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The Little Ship That Did
By the 1820s the transatlantic slave trade was largely outlawed. Great Britain and the US were early adaptors of its abolition. France and Spain were still winking at it (largely to twit Britain). Brazil would not outlaw the trade until 1831. Regardless, transatlantic transportation of slaves illegally continued.
“The Black Joke: The True Story of One Ship’s Battle Against the Slave Trade,” by A.E. Rooks tells of a ship instrumental in closing down this illegal traffic. Never a formally-commissioned warship in the Royal Navy, it was the vessel of Britain’s West Africa Squadron most feared by slave traders.
Rooks carries the story from Black Joke’s incorporation into the Royal Navy in 1827 through its disposal a five years later. Its career was brief, but as Rooks shows, its impact was profound.
Launched as Henriquetta in Baltimore for the slave trade, it was captured in 1827 by HMS Sybille with an illegal cargo of nearly 600 slaves. Renamed Black Joke and taken into Royal Navy service as a tender to Sybille, it was manned from Sybille’s crew and technically part of Sybille. It was armed with a single swivel gun, firing 18-pound shot, and had a crew of up to forty, including marines.
Rooks describes what came next. Black Joke became the terror of the Slave Coast of Africa, capturing or participating in the capture of fourteen slavers and freeing over 5700 slaves. It was the most successful anti-slavery vessel on the coast. It was so effective Black Joke was transferred to a different warship HMS Dryad when Sybille returned to Britain.
Rooks also picks through the legal complexities and cultural issues associated with Black Joke and fighting the slave trade. She explains how international law constrained fighting the slave trade. Britain was looking for ways to cut government spending during this period, which further affected efforts. Both were reasons why Black Joke remained a tender rather than an independent warship. It kept costs down and simplified legalities.
Rooks makes a few errors (Great Britain does not have a Royal Army), but they are minor. More jarring is her use of modern jargon. This language will make this book seem dated and quaint a century from now. So too is her attempt to impose twenty-first century values on the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Regardless “The Black Joke” is a classic study on the subject. which will almost certainly be read a century from now.
“The Black Joke: The True Story of One Ship’s Battle Against the Slave Trade,” by A.E. Rooks, Scribner, 2022, 400 pages, $29.00 (Hardcover), $14.99 (ebook), $16.50 (audiobook), $39.99 (audio CDs)
This review was written by Mark Lardas who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Published in History
I wonder how well it would mesh, supplement, or generally go together with this book? I’ve had it on my Amazon wish list for a while now, after reading a review in one of the history magazines to which I subscribe.
“Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed in the early nineteenth century by every major slave trading nation, merchants based in the United States were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City after the shuttering of the massive illegal slave trade to Brazil in 1850. These traffickers were determined to make lower Manhattan a key hub in the illegal slave trade to Cuba. In conjunction with allies in Africa and Cuba, they ensnared around 200,000 African men, women, and children during the 1850s and 1860s. John Harris explores how the U.S. government went from ignoring, and even abetting, this illegal trade to helping to shut it down completely in 1867.”
It’s a different era (The Last Slave Ships is 20 years later), but they fit together pretty well. I reviewed The Last Slave Ships almost exactly a year ago. It was good.