Combat· West Africa Anti-Slavery Patrol
USS Yorktown vs Pons off Cabinda
One of the most significant American slaver captures of the era, and a notable case in the politics of the trade.
Off Cabinda on the West African coast, the sloop USS Yorktown seized the Pons, a bark sailing under the American flag that had taken on a large number of captives, the Marine guard providing the boarding party. The capture came under the African Squadron that the United States had pledged to maintain by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, and it was among the squadron's first major successes. The Pons case drew wide attention: the dreadful condition of the hundreds of Africans crammed aboard became evidence in Senate testimony and abolitionist literature of both the cruelty of the trade and the American Navy's role in fighting it. The captives were landed and freed. The seizure was bloodless but morally weighty, a concrete instance of enforcement actually working.
Record no. 315