Squadron

by John Broich

  Hamed bin Mohammed el Marjebi, who went by the name ‘Tippu Tip’, was part trader, part warlord, part agent for the sultan of Zanzibar, and fast becoming a slaver king. He was Swahili-Arab: born on Zanzibar, descended from East African and Omani forebears. After becoming a successful trader on the island, Tippu Tip plunged into East Africa with a company of mercenaries and slaves. There he murdered and battled rival strongmen; set up protection rackets and extracted tribute in ivory; hunted elephants for their tusks; bought influence with guns; and kidnapped people en masse. He began building an empire to the west and north of Zanzibar – around today’s Tanzania and Kenya – by creating and filling power vacuums, bringing ruin to countries and enslaving their people.

  Tippu Tip

  But he was not simply murderous, he was politically adept. When word reached him of the near-starving Scots explorer wandering and measuring the countryside he saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Europeans. Not only did he give Livingstone food and tradestuff, but he invited him to stay and travel with him, which the desperate man did gratefully. And though Livingstone truly reviled Tippu Tip’s slaving, he admired his regal bearing and his famous hospitality. When Livingstone left Tip’s entourage, he gave the man a warm letter of introduction to the European community based on Zanzibar.2

  Nearly all trade in the western Indian Ocean depended on the coast-skimming dhow. A large triangular sail is what made a dhow a dhow. This sail, called a ‘lateen sail’ hung from a yard that ran more or less straight down the length of the ship, ‘fore and aft’. While this sail could be pushed by the wind, it propelled the ship fastest when it acted as an aerofoil: when wind flowed over it, that is, pulling the ship like a wing. (Most European ships, especially warships, relied on square sails, which did best when the wind was behind them.) Dhows often shared other characteristics such as a high poop in the back of the larger ones and a dramatically up-turned stern at front. But the wide lateen sail was its animating spirit. The captains of Heath’s squadron called any Arab lateen-rigged ship a ‘dhow’ as a generic term, though the proper word for larger ones – those with multiple masts – was ‘baghlah’.

  The new Amazons – Daphne, Dryad and Nymphe – were well-suited to this coast because they borrowed the dhows’ ancient technology. The two forward masts mainly carried square sails; while the rearmost, called the mizzenmast, tended to carry triangular sails for helping the ships sail into the face of the monsoon winds. They were a kind of hybrid.

  And the monsoon ruled this ocean. From roughly November to February the prevailing winds in the ocean swept down out of the northeast, while from about April to September the winds shifted and blew out of the south-west. The movement of captive East Africans depended on these winds. The pattern was for traders to bring northern wares down the East African coast in the winter months, then await the shift in the monsoon, purchase slaves at Zanzibar or Kilwa on the coast south of Zanzibar, and run for the north with their victims in the spring and summer.

  A sketch of a dhow, probably by Zanzibar Consul John Kirk, c. 1872

  In former years, when any ships were ordered to police the trade in these waters at all, they tended to be stationed at Zanzibar or patrolled its waters checking licences. But Leopold Heath decided that could not be effective since a dhow heading north from Zanzibar could simply plead that it was heading to a coastal town to the north that was within the sultan’s dominions; that is, perfectly within the treaty rules. That hopeless routine was about to end.

  In his study of reports and letters from former British officials based on Zanzibar and his talks with other Royal Navy officers, Heath began to develop a plan. He considered keeping his ships away from Zanzibar. Instead, he hoped that by positioning them at natural chokepoints where features of land, sea and current would force the dhows through a relatively small passage, his Amazons could take advantage of their barque rigs and powerful engines to descend on the slave dhows against the monsoon – while the dhows themselves would be at the mercy of wind and current forcing them into the Royal Navy’s awaiting hands.

  HMS Octavia, Zanzibar harbour, September 1868

  The tall masts of HMS Octavia lording it over the harbour, her many commissioned officers made the short pull to the beach and the sultan’s palace. Two whole goats were roasting and a lavish feast was set. The sultan sat before the array as his secretary of state personally waited on Commodore Heath.

