Squadron

by John Broich

  While her captain was away and Nymphe was lying at anchor as mother ship to the boats, a dhow came into a bay in which she was lurking. A small crew manned the white whaler, led by a young officer, and pulled for the dhow immediately. They came up the side of the dhow, meeting no resistance, to find about forty souls on board, among whom there were six slaves. The dhow’s captain offered no objection to returning to the Nymphe with the sailors to await Captain Meara’s return from stalking some creek.

  Returned the next day, Edward Meara and the interpreter made their own inspection of the dhow and interviewed the captain. The dhow was owned by a Mombasa man, and he had let it out to be chartered. She was just out of Zanzibar, headed for the small port of Lindi, a place to the south that the Nymphe had passed in recent days. The dhow’s captain had sold cloth and powder up the coast and had other goods for Lindi. The swirling winds had slowed their passage and they needed water so had put into the bay with the clear little river.

  Meara and the interpreter looked at the dhow’s papers. Old ones, the interpreter said, that showed that in years past she had been a slaver licensed by the sultan of Zanzibar. They turned to the enslaved Africans on board and the interpreter spoke to them. They were treated cruelly, they said, and used in shameful ways. They said, too, that the cargo on board was for the purpose of trading for more slaves.

  Edward Meara told them they were to be released. And so followed expressions of happiness, in the languages of their homes. The Nymphe found them room on board among the many others lifted from dhow hulls in recent days.

  The Nymphe’s crew had its own reasons to be pleased. The next morning, before dawn, some of the morning watch unloaded valuable cargo from the dhow onto the deck of the Nymphe: bales and boxes. Meara having condemned the dhow as a slaver, its goods were all forfeit. The men would share in a small bounty paid for each African released, a bounty based on the cubic measurement of the condemned dhow, and a share of the proceeds of these items once sold at Zanzibar.

  At five bells of the morning watch, around sunrise, the dhow’s crew was set onshore at their request and the dhow burned, a spectacle familiar, by now, to the crew of the Nymphe. The forenoon watch relieved the morning watch, and the stokers made up steam to sidle out of the bay. In a few days they would be in Zanzibar. They set all plain sail to catch a light but regular south wind, the same wind that should strengthen soon to bear the northern slave traders into Leopold Heath’s spider’s web.3

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘OF MOVING ACCIDENTS BY FLOOD AND FIELD’

  Dryad and Daphne continue the hunt, meeting success and near disaster

  THE MONSOON HAVING STARTED, work began in earnest for the crew of the Dryad, which moved from Bombay to its place in Heath’s web. Commander Philip Colomb took a characteristic approach to the problem of trapping his prey, employing technology and a rational procedure.

  HMS Dryad, off the north-east Arabian coast, April 1869

  HMS Dryad was poised off Ras Madraka, Oman, at the north-east corner of the Arabian peninsula. It was April now, and Philip Colomb noticed wind and tide becoming steadier, coming up the coast of Arabia – still light, but steadier. In recent days they had met dhows from Zanzibar, pushed by the new monsoon, but they had been legal traders. The slavers must follow close behind, and it was time to prepare his corner of the trap.

  It was a corner, Colomb hoped, from which the Dryad might see the slavers before they saw her. Much of this coast was open, sandy beach – exposed. But today he was inspecting a place that might hide Dryad from wind, tide and north-bound dhows, a cape, a peak of reddish-brown stone, around 400 feet high, that stood out into the sea. Just beyond this point was a small, low rocky island. Under steam, the Dryad approached cautiously, not knowing exactly where the bottom was. The leadsman dropped his line frequently to find it. It was deep here, he learned.

  Dryad (Colomb’s ship) making a capture

  A dhow sailing up the coast should pass close and should be visible from the peak above, Colomb thought. A man there should see at least twenty miles. Further, behind the peak was a good anchorage for the ship. A man in the masthead could even keep an eye on a small horizon of sea between the point and the island, the ship remaining hidden. There were good hiding spots for boats around the fractured little island off the point, too.

  Colomb was satisfied, and he could feel the drift of the crew’s mood, the shared sense that there was an enemy nearby, a monstrous thing, and they were eager to hunt it. One hundred and thirty-five minds were bent on the game.

