Combat· West Africa Anti-Slavery Patrol
USS Marion off Congo River
A pair of captures during the African Squadron's most active period.
Off the Congo River, a notorious slaving ground feeding the markets of Cuba and Brazil, Marines aboard the sloop USS Marion took part in the seizure of the American bark Orion, and within days the Marion took a second slaving bark in the same waters. The double capture in under a week reflected the sharp increase in the squadron's effectiveness in the late 1850s, when a new forward base at Luanda and the arrival of steam warships finally let American ships spend real time on the coast where the slavers worked. The captures were bloodless. The Congo mouth was one of the last strongholds of the trade, drawing slavers right up to the eve of the Civil War, and the Marion's seizures there were part of the surge of activity that marked the patrol's final, more successful years.
Record no. 367