  Later, from his flagship, Heath sent a letter to his Admiralty superiors in London on the eve of launching an experiment with his new stratagem. ‘For 25 years we have followed the same dull routine,’ he wrote, ‘capturing a few dhows here and there.’ He announced that he would end the routine and commit unparalleled effort. He asked for more ships, perhaps being redirected from the West African coast where slave trade suppression was winding down. But going beyond matters over which he had responsibility, Heath also recommended an overhaul in political and diplomatic efforts against the slave trade: that permanent anti-slave trade commissions be set up in the chief ports of East Africa; that British India should police the Persian Gulf to smother the trade at the point of demand; that the government itself in London commit to finally ‘erasing’ all trade in humans from East Africa.

  I trust their Lordships will not think that I have given my opinion in too free a manner [he wrote] … If I have presumed to indicate the steps which I think should be taken … for finally attaining that object, it is because I feel that although what we have hitherto done may have annoyed and harassed the Slave Traders it has had no effect towards suppressing the Trade.

  Heath would eventually learn to his cost that many in India and London indeed took exception to his free manner.

  HMS Daphne, Zanzibar harbour, October 1868

  The letter sent on its long voyage to London via the Red Sea, Heath issued orders to Sulivan, the man on the station with the most experience in East African waters: it was time to experiment with the chokepoint tactic. In October 1868, Sulivan’s Daphne lay at single anchor in the harbour of Zanzibar. The crew scrubbed, mended and, as ever, coaled, like Sisyphus labouring under heavy bags of coal that turned to ash almost as soon he stowed them. The captain surveyed a crowded harbour. It was nearly November and the monsoon was hanging on, still blowing from the southwest. On this wind depended slavers carrying their abductees north. But the monsoon would expire soon, returning in the spring, and many of the dhows were preparing for the last northerly run.

  In the coming days, Sulivan gathered what news he could find. There was a war on the African coast to the west and north. Some slavers preferred to march their captives north up the coast to some isolated landing place before boarding them so as to evade any over-zealous British captain stalking Zanzibar waters. In these days of war slavers could not march their victims here. Zanzibar and its sister island Pemba, covered with clove plantations, were particularly crowded with slaves waiting to run the blockade for the north. Some large dhows at Zanzibar, Sulivan learned, were crowded with East Africans. The dhows had licences for sailing for Lamu Island – a place within the sultan’s territory. He also learned that some dhows intended to run the gauntlet for the north beyond the treaty limit, to make a run for the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf.

  Commodore Heath and Sulivan knew that most smugglers would stay in harbour with Daphne watching. This gave them an opportunity to run up false colours. In the next couple of days, as he moved about Zanzibar, Sulivan let slip that he had orders to sail directly for Bombay on the aged monsoon. Soon, some of the Indian merchants in the town came to ask whether he would bear some goods there. They want to test whether we’re really going there or not, guessed Sulivan. He gladly agreed to carry their things. But he was not bound for Bombay. He would point Daphne conspicuously toward Bombay, but instead of heading north-east he would head north-west to the coast. The dhows, not made for the open ocean, hugged the coast all the way to their destinations in the north. At a point on the coast where they would be exposed, Daphne
would lie in wait, her whaler, her speedy sailed cutter spread out to help corner the slave ship. The monsoon’s last breezes and the current would carry the dhows into the awaiting trap whether they liked it or not, while the Daphne could set barque sails and raise steam to carry her into the face of the wind, leaping down on the slavers.

  A few days later, and the Daphne was almost ready to weigh. There was a muster at quarters early in the forenoon watch, then the order for stokers to raise steam. The circling men at the capstan weighed anchor and Daphne edged through the traffic of the harbour in broad daylight. She pointed her head north-north-east, unmistakably for Bombay. The next day she let her boilers cool and set most sail in front of a reliable wind out of the south. To any passing craft she looked as if she were truly bound for India. Meanwhile, Sulivan had the men of the forenoon watch exercising at the great guns and the afternoon watch drilled at cutlasses.