  Colomb continued to scheme. What if he could place some men on the top of the promontory permanently as look-outs? They might signal to Dryad and the boats below when a dhow was in sight, perhaps even signal details of number and direction using the signalling techniques Colomb had demonstrated years before in the Admiralty’s test.1

  So Philip Colomb worked out a rudimentary system of signals to pass between the Dryad and her boats and a lookout he would post on the peak above, with flags by day, flashes by night. He saw that the boats were stocked with rifles, pistols, provisions, water; in the pinnace was stowed powder and shell for the breech-loaded gun at the stern. Then the captain selected twenty-six men for two boats and sent them off to lie under the shadow of the island, ready to chase. After that Philip Colomb sent his first lieutenant Henry Walker to reconnoitre the little island. Walker and his group had two orders: first, to make sure there was no one on it to cause them trouble – a musket volley from the surrounding rocks, Colomb thought, might be unsatisfactory; then, to drag one of the island’s little inlets for fresh fish.

  Captain Colomb himself climbed down into his gig with his coxswain, boat’s crew and interpreter Saleh bin Moosa. They pulled for the base of the peak above them. Soon they saw ten or fifteen armed men on the rocks that bordered a white sand beach, but these figures disappeared inland before the boat touched ground. Colomb turned to John Pitcher, his coxswain, by ancient tradition a captain’s capable hand. Follow them, he ordered. Make friends, but don’t take risks, don’t go too far. And take Bin Moosa to interpret.

  With that, the captain and a few men searched for a way up the dry promontory. It was the perennial temperature of 85 degrees and the red rocks over which they walked and crawled seemed burnt. Finally they found the way up and arrived at a little plateau standing above the earth and sea. Glorious, thought Colomb, a great sweep of creation below him. He could see the entire island to the east, with red-brown rock fringing white sand in its middle. And they could also see far inland to the west. A lookout and signal party stationed here could defend the plateau with ease. In case of dire emergency they could easily retreat to the island, fording just a narrow channel.

  The day, the climb, the view lifted Colomb’s spirits and he and his junior officers scampered back down from their new fort. Leaving the gig’s crew to await the return of John Pitcher and Bin Moosa, Colomb and the younger men swam, crossing the channel to the island boy-like, with a sense of some bygone summer’s day.

  Colomb and his officers arrived at the island’s beach to find the fishing party happy and successful, with piles of fish already on the beach. Colomb appeared in time to lend a hand in tailing on to the net, the water churning as the net approached the shore. Fish, large fish, began to jump and twist; two great ones escaped the net and the captain took it upon himself to chase them down. They swam and twisted into a little side pool where he jumped and scrabbled until he was on hands and knees trying to grab them. One of them jabbed him with a spine then escaped through his legs. The other Colomb was able to seize by the gills and, after a fight, land on the beach amid the sailors’ shouts and laughs.

  Then they saw one of the captain’s gig crew hurrying from the opposite beach. He was shouting, but they could not make out the words. Something was wrong.2

  The story of the spider squadron stands for many kinds of complexities and paradoxes, but perhaps no single member of that squadron embodied paradox more directly than Saleh
bin Moosa, slaver turned slaver-hunter.

  In these early days of still getting to know his ship and shipmates, Philip Colomb came upon the Dryad’s interpreter one morning. Saleh bin Moosa returned a greeting, raising his small red skullcap. He was willowy, but graceful, not bony; fine-featured, open-faced, with a gentle look and usually a smile. His simple white robe contrasted with dark skin.

  ‘Well, Moosa, think we shall catch a slaver today?’ It was trifling talk: there was really no chance at this time of year and in these waters.

  ‘Oh, suppose slaver come, we catch him.’ He touched the breech of the great gun next to him – the immemorial rite of sailors, touching wood to invoke luck.

  In such chatter were the beginnings of a kind of understanding, later esteem. True understanding was beyond overcoming rank and national and religious prejudice, yet it was a kind of understanding. Trifling talk turned to more substantive talk over the long passage over the Indian Ocean, longer days in the harbour, and sailing and steaming to the Arabian coast.

