CHASING A SLAVER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4791, 7 September 1883, Page 4

CHASING A SLAVER.

A letter recently received from Oomrpander Wiloox, of H.M. schooner Harrier, fs, says a London contemporary, likely to arouse memories of a stirring kind in many an old naval breast. The communication relates that the Harrier captured a large dhow of 122 tonß near Mohilla, Oomoro Islands, after an exciting chase. The dhow had several slaves on board, and the orew endeavoured to get rid of the blacks by running their vessel ashore, and forcing the slaves to wade to land ; but the man-of-war boats were too sharp for the slavers, and the blacks were pioked up. The dhow proved to be an old offender. Some years ago she was captured, but not condemned. Bhe has now been run ashore, but whether she has gone to pieces through this act of hor own orew, or whether the man-of-war's men have taken care to provide against .all possibility of her being salved by her owner, the Bultan of Mohilla, is not stated. It may be readily believed that the chase was a hot one. Many of ' these dhows aro exceedingly swift vessels, in spite of their uncouth and primitive style of rig. With their long, ungracoful, overhanging bows and tall raised afterdeok frame with bulwarks, they are scarcely moro sightly than a barge. Their masts are sharply inclined forwards and are very short, but their lateen -cut sails offer an immense surface, and as the ends of the yards are aim ont perpendicular with the plane of the deok, the violent angle of the masts ib in Borne measure relieved to the eye. Beauty of hull and elegance of rig, ■ however, seem to have very little correspondence with speed outside Earopean waters. The Fiji oanoo, with its two narrow hulls conneoted by a deck, and furnished with an oblong sail supported by a stump of a mast in the middle of the deok, is at once the ugliest and the swiftest oraft afloat. The boats used by the fishermen of Bombay, not unlike the dhow in rig and hull, offer another example of keen keels and an unlovely aspect. The flying proa of the Ladrone Islands, the Ohinese smuggler junk with its battened Bails and high stern, the Cingalese catamaran, the Turtle Island canoe, and even the little Bombay dinghey are all illustrations of the speed which may bo obtained by fabrics of the most primitive oonceivable types, shaped and sparred on theories utterly irreconcilable with all Western notions of " lines," spread of canvas, metacentres, " runs," and so forth. We may readily conceive, therefore, that the Harrier found the chase of the Sultan of Mohilla's dhow a very long job, and consequently a very exoiting one. Plenty of sharp navigation is required in the Mozambique Channel, and a native or Arab craft might easily lead a pursuer into trouble among the dusters of islands and shoals at tho Channel head betwixt o*pe Amber and the African ooast. To read of such a chase recalls times whioh Beem to have ended years and years ago j for here is no steam ; a small British sohooner is sticking to the skirts of the slaver, blazing away at her, perhaps, from timo to lime with a small bow gun, both of them exerting every art of seamanship known to them, watching eagerly for every slant of wind, and slipping along one after the other, eating into the breeze as only fore-and-aft oraft know hew, with a glassy bluo ripplo breaking away and rolling aft from the bows of either of them, whilet over the uncouth sideß of the dhow a score or two

