a few 10-gun brigs were employed, they being generally slow craft
and very crank, in the open sea the fast-sailing slavers managed easily
to escape from them. Captures, therefore, were mostly effected by their
boats, which were sent up the rivers to lie in wait for the slavers, or
to attack them when they were known to be at anchor. This species of
service caused a great mortality among their crews, as a night spent in
the pestiferous miasma of an African river was sufficient to produce
fever among all those exposed to it, while the hot sun of the day was
almost equally trying to English constitutions. Thus for many years the
mortality among the blockading squadron was very great, and vessels have
been known to return home with scarcely men sufficient to work them, and
under charge of a master's assistant, or on one occasion the purser's
clerk, all the superior officers having died or been invalided.
Sometimes the boats were sent away for days, and even weeks together, to
watch for slavers, and were thus often successful in capturing them when
their ships had failed to do so. In this way a mate of the _Hyacinth_,
Mr Tottenham, who was a remarkably good shot, in a four-oared gig
chased a slave-brig, armed with a long gun and a number of muskets.
Having succeeded with his rifle in picking off four of the slaver's
crew, he compelled her to run on shore to avoid being boarded; the
survivors of the crew, eighteen in number, then abandoning her, she was
hove off by the _Hyacinth_, and proved to be of 200 tons, fitted for
carrying a thousand slaves, and armed with two guns, and a number of
muskets, swords, and bayonets.

Prizes were carried to Sierra Leone for adjudication, often with several
hundred negroes on board. To preserve the rescued blacks in health was
an onerous care to the captors; and instances have occurred where the
greater number of the prize-crew have died from fever. Such was the
case with the _Doris_, a small schooner captured by the _Dolphin_; her
gunner, who was put in charge, with nearly all his men having died, so
that she was found boxing about some twenty miles below Acra, without
any one to navigate her. Lieutenant Augustus Murray, with a crew of two
men and two boys, and a black who had survived the fever, was then put
on board on August the 12th. Sickness attacked the lieutenant and his
small crew, heavy gales came on, the schooner became so leaky that it
was with difficulty she was kept aflo