  Over these days Philip Colomb learned that Saleh bin Moosa was born on the island of Johanna, off the north-west coast of Madagascar. Upon reaching adulthood – Bin Moosa looked young, but was probably older than he appeared – he set out to be a trader in cattle and moved about markets on the Comoro Islands and Madagascar. He succeeded, married, and became a father. But one day there was some trouble with the Portuguese in Mozambique, the source of his cattle. They confiscated his stock and sentenced him to flogging. Ruined, he determined to rebuild. He changed professions, managing to charter a dhow and buying slaves from a middleman in Mozambique. Wedging them inside, he boarded and set sail for Madagascar. Then followed a short crossing of the Mozambique Channel.

  After the brief passage, Madagascar’s Boyanna Bay was dead ahead. Bin Moosa thanked God for his success as a headland loomed between the dhow and the bay’s landing spot. Arcing over it and turning south for the beach, Bin Moosa saw the trap too late: a British cruiser was already leaping for him and there was no escaping the bay.

  God had not delivered him success in slaving, but instead delivered Bin Moosa into chains. It was as if God had allowed him to read from the book of time itself, so that he knew the trade in man was abhorred by God. Saleh bin Moosa concluded that he was now enthralled to the trade’s destruction. Blessed he was that God made his will known, for God would surely punish all those who persisted in the slave trade. As an Indian Ocean trader he had picked up some Portuguese, some Malagasy, some English. Added to his Arabic and Swahili tongue and letters, and he had the makings of an interpreter. And so he began to serve God’s sentence on board British cruisers.

  One day Bin Moosa told Philip Colomb of the disapproval he sometimes met in Arab ports when he walked among his British shipmates (though some shipmates were West African, Chinese, Ceylonese).

  ‘“You eat pork on board that ship – Englishmen all eat pork – you eat pork, too!”’ Bin Moosa related. ‘They say, “You drink grog – you smoke!”’

  But Bin Moosa abjured the forbidden things, studied his Koran, prayed five times daily.

  ‘Oh, I say, “Englishman all same.”’ Saleh bin Moosa paused. ‘Yes, all same God.’3

  A man hurried from the opposite beach, shouting. Saleh bin Moosa was taken. The coxswain had escaped.

  ‘They’s been and fired on him, sir. Four shots.’ It was Williams of the gig’s crew. He poured out a disjointed story. ‘Pitcher only saved hisself by running under the rocks.’

  Colomb collected rifles, then sent off the crewmen with the nets and haul of fish to Dryad. He and his gig’s crew were soon rowing for the shore near where Bin Moosa was taken. They found Pitcher there and he described what had happened. ‘Well, sir, there was a lot of ’em on the hill. Then Aggis,’ he used the men’s name for Bin Moosa, a bastardisation of the word eggs, which the interpreter mispronounced, ‘he said they was a callin’ of him to come. And I says, “we’s far enough from the boat.” But he says it was alright.’ The Arabs then surrounded them with spears and daggers.

  ‘Then they had no muskets?’ Colomb was relieved. Williams’ tale might have been a bit overstated.

  ‘No, sir, I seen no firearms.’ He went on. ‘They shows their spears and swords, and makes motions of cuttin’ our throats. And then they makes Aggis sing a song.’ Next, Bin Moosa had told Pitcher to hand over his hat ribbon, then told him the men were going to take them to their king. Finally, the interpreter told Pitcher that he could go back to the boat, for he would make it all right.

  Colomb and the men next pulled towards the place the coxswain pointed out until the boat touched the beach. Just then Bin Moosa emerged, coming down from the rocks flanked by two Omani men. He wore his most amiable face. His escorts, though, were dour.

  Philip Colomb approached them, acting as if his men had never been threatened or seized. Through Bin Moosa, he spoke as if he were delighted to make their acquaintance, shaking hands innocently. There followed smiling chat, the promise of trade for biscuit and cloth, and a kind of treaty was struck.

