‘To Relieve the Injured from the Jaws of the Oppressor’: William Roscoe and the Debate on Intercepting ‘Illegal’ Slave Ships in the Early Nineteenth Century

Following the passage of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, debate in the newly formed African Institution focused on how to suppress the slave trade in West Africa. Correspondence between Prince William Frederick, second duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, and William Roscoe reveals aspects of a wider debate among abolitionists on the strategies that should be deployed to bring an end to the export of enslaved individuals in the transatlantic slave trade. Between 1810 and 1813, discussion between Roscoe and Gloucester focused on issues of international law and the legality of intercepting the ships of neutral nations engaged in slave trading. Despite Roscoe’s reputation for gradualism during his earlier role in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, he argued in a lengthy letter to Gloucester in 1810 that Britain should use her military resources to rise ‘in her terrors’ and unleash vengeance on the ships of foreign nations engaged in slave trading. The practical implementation of suppression policies on the coast of West Africa, however, reveals the gulf between theory and practice in a context of international maritime warfare.