The Niger Expedition of 1841

In 1807 the British Parliament voted to make the slave trade illegal in all of its territories. Not content with this, they set out to abolish the trade globally by seizing slave ships on the high seas during the early 19th century.

But the abominable trade continued — in 1839, about 100,000-150,000 African slaves were sold to the Western World — and, as one member of the House of Lords concluded, the trade “could not be repressed by the entire British Navy.”

It was then that the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilization of Africa, headed by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, launched an unprecedented attempt to eradicate slavery at its origin. The ambitious plan was to win or buy the cooperation of the tribal chieftains along the River Niger through a series of treaties, as well as introduce Christianity and increase commerce.

This was a daring idea to begin with. Until 1820, no one knew whether the 2,600 mile-long Niger emptied in the River Nile, was lost in the Sahara desert, or emptied into the Pacific. In the late 1830s, the climate and the people from the native communities along the river killed all but eight of the 47 members of an expedition that failed to solve the puzzle.

But the Society had the full support of Her Majesty’s Government, the Royal Navy, the Parliament, several philanthropic and scientific societies, and a group of wealthy English merchants. The planners were given ample funds and were able to hire Britain’s best ship designers and builders.

It therefore seemed possible that the expedition could sail the continent’s longest river and fulfill its mission: to negotiate anti-slavery treaties with the “Chiefs and Powers on its banks, within whose dominions the Slave Trade is carried on, and the external Slave Trade is supplied with its victims.”

 The expedition was an adventure. It was carried out by men who paid a heavy price with their lives and health. And except for some impressive scientific findings, their odyssey — as described by two of its surviving Royal Navy officers, Captain William Allen and Surgeon T.R.H. Thomson — was a tragic failure.

In their 1100-page work, A Narrative of the Expedition Sent by Her Majesty’s Government to the River Niger in 1841, the authors make it clear that the fiasco was not due to lack of effort, care, or planning.

The expedition specially designed and built three iron steamships that had flat bottoms for easier navigation on the river and sliding keels to balance them on the high seas. The vessels were equipped with an elaborate ventilation system to bring fresh air to the quarters for the officers and soldiers. Each ship’s captain was equipped with a novel compass that was unaffected by the boats’ iron structures.

The handpicked crew consisted mostly of Naval and Marine officers and petty officers. They were volunteers and promised double pay. Two of the expedition’s naval commanders were “empowered by Her Majesty to make Treaties” with the native chiefs “for the suppression of the external Slave Trade, and for the establishment of lawful commerce.” Also aboard were six scientists eager to explore the African flora and fauna.

Finally, as Allen and Thomson noted, “although the mission was essentially of peace, it was necessary it should have an imposing appearance,” which was provided by a total of 14 howitzers plus “musketoons and small arms.”

The expedition set out on a happy note. It left Liverpool on February 17, 1841 in “unusually beautiful weather” and amid rousing farewells. It was inspected by a “truly amiable” Prince Albert, and — Allen and Thomson reported — as the expedition “passed several line-of battle ships... they gave us the honor to man the rigging, and... three hearty cheers, with which flattering mark of sympathy... we took leave of the shores of England.”

A Narrative dwells at some length on the beauty of the island of Madeira. It describes the exotic plants on the island of Tenerife and, when the ships reached the West African colony of Sierra Leone, the hiring of a native who had traveled the Niger as far as Timbuktu, “having had a tolerable Mussulman education.”

Resuming the journey along the African coast, A Narrative asserts that “No Englishman can visit Freetown” — a settlement of liberated slaves — “without a feeling of honest pride, that his country should have been the first to attempt to atone for the deep miseries inflicted on Africa by the inhuman traffic in her children.”

But soon afterwards, the authors were more impressed by another settlement along the coast — Monrovia — which they described as an American colony of about 1,000 inhabitants, living under the presidency of Mr. Buchanan, the only white resident there. “This is a very interesting experiment,” the authors write, “but how far it has succeeded, our short stay would hardly allow us to judge...”