of ohooolate-coloured faoes swathed in white head-gear watoh with growing terror the gradual approaoh of the little British sohooner lying well up astern. Plenty of exoitement there must be in races of thia kind, when the prize is some dozens of kidnapped blaoks who are to be set free if the Britisher wins or to be used and flogged as slaves if the dhow proves the flteter ship. Yet these Arab slavers are but unworthy feemen for English steel. They will sometimes siow fight, but their policy is escape, and they will run their vessel ashore and take their ohance of the perils of a quarter of a mile of Burf sooner than bring their oraft to a stand and fight out the question of slavery. In earlier times the English man-of-war's man afloat in suoh a schooner as the Harrier had few tougher tasks out out for him than the capture of Slavers, more particularly during the interval when the kidnapper was pronounoed a pirate, and man-handled accordingly when caught. For a while after the total abolition of the British slave trade in 1808, a money penalty only was imposed on persons found guilty of dealing in slaves. This effeoted very little, and in 1811 the traffio was visited by transportation for fourteen years. This again being found inadequate, the offence in 182- was rendered punishable by death, and that law oontinued in force for thirteen years. The consequences following c-pture rendered slaver captains and crews desperate. Tbey would haul off from a British cruiser if they oould, and, knowing a hundred tricks of seamanship, were very often successful in making their escape. If, however, they oould not get away they usually offered a fierce resistance, even going to the length of arming the slaves and fighting until they were overpowered, or, as in several instances, until a shot in the magazine blew the vessel to pieces. One of the most powerful pieoes of marine description in the language is Miohaol Scott's aocount of the destruction of a slaver in this way. There oan be no doubt that he drew from the life. The vessel having been boarded, some of the piratical crew released the slaves in the hold, and the ' English, in order to compel these unfortunate creatures to remain below, ran a cat ronade to the hatch, pointed tbe muzzle downwards, and threatened to fire. The manace waß disregarded, and the gun was accordingly fired into the pont-up struggling crowd of men, women, and ohildren. The discharge set fire to the vos.el, and the menof*war*men had barely time to escape to their schooner when the slaver blew up. A puff of blaok smoke emerged with a loud gurgling noise out of the oalm sea from the spot where the slaver had vanished, and shortly after " about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, men, women, and children, who had been drawn down by the vortox, rose amidst numberless pieces of smoking wreck to the surface of the sea, the strongest yelling like fiends in their despair, while the weaker, the women, and the helpless, gasping little ones, were ohoking and gurgling and sinking all round." " But crack on sail and trim the ship," run the words of a famous old song ; " Before we'll captured be, We'll have the niggers up, my boys, And heave them in the sea.*' This was the Yankee remedy for lightening the pursued slaver, and it was a remedy good for the fleeißg skipper in the sense that it was a direct appeal to the humanity of the chasing vessel, whioh was forced to heave to in order to - pick up the drowning blacks while Jonathan quietly glided out of sight behind the hori-on. Thero iB no occasion, however, to go to novels or songs for slaving adventures and expedients. Our naval histories are full of accounts of daring deeds, of desperate encounters, of thrilling pursuits, and captures of the villains who were made to sing triumphantly, Set every stich ot canvas, boys. To woo the freshening' wiad, ; Our bowsprit points to Cuba, The coast lies f*r behind ; Filled to the hatches full, my boys, Across the seas we go. With twice five hundred niggers in The stifling hold below. The chase of a slaving dhow in theae days oould hardly exoite the same maddening oagerxess to oatoh her and free her wretohed freight as was aroused in former times. The barbarities then practised are soaroely conceivable to a generation who live within a few years, comparatively speaking, of their perpetration. Small, narrow, suffocating holds were crammed with negroes and negresses and their babes, the miserable people being lashed together or manacled. Ihe horrors of the middle passage are painted in Btories of these crowded raft running short of water under a broiling sun, of the agonies and delirium of the Buffering blaoks below, of dead bodies and dying oreatures flung up to the savages on deck and tossed overboard to the sharks, until the wake of the vested ran away red with the blood of mangled corpses. Such horrors are no longer heard of; but when they were of oommon occurrence it is easy to imagine the kind of fierce determination tbat would animate the crew of a man-of-war in chase of a slaver. As a rule, the kidnapping oraft were oaptured by boats, and the duty was always exceedingly arduous and perilous in consequent of the numbers which the pirates were enabled to oppose to the attacking party. By way of example, it may be worth recalling a notable exploit performed in 18-4 by a four-oared gig belonging to Her Majesty's ship Hyaointh, and in charge of the mate of that vessel, Mr Tottenham. He had been sent to communicate with the Portuguese Governor, the ship then being off Fish Bay, on the West Af rioan ooast. Owing to a fog rolling up he missed tho port, and had to anchor for the night. Next morning he spied a brig at anohor without oolours ; she slipped, and mado sail, whereupon the gig chased her. Being to windward, tho mate overhauled her, and fired a musket across her bows, as a hint to heave -to. Her answer to this waß to open a port and run out a gun, which the gig dodged by falling into her wake. Finding the pluoky little gig meant to board her, the brig turned tail and ran ashore, where her orew, to the number of eighteen, inoluding three men who had been wounded by the man* of*warsmen's fire, deserted her, leaving one man dead behind. When taken possession of she waß found to be a vessel of two hundred tons, equipped for the conveyance of one thousand slaves, armed with two guns, a quantity of powder and shot, and a large stock of muskets, bsyonets, and swords. Suoh exploits are reoalled by the latest slaving adventure ; but fifty years ago they were of almost daily occurrence, whilst now the news of ono of Her Majesty's ships ohasing a slaver dhow reads like an anaohron* ism, and is of interest chiefly as a revival of a species of marine warfare whioh seems aB extinct as privateering. Yet it is certain that wherever the glorious St. George's Cross waves slavery cannot by any possibility flourish ; and the Harrier merely shows herself faithful to the noblest of our naval traditions by extinguishing the Sultan of Mohilla's dhow, and resouing her freight of captives from a oruel fate.