  Later, as the party pulled back for the Dryad, Bin Moosa told his story. The Omanis had summoned him and Pitcher with very real threats. He thought it was finally his fated day to die. It seemed the men thought Bin Moosa an apostate. So he had quoted the Koran – the ‘singing’ heard by Pitcher. Then they ordered Bin Moosa to send Pitcher away. When they asked what the Dryad was doing there, Bin Moosa had said they were gathering water – a successful lie.4

  HMS Daphne, off the south-central Arabian coast, April 1869

  In the same days as Colomb was hunting off the north-east coast of the Arabian peninsula, Sulivan moved to the south-east. Near her post above the entrance to the Red Sea stood Mukalla, a white city that clung to the edge of the sea, rocky cliffs rising hard behind it. Before Mukalla was a shallow bay, sheltered from the northern monsoon, and behind her a pointed mountain peak. The peak was like a lighthouse that summoned the trade of the whole Indian Ocean, the trade of the Red Sea, India, Abyssinia – and the slave trade from Zanzibar.

  George Sulivan knew that some East Africans were sold into slavery here. He also knew many more were off-loaded to await favourable winds for the ports of the Persian Gulf. The captain went into the town to invite the sultan of Mukalla to visit the ship.

  Sulivan arriving before him, the sultan’s welcome was strained, as if he thought that the British gunboat might be there for no good. But when the sultan boarded the Daphne the next day there was a practised amiability. And when Daphne’s 64-pounder fired, it was for the sultan’s amusement – and away from the port. Sulivan went through the spoken pantomime of asking whether slaves were transshipped here, and the sultan went through the pantomime of replying that he knew nothing of the slave trade.

  The winds were light and turning, but most often south of east; the monsoon had been slowly manifesting and with it the traffic from Zanzibar waters. The cutter, whaler and long galley swarmed over the local coast. Daphne herself moved east, out to sea, to get the weather gauge of dhows coming up the Arabian coast, the wind at her back instead of her face.

  One clear, hot afternoon, with only a breath of an east wind to work with, Daphne was springing on dhows under steam, blasting her titanic guns to bring the dhows to, and sending a lieutenant in the whaler to board. Then, in one of the dhows, the boarding party found two boys. They brought them back to the ship where George Sulivan and Jumah interviewed them. They were crying, terrified that they would be returned to the dhow; they begged, fearful to the point of physical pain. They had been kidnapped along the African coast by the captain of the dhow about a month earlier. Sulivan knew the gambit: the dhow captain on the eve of heading north kidnapped one or two young victims, paid no slaver middleman, but turned a profit, almost a perfect profit – depending on how much he bothered to feed his captives – at some Persian Gulf market. This dhow was condemned and taken in tow, yet the boys could never go home.

  Later that same day, word came that
one of the cutters was bringing in a dhow. Lieutenant George Loch, who had replaced the alcoholic Gardner at Bombay, had made the capture. In time, he reported to George Sulivan that upon boarding there had been some snarls, some half-drawn weapons; it was a dangerous situation. But as the cutter crew mounted up and up on the dhow, the situation looked hopeless to the slaver’s crew. They edged back and surrendered. Sixty Africans, most women and children, were crowded on the deck. There were no papers and no flag on the slaver.

  Normally Sulivan would have summarily condemned such ships there and then and burnt or exploded them. They were difficult things for the inexperienced to keep afloat, and he did not want to leave his station for the purpose of towing a pair of dhows to a Vice-Admiralty court for what he assumed was a trial with a foregone conclusion. But he was now close to Aden and its consular bureaucracy; he could hardly justify not towing them in. Besides, he could hunt in Aden waters too.

  The dhows properly condemned at Aden some days later, the Daphne pointed for the Seychelles. It was time to land the scores of people who had no more home now than Daphne’s sun-bleached deck. On most nights the East Africans danced to contrived drums and sang. Sometimes Daphne’s engine lent its own rhythm. At those times they danced under a light cloud of coal smoke and steam. Other times they danced under flashing lightning. Other times under stars, while a young officer found Daphne’s position by Alpha Centauri and Vega.

  The music had no appeal for George Sulivan. Monotonous, he thought. But he believed that the Africans’ music and dancing were a sign of at least some kind of relief, and he was glad that these were not the walking or even paralysed skeletons that he had sometimes carried aboard Daphne.

  On a Sunday, not long after George Sulivan read the Bible to the collected men, Daphne steamed into Port Victoria, Mahé, Seychelles. She navigated the complicated approach and moored. The next morning boats moved between the ship and shore. They carried men, women and children born East Africans, then made slaves, then freed by Daphne, then transmuted again upon stepping foot on dry land. They were now Seychellois.