shell at his feet, Jumah was committed to the deep. Above him, as he sunk in the quiet, his messmates glided onward without him, pointed north-east, their paths forever diverging.
A few days later, at dusk, the Daphne arrived at the French sugar island of Mayotta. She was welcomed by banging salute, but immediately placed in quarantine. The next day was Assumption Day, an important holiday in Catholic France, and the ecumenical Sulivan ordered the ship draped with signal flags, the French tricolour at the mainmast.
After that, the French governor released Daphne from quarantine. The commissary-general laid his bounteous blessings upon them and Dr Dillon, with a fresh supply of medicine, went to work. Fresh food was taken on and bullocks hoisted over the side, along with extra coal. George Sulivan entertained the captain of a French gunboat also in port, and received a brief visit on board from the governor of the island, General Columb, with whom Sulivan diplomatically broached the matter of the multiplication of French flags flying over dhows in the Mozambique Channel – a flag that, he felt certain but did not charge out loud, protected the slave trade in those waters. The governor evaded.
Over the course of the next week the sick berth began to clear, the men saved, perhaps, by the aid of a slave labour island’s officials. Over those days, Sulivan and his senior officers happily glimpsed the memorable daughter of the kindly commissary-general. Until, on a windless afternoon, the stokers raised steam to ease out of Mayotta’s harbour and resume hunting.3
HMS Nymphe, north-west coast of Madagascar, August 1869
While Daphne was patrolling the west side of the Mozambique Channel in August 1869, Nymphe was patrolling the east. One day, five months after Edward Meara had left the place, the Nymphe sailed into Majunga harbour on Madagascar’s north-west coast. For five months, the fates of just under 200 East Africans hung in the balance. The governor of the province had promised to refer the matter to his capital in the centre of the island and Meara intended to find out how the capital responded. What excuse could the capital offer for holding them? That they were free engagés labourers? The provincial governor could offer no such proof the last time Meara was here.
Not long after arriving, Captain Meara was informed of visitors, officers from the fort above the harbour. He received them and all was politeness and civility, in contrast to Meara’s departure that spring. They bore an invitation to sit with the governor.
The next day Edward Meara crossed to the beach where he had summarily burnt the two ships an eyewitness fingered as slavers. Then up to the fort to meet Governor Ramasy, up a path framed by fruit trees among coarse grasses, and to a rough stockade above a deep ditch. Two guns framed the fort’s entrance gate, within which lay the large square where Meara and some lieutenants were entertained in the spring with music and dancing. There was another civil reception and eventually Meara put the question to the governor. Had he received an answer from the Queen’s Court?
Yes, he had. He was ordered to keep the slaves and await further instructions from the capital.
Meara then asked how many Africans there were.
‘There were one hundred and seventy-four slaves landed, fifteen of whom died very shortly after they were landed. Twenty-six have died since.’ The governor said that the Africans were distributed about the households of Majunga.
And so, unless he and his men turned the town upside down, Edward Meara still could not release the East Africans. Still, Meara managed – this time – to leave in politeness. Just after nightfall, Meara was presented with a bullock and chickens on board the Nymphe.
At dawn the ship left the harbour for the south. The Nymphe was due in Zanzibar soon, but Edward Meara intended to search some more bays for the slavers he believed must be landing on this coast. Soon the Nymphe hovered outside a suspicious bay and the boats moved out. Before long word came that two Africans on shore reported having seen slavers recently. Meara and the interpreter Ali rowed to interview them. A dhow, they said, had landed slaves at this place ten days before, while a second had taken 120 slaves to Majunga – to the harbour the Nymphe had just left.
Connivers, wrote Meara in a letter to Commodore Heath. These Malagasy do trade in slaves. They conspire in silence.4
HMS Forte, Port Victoria, Mahé, Seychelles, August 1869
At that moment, Leopold Heath and HMS Forte were to the north-east at Port Victoria, Seychelles. The commodore was investigating the Malagasy claims – sent through the British consul there – that Edward Meara had raided a port and carried off slaves. He found freed men, but only two – Ferejd and Malbrook – who had swum on board Meara’s sloop. Through an interpreter he interviewed them and had them swear over a deposition that they had fled of their own free will. And once on board, the deck of a British man-of-war being British territory, thought Heath, they became ipso-facto free.
Had Meara really fired a warning shot over the town in order to rattle the local governor into releasing many scores of captives? Unclear, and Heath would not know until he caught up with the Nymphe somewhere in this vast ocean, but he would hardly condemn Meara for it, given that a show of force, as he thought of it, might have been called for in securing the freedom of people undoubtedly brought there in violation of Madagascar’s own treaty with Britain. And, bewildering to Heath, they insisted on holding the Africans hostage until they heard from their capital. Heath sent the depositions to Consul Packenham at Madagascar and hoped he had won some vindication for his squadron.5