What strikes the reader, now, is the utter horror of the conditions in which the poor slaves were transported, and in which the vast majority of them were always going to lose their lives — something allowed for by the traders. One captain in the Preventive Squadron boarded a French vessel, the Caroline, just out of the Gallinas, to find ‘164 Negroes packed into a space 15 by 40 feet’ — not much better than the most extreme accounts of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the cargo of the Caroline were going to be there for many weeks, barely fed and watered. The horrors of the trade have been thoroughly explored by historians, but what can be remembered, some way after the sufferings of the primary victims, are the atrocious conditions in which the brave people working for the Preventive Squadron found themselves. Losses from malaria and the dreaded yellow fever were appallingly high. There were the usual horrors of the sea journey, even for those not manacled below decks, which affected slavers and anti-slavers alike, rather amusingly captured in this horrid glimpse:

[The ship sighted was] a square-rigged vessel … a man-of-war … an eighteen-gun sloop … and finally — it was just out from home. ‘How can you tell?’ roared back Keppel from the waist. ‘The three midship cloths of her foretopsail are discoloured.’ ‘What the deuce has that to do with it?’ The lookouts at the stranger’s mastheads were new hands. Their stomachs had not yet adjusted to the coastal swell and the result was all over the sails.

And there was, too, the wildlife. One captain mistook the giant West African cockroach for a small perching bird, and foolishly introduced a breed of spider into his ship which was said to eat the things. Pretty soon, the spiders, with bodies the size of walnuts, were sitting glowering at him from every corner of his cabin, and nothing was to be done about them. All in all, this history falls into the very familiar category of Rather Them Than Me.

Siân Rees has read very thoroughly, and tries to give an all-round account of the slave trade, the abolitionists, and the brave fellows of the Preventive Squadron. History has not been kind to the British, and current trends are keener to blame them for ever having had anything to do with it than to credit them for working against it. As we have seen, even the most benevolent and heroic actions have been eagerly interpreted as the acts of awful hypocrites acting in well-disguised self-interest. This lively and interesting book, taking an alternative view, will no doubt be denounced or ignored in academic courses all over the semi-educated world. That, by the way, is a recommendation.

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