List of slaves liberated by the West Africa Squadron

In 1807, Britain made the capture and trade of new slaves illegal.
With competitors 'businesses still booming, the Royal Navy made an extraordinary transition – from an enforcer of slavery to a liberator. A special taskforce was setup, the West Africa Squadron, to intercept slaveships and free the Africans on board.
The mission was undermined by being poorly resourced and plagued by corruption. The Squadron only managed to capture around 6% of the slaveships heading across the Atlantic.
Nevertheless, over 50 years of patrolling three thousand miles of African Coast, between 1808–1860, it liberated 150,000 Africans.
These liberated slaves were taken to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where the identities of some of the freed men, women and children are recorded in the town archives.
It wasn’t a happy ending for all–some were apprenticed to exploitative employers, others were press-ganged into the navy. But it is evidence of a change that was sweeping across Britain and its empire.
This photo was taken for Black and British: A Forgotten History, a BBC series revealing the extraordinary long relationship between the British Isles and people whose origins are in Africa.