  At a point thirty miles east of the coast and out of sight of the coastal traffic, Daphne turned back west. Sulivan’s stalking ground was near a town called Brava on the Somalian coast, a natural calling point for dhows bound north. Some small islands just off the coast formed a bottleneck here that should hem in traffic. There she stalked over several days. One late night Sulivan emerged from his cabin to have a look at things and found the midshipman on duty asleep. On a Sunday morning at single anchor Sulivan read to his crew from the Bible under bright skies and the lingering south-westerly breeze. Up boats, down boats; raise steam, bank fires.

  It was a frustrating wait: nearly November, and they had yet to see one of the large dhows crammed with victims that they had seen tarrying suspiciously in Zanzibar harbour. Until, one day, after a morning of rain and cloud, the air cleared and showed a sail on the southern horizon off the starboard bow. The crew turned the clicking capstan and the stokers built steam. It was now mid-afternoon and she would have plenty of daylight for a chase. Steam up and, working against wind and current, Daphne began her descending run at the sail. An hour passed and the sail kept coming north, close to the shore. Another half hour’s approach confirmed that she was a large dhow and George Sulivan ordered the whaler and another boat equipped and armed and the boats’ crews to stand by. Soon the men hoisted out the whaler and lowered it to the sea.

  The dhow, it seemed, knew then what kind of a ship Daphne was, but it could not easily turn and run against the five-knot current bearing it up the coast. It would not turn east and risk the open sea. Instead it turned toward the shore, slicing through large rolling seas, and ran headlong towards rock and beach. It could only mean that the captain meant to wreck, for just one terrible outcome was possible in such seas. The men on the Daphne could only watch since, while the slave ship was not far away now with Daphne steaming fast toward it, Daphne could not intercept it. It was about to strike. It crashed. The hull shattered. The men on the quarterdeck saw some figures immediately moving up the beach away from the disintegrating ship. The slavers, it appeared, would escape. Some captives ran before them up a hill into the tree line. Other bodies were in the water, and some were obviously trapped in the heaving, collapsing wreck.

  Sulivan had no choice but to watch the dhow break on the beach, but he would not abandon the survivors to drowning as he had been forced to abandon young Orton in the cold waves under Africa. He moved, ordering the small lifeboat dropped. The waves that were pounding the dhow to fragments would also pound any boat that he sent in a rescue attempt. He would go but he would not order anyone else to go. Before he could pull away, young William Breen, only just made a midshipman, slid down the lifeline into his boat. Then the ship’s carpenter, Jim Richards, slipped down. Rifles handed down, the three men in the boat pulled away.

  Into the heavy waves, now, and not far from the wreck, Sulivan could see dark bodies in the water more clearly. The heaving breakers started pouring onto the lifeboat from behind. A steep wave violently flung the stern. Sulivan leapt for a line above the rudder to weigh the stern down and succeeded in keeping the boat right-side-up. Waves continued to strike the boat from behind, violently swinging at the men. But hard as the waves attacked, they also shoved the boat quickly towards the beach.

  In a few minutes they were there, hurrying through the water, scrambling among wood and bamboo fragments. Bodies, many bodies, and most beyond rescue. A woman – a mother? – struggled to get a child out of the collapsing wreck of the dhow. They ran to her and found that there were other children there. They seemed too exhausted to climb out of the broken hull, to pull themselves out of the waves. The men found one who was paralysed in a balled-up position, then another; there were seven children in all, about six years in age or younger. These were the only survivors other than those whom the slavers had taken away. Captain, carpenter, midshipman worked in the waves and ruin to extract the children.

  Eventually, the three men and the surviving woman carried the children to the boat. They could not stay on the beach with an uncertain number of slavers at an uncertain distance. They moved quickly to help the children in, placed doubled-up children carefully down low among the ribs. Then, where was the woman? Vanished in wave and chaos.

