CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Glossary of historical figures

Glossary of mid-nineteenth-century Royal Navy ranks

Introduction: The Arabian Sea, May 1869

PART I. ‘SET A SQUADRON IN THE FIELD’

1 ‘On the brow o’ the sea’: Meara, Heath, Sulivan and Colomb before their convergence

2 ‘The valiant of this warlike isle’: The commodore’s resolution and the journey of the Daphne

3 ‘His bark is stoutly timber’d’: Commodore Heath declares his intent and the Amazons prepare for their campaign

4 ‘The imminent deadly breach’: Daphne hunts and draws first blood

5 ‘In her prophetic fury sew’d the work’: The spiders spin their web, unaware of their own vulnerability

6 ‘With all his might’: Edward Meara between the choices of justice and the law

7 ‘If it prove lawful prize’: The grinding work of inspecting traders, and the question of prize money

8 ‘Of moving accidents by flood and field’: Dryad and Daphne continue the hunt, meeting success and near disaster

9 ‘Destiny unshunnable, like death’: The courtroom on the Dryad and the battle in Zanzibar harbour

10 ‘Most disastrous chances’: The daring of the Kroomen, the success of the spider’s web tactic, and the cost in lives

PART II. ‘A DANGEROUS SEA’

11 ‘Too true an evil’: Forces array against the squadron while Daphne approaches the realm of a slaver king

12 ‘The wind hath spoke aloud at land’: As word of the squadron’s ‘zealotry’ spreads, so does alarm in official circles

13 ‘Swell his sail with thine own powerful breath’: Sulivan, Meara and Heath work to expose hypocrisy, and Daphne tries to outrun a curse

14 ‘Stand upon the foaming shore’: Philip Colomb tries to win the release of hundreds of kidnapped Mozambicans

15 ‘Traitors ensteep’d to clog the guiltless keel’: The squadron sails into political trouble

16 ‘Vouch with me, heaven’: Sulivan tests the depths of hypocrisy while Colomb examines the fate of the African refugees

17 ‘False as water’: Dark days for Meara and Sulivan at Zanzibar, while Colomb wins a joyless victory in Madagascar

PART III. ‘SOLD TO SLAVERY, OF MY REDEMPTION THENCE’

18 ‘The desperate tempest’: The political storm breaks over the squadron

19 ‘After every tempest come such calms’: News of their work precedes the captains to Britain, to good effect

20 ‘May the winds blow till they have waken’d death!’: The last effort to compel Zanzibar

21 ‘Here is my journey’s end’: A return that marks the beginning of the end

Note on sources and methods

Acknowledgements

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