Captain Peter Strickland of New England: Trader and Consul in West Africa, 1864-1905 by Stephen H. Grant For the next twenty-three years, (left) The only known portrait of Peter Strick- Strickland carried out consular duties for land appeared in the National Cyclopedia his country and simultaneously engaged of American Biography (New York, 1899). in the mercantile trade in West Africa for his Boston patrons. In 1905, at age sixty- CONSULAR DUTIES eight, he retired from consular service, set- Consuls today stamp visas, issue pass- tled in Dorchester, and became a gentle- ports, and try to keep Americans in their man farmer. In his “retirement,” he acted jurisdiction out of trouble. The consular as a commission agent for the Tennessee- duties that Peter Strickland performed based Luckett-Wake Tobacco Company were quite different. He had no author- and closely followed African trade until ity to issue passports or stamp visas. He 1914. He died in 1921 and was buried in was virtually the only American living New London’s Cedar Grove Cemetery. full-time in Senegal. His consular services Strickland’s original writings are dealt solely with visits by American vessels housed in three major repositories in and their crews to Senegalese ports. the US.1 At sea, Captain Strickland kept His duties were to record the arrival rom New London, Connecticut, meticulous ship’s logs. As a merchant, he of American ships in port, certify to the Peter Strickland worked his way maintained detailed business ledgers with health of ships’ company, listen to protests Fup the ranks of the merchant ma- names of business partners, lists of ex- from captains and crew, take care of sailors rine from cabin boy in 1852 to master in penditures, and inventories of ships and in distress, verify that ships’ papers were in 1864. Initially dedicated to trade along cargoes. Not only was he a prolific letter order, receive oaths from importers as to the eastern seaboard and the Gulf Coast, writer, both with official business and per- the value of their cargo, and authenticate his vessels later ventured to the Caribbean, sonal letters, but he kept carbon copies foreign documents to be used in American South America, and Europe. He made his of his outgoing letters (over 2,000 letters business and courts. Consular regulation first voyage to West Africa in 1864, carry- written between 1876 and 1921). In his manuals included as many as 160 forms ing tobacco and lumber, and brought back retirement, he transcribed his personal di- for consuls to fill out. In addition, con- animal hides to make shoes for Union sol- aries into hardbound albums (over 2,500 sular officers were expected to report sig- diers during the Civil War. In the early pages). At eighty-three, in true mariner nificant happenings of political, as well as 1870s, Strickland became convinced that fashion, he began his journal entry by commercial, nature. New London was no longer a reliable scrawling the temperature and the barom- location from which to secure berths on eter reading of the day, but his shaking WEST AFRICA merchant ships. With his wife and two hand let the pen fall in mid-sentence. Today, an American consul receives