The modern
city of Calabar was founded by Efik families who had left Creek Town, further
up the Calabar river, settling on the east bank in a position where they were
able to dominate traffic with European vessels that anchored in the river,
and soon becoming the most powerful in the region.
In 1767
there was a massacre when the crews of six British slavers intervened in a
dispute between the rulers of two competing slaving centers on the river, Old
Town and New Town, or Duke's Town: 400 men were killed.
Akwa Akpa
(Duke's Town) became a center of the trade where slaves were exchanged for
European goods.
Due to
public petitions against slave trading, the British House of Commons held a
hearing on the 1767 massacre in 1790.The British banned the slave trade in 1807
and began to actively intervene in suppressing the trade by ships of other
nations.
Between
1807 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron seized around 1,600 ships involved in
the slave trade.
HMS Comus
appears to have been the first warship to have sailed up the Calabar River as
far as Akwa Akpa in 1815. Her boats captured seven Portuguese and Spanish
slavers carrying some 550 slaves.
Source: @NigeriaStories
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