Four Sierra Leone Recaptives

Abstract

Parliament passed in 1807 the act to illegalize (called prematurely to abolish) the slave-trade. A Vice-Admiralty Court where the Navy could bring captured slave-ships for condemnation was constituted in Freetown, the capital of the Colony of Sierra Leone. From 1819 international anti-slave-trade courts, the Courts of Mixed Commission, were constituted there too. Until 1864, when the last ship destined for the Atlantic slave-trade was condemned, slave-ships were regularly brought in and the slaves freed.