West Africa Squadron The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron ( or Preventative Squadron ) at substantial expense in 1808 after Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807 . The squadron ' s task was to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa . With a home base at Portsmouth , it began with two small ships , the 32 - gun fifth - rate frigate HMS " Solebay " and the HMS " Derwent " . At the height of its operations , the squadron employed a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and marines . Commodore Sir George Ralph Collier , with the 36 - gun as his flagship , was the first Commodore of the West Africa Squadron . On 19 September 1818 , the navy sent him to the Gulf of Guinea with the orders , “ You are to use every means in your power to prevent a continuance of the traffic in slaves . ” However , he had only six ships with which to patrol over 3000 miles of coast . He served from 1818 to 1821 . In 1819 the Royal Navy created a naval station in West Africa at a captured slaving port that the British renamed Freetown . This would become the capital of the first British colony in West Africa , Sierra Leone . Most of the slaves the squadron freed would choose to settle in Sierra Leone as they would not have to fear being re - enslaved , a danger in any other part of Africa . From 1821 , the squadron also used Ascension Island as a supply depot , before this moved to Cape Town in 1832 . As the Royal Navy began interdicting slave ships , the slavers responded by abandoning their merchant ships in favour of faster ships , particularly Baltimore clipper s . At first , the Royal Navy was often unable to catch these ships , however with the capture of slaver clippers and new faster ships from Britain the Royal Navy regained the upper hand . One of the most successful ships of the West Africa Squadron was one such captured ship , renamed HMS " Black Joke " . She successfully caught 11 slavers in one year . Until 1835 the Royal Navy was only allowed to take slavers that actually had slaves aboard . This meant the squadron could not interfere with vessels clearly equipped for the trade but without a cargo . It also gave slavers being pursued an incentive to throw their slaves overboard before capture to avoid the seizure of the vessel . By the 1840s the West Africa Squadron had begun receiving paddle steamers , such as , which proved superior in many ways to the sailing ships they replaced . The steamers were independent of the wind and their shallow draughts meant they could patrol the shallow shores and rivers . The Royal Navy considered the West Africa Station one of the worst postings due to the high levels of tropical disease . This did however provide Royal Navy surgeon s with the experience they would use to effectively fight such diseases , but at a huge cost in lives . As the 19th century wore on , the Royal Navy also began interdicting slavery in North Africa , the Middle East , and the Indian Ocean . The United States Navy assisted the West Africa Squadron , starting in 1820 with the USS " Cyane " , which the US had captured from the Royal Navy in 1815 . Initially the US contribution consisted of a few ships , but eventually the Webster - Ashburton Treaty of 1842 formalized the US contribution into the Africa Squadron . Between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1 , 600 slave ships and freed 150 , 000 Africans . < / div >