  Suddenly, men broke out of the tree line far up the beach. Ten. Twenty. Some with guns, some with spears. Sulivan guessed they were local men drawn to the shore by the noise. With such uneven numbers, this was not time for diplomacy. He raised his rifle. He waited until they were about two hundred yards away, then aimed at a spot fifty feet in front of the leading man. He fired, and the Somalian men flung themselves to the ground. They rose, but did not take another step forward. Nor did they step backward: they would wait and see.

  Sulivan turned to the boat and ordered his companions to shove off. The men pulled hard for the breakers. It was the most resolute wall of waves Sulivan had ever seen in a long career at sea. From where he had stood on the Daphne he could not see the see the inner face of this unyielding wall, but now he saw it for what it was. In former days he had seen seven shipmates drowned by surf less high than this, and there were miles and miles of this barricade stretching up and down the coast. When the wave drew in the water of the beach, the inhaled sea nearly left the boat aground on coral. And darkness was coming on.

  But they heaved on the oars. One dash at the breakers. Repelled. A second run for it. Repelled. Behind, on the shore, the Somalian men still watched.

  Haul up the boat and try to survive the night on the beach? Sulivan wondered.

  Then, a slight lull in the waves. It’s now or never.

  Again, they pulled hard and aimed the bow to cut through the wall. The wave blasted the boat and poured through it stem to stern. They were through, but the children? The men counted them. They were all there. A miracle, Sulivan was sure.

  Heath’s tactic was proven. From that day, slaver after slaver was borne by wind and current into Daphne’s trap. She spread her ships out to coordinate in penning slavers – two cutters, the captain’s gig, the broad whaler, the dinghy – even the Kroomen moving between boats in their distinctive canoe. Boats chasing in all directions. Sulivan rewarded Midshipman Breen with the captaincy of one of the boats. Daphne fired her monster guns to try to bring suspect dhows to. Sometimes they stopped, sometimes they darted.

  Amid all of this, Sulivan worked with his trusted interpreter Jumah, his old shipmate from the Pantaloon, to learn about the children he and his men lifted from the wreck.

  ‘What is your name?’ Jumah asked one of the children, a small boy.

  ‘Zangora.’

  Jumah asked how long he had been marched from his home to the coast.

  ‘From when the corn was young to when it was cut. About three moons.’ His village was well inland. More questions, and Sulivan and Jumah estimated that he had been taken off the coast at the island harbour of Kilwa, the busy slave depot.

  ‘How many slaves were in the dhow with you?’

  ‘A great many,’ he said. ‘Some were drowned.’

  They had been at sea for about a week, consistent with
a departure from Zanzibar. They had been packed under the deck. The entire dhow had been crammed.

  Two of the children, who had seemed paralysed, had been crammed in so tightly with their heads between their knees that they could not straighten their bodies to try to save themselves from drowning in the wreck. One of the children reported that when the Daphne had appeared, issuing coal smoke, the slavers had told the Africans that the big ship was a cannibal ship, the fires for cooking children. They would wreck not to drown the Africans, but to save them. Once on land they should run for the trees. Sulivan and Jumah spoke with the others and heard nearly the same story. ‘Fighting … murder … a long journey … cruelty … impossible ever to return to my own land.’

  November, and constant activity continued: Daphne running down ships; the boats boarding. There were many legitimate traders and many slavers – some escaping when there were insufficient boats to chase, others running aground. Royal Navy policy stated that the slaver crews themselves must not be harmed if it could be helped; they should be offered passage to the nearest port. But naturally they always declined to spend much time on the Daphne among their former victims and officers who loathed them; they usually asked to be landed immediately or placed in passing dhows. Their dhows, though, were almost always burnt at sea.

  One day, an experienced sub-lieutenant, William Henn, had command of one of the sailed cutters. He chased a slave ship, taking care to keep the cutter between this dhow and the shore. The dhow gave up the chase and Henn’s crew boarded. The deck was clear other than the crew of ten or so, but it was a big dhow. What was below?

  One of the Amazons attempting a rescue and depicting the slaver running aground