John O'Neill Walsh Disappears from Freetown

'I feel so heartily sick and disgusted with the Commission Courts,' wrote an exasperated John O'Neill Walsh, 'that I am determined to interfere no further with them.'
The Portuguese brigantine, Gaviao, had been returned to her former owners even though the British Arbitrator admitted she had been slaving in a forbidden latitude. Not only that, she had been awarded over £1,500 in damages, a very considerable sum in 1821. No wonder John was upset. he was the agent and attorney for the Tartar, the British man-of-war which had captured the Gaviao on the Calabar River that flows into the Bight of Biafra.

Digby Marsh had been a lieutenant on the Tartar when he was ordered by his commander, Sir George Collier to proceed with a division of boats up the Calabar River as far as Duke Ephraim's village. On the way the pilot told him that two vessels were on the river looking for slaves. He saw a vessel and boarded it only to realise it was English and innocent; but his mistake alerted the Portuguese to his presence and, when he turned his attention to the Gaviao, he was just in time to see a canoe returning after landing two slaves in the bush. These and a third slave who remained on the ship had been bought from Duke Ephraim, an African chief, the previous day. Lieutenant Marsh and his men boarded the ship to find its slave decks laid and slave coppers and slave irons on board. Searching the hold, the third slave was seen being forced into a pair of trousers by a Portuguese sailor to make it appear he was one of the ship's crew.

When the Gaviao was captured she had on board up to a dozen hogs and three to four dozen fowl. Some of these were slaughtered to feed the four officers and up to forty seamen and marines who came on board the slave brigantine from the Tartar and her sister ship, the Thistle, and who also fed on the rice and spirits the Gaviao was carrying, while cassava and jerk beef were given to slaves who had been removed from the Constantia, another slave ship. The Mixed Commission Court in Freetown awarded the Gaviao's owners compensation for food consumed, but disallowed a claim for forty dozen sausages costing £37. 10s.

It was not just for food that the Portuguese were claiming. They sought compensation for damage to their ship's sails which occurred during the voyage, and for an anchor and thirty fathoms of grass cable lost during a tornado at Sierra Leone. 'Rubbish,' retorted James Hannah, the Prize master. The sails were left in better condition than they had been found, the anchor was much worn and the cable was rotten. Compensation was awarded.

There was still one more matter to be settled – compensation for the time the Gaviao was detained in Sierra Leone; and John O'Neill Walsh found he was being blamed for the delay. Had he not, after acting for the Captors at the start of the trial, written to the Registrar on 29th June stating he wanted nothing more to do with it, then left the colony without appointing a representative and only returned on 13th September? John would say he had no alternative. The master of the Gaviao had made villainous and false deposition and the presence of the Tartar's agent at the court would only add to the mass of perjury and inconsistency.

John was defended by Sir George Collier, who pointed out that his interference was forbidden by the Mixed Commission until his interference became useless by their having restored the Gaviao to its owners. John had been called on to produce evidence against the Portuguese when the same commission had disregarded that of Mr Hannah. Mr Walsh could do no more than resort to Mr Hannah.