USA Africa Dialogue Series

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FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: African Slave Trade
----- Original Message ----- From: Dr. Valentine Ojo
To: AfricanTalk ; Africare-Newpublications ; TalkNigeria ; TheBlacklist ; TheBlackList Cullection ; TrueBlackness ; Yorubas-Community
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:05 AM
Subject: FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: African Slave Trade

On Behalf Of Adeniran Adeboye
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:12 PM

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: African Slave Trade
Bits and pieces of the catastrophe are coming out. That is not bad.

The Arab domination of Spain eventually ended under King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella and the Europeans were able to say to themselves
and one another, NEVER AGAIN. They then went on to conquer the world
militarily and politically. The Nazi killing of Jews and Gypies
eventually ended with WWII and the Jews were able to say to
themselves, one another and the whole world, NEVER AGAIN. They then
went to conquer Palestine militarily and politically, and the West
commercially and professionally. When will the Africans at home and
in the diaspora be able to say NEVER AGAIN. The way things are now
the mother of all holocausts remains merely a historical annoyance
while the consequences are raging fiercely at home and abroad in the
form of neocolonialism and racial discrimination. Overt slave "trade"
may have ended, political, economic and social slavery are still with
us and attended by increasing hopelessness. Our submergence has now
lasted longer than 500 years. If we take our situation seriously
enough, we will put our acts together and engineer our re-emergence,
and in a hurry. Otherwise our slide to oblivion will soon become
impossible to arrest.

Adeniran Adeboye
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Diary reveals reality of African slave trade
By Cahal Milmo
Published: 29 January 2007

On 13 July 1823, a young Royal Navy officer called Cheesman Binstead noticed a large number of sharks in the water as his ship patrolled in the seas off west Africa. His superiors left him in no doubt about the cause. To avoid a fine, an intercepted slave ship had thrown its human cargo into the waves and the jaws of the predators.

Amid the barbarity of a trade that brought 11 million Africans to the New World in chains, what Midshipman Binstead witnessed was not rare. But what was unusual was that he wrote it down as part of an account of the reality of transatlantic slavery and attempts to bring it to a halt.

This week, the diary kept by Binstead for two years while serving on the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, charged with intercepting slave ships, goes on display for the first time since it was written. It forms part of a new exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth to mark the abolition of the slave trade by Britain in 1807.

Binstead was serving on the HMS Owen Glendower between 1823 and 1824. The vessels in the squadron were empowered to impose a fine of £100 for every slave found on a British ship.

Describing the aftermath of one such encounter, Binstead wrote: "Many large whales and sharks about us, the latter is owing to the number of poor fellows that have lately been thrown overboard. The ship is now truly miserable, many of our own crew very sick and the decks crowded with black slaves who are dying in all directions and apprehensive - their cases of fever are contagious."

A month earlier, Binstead had learned of the fear caused by the slave trade among Africans when he gave chase to a convoy of canoes on the Congo river as the British sailors looked for enslaved tribesmen. He wrote: "Observed many large canoes, one of which I went in chase of. On my coming up with her, the whole crew jumped overboard and I fear they met a watery grave. These poor wretches were fearful we were going to make slaves of them."

The diaries were donated to the museum by Binstead's great-great-granddaughter, 78-year-old Rosa Lee, whose mother discovered them after the Second World War. Ms Lee, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, said: "I'm so glad I kept the diaries and they are of interest and that they have found their natural home."

Some historians have argued that the West Africa Squadron, established a year after the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, was as important as the campaigners led by William Wilberforce in bringing slavery to an end. Others point out that the squadron's anti-slavery role was twinned with the task of establishing British influence in West Africa and dominating maritime trade routes. The squadron was tasked with patrolling the 3,000 miles of the west African coast, blockading ports and giving chase to slave vessels.

Binstead described the "wretched state" in which slaves were discovered and the privations of his shipmates as they succumbed to diseases such as yellow fever and malaria. More than 1,500 naval ratings lost their lives over the next 60 years while serving in the squadron.

Initially, the unit was limited to intercepting only British slave ships but London eventually signed a host of bilateral arrangements, sub-contracting the Royal Navy to target slavers from all other countries.

The exhibition, Chasing Freedom: The Royal Navy and the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, opens at the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on Saturday.

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