THE GRIM END OF THE ODYSSEY

With one brief exception — the convoy’s arrival on August 15 at the mouth of the Niger — the visit to Monrovia turned out to be the last positive experience of the expedition. From then, A Narrative mostly describes increasingly dangerous and eventually mortal obstacles: lack of fuel for the ships’ steam engines, equipment failures, noxious climate, and uncooperative-to-hostile Africans.

Since there was no coal to be bought in Africa, the ships’ only fuel was wood. There was plenty of it in the jungle along the river, but what was hard to find were natives willing to cut it for the expedition. Allen and Thomson reportedly complained about wood that turned out to burn poorly and natives who “having antipathy to any form of active exercise” refused to be hired.

The ships’ vaunted special features were another failure. As the expedition moved into more shallow waters, the vessels got stuck despite their flat bottoms, the rudders broke down, and the ventilation system provided no relief from the extremely hot and humid climate.

This malfunction was particularly disastrous because it worsened the suffering of officers and crewmen who increasingly succumbed to a painful disease that mystified the ships’ medics. For example, on September 18, 40 members of the expedition — including engineers essential for maintenance of the unreliable steam engines — came down with fever, vomiting, and uncontrollable hiccups for which there was no good treatment.

By September 21, Allen and Thomson reported, “nearly all of our crew were sick... Our deck was completely covered fore and aft... with hammocks and beds...” At night, two officers committed suicide to escape their agony.

As the misfortunes mounted, morale sank. On September 25, after several villages refused to provide the ships with wood, the boats were stranded about 20 miles from the sea and, as described by A Narrative, were “borne mournfully along... in the stillness of death... The retreating tide [displayed] arching roots of the mangrove dripping with the slimy fetid remains of animal and vegetable matter, rife with threatening fevers.”

By the time the expedition was called off and returned to the sea, its last medical officer and carpenter’s mate had died, two civilians were dying, and one of the boats was “without officers, engineers, or fuel.” Three of the chaplains were dead, and a young naval officer presided over the funerals. In all, about 130-140 members of the expedition had come down with the fever, and some 50 of them died before the ships returned to England.

It was a high price to pay for learning that the African chieftains were not interested in getting rid of slavery.

Some of the tribes discouraged any contact with the Englishmen by posting armed warriors on the banks of the river. According to Allen and Thomson, one approached leader agreed that “slavery might be against God’s and the British Queen’s laws, but we obey the laws of our King, and they are different.” Another tribal head said he would stop selling slaves if the neighboring village did the same, and yet another promised to give up the trade, but only “if no one pays for it.”

The most frequent response echoed King Obi, who signed the treaty but promptly declared it void. He argued that the slave trade was an important source of his revenue, and “If you want me to put (the trade) down, you must send plenty of ships” for the legitimate commerce. Since the expedition was unable to make such promise, Allen and Thomson wrote that King Obi believed they had “undoubtedly broken the treaty and have justified his return to the Slave Trade.”

“Upon returning to the shores of our country,” Captain Allen wrote bitterly in the last chapter of A Narrative, “after an undertaking replete with danger and suffering, we found an almost universal impression that we had failed in executing the purposes for which we were sent.”

Allen admitted that the expedition’s efforts were “worse than useless” and “humiliating... in the eyes of Africans,” but he put the blame squarely on the natives.

Africans, he wrote, “are far from devoid of civilization. They have institutions which have been perverted... They have justice, which lends its hallowed name to the worst of purposes. And they have commerce — the sale of their fellows... Kings, priests, warriors, down to the meanest slaves, all are traders in Africa.”

Allen proposed the establishment of “a British colony on the Niger... which would be populated entirely by native Africans” have “its own army and navy (and) work to eradicate the slave trade in the interior of Africa.”

“The very existence of such a community... would excite among its neighbors a desire to participate in those blessings and would be at once a normal and model society.” Thus, A Narrative concludes, it would echo “the prosperity of the colony of free blacks which the Americans have established in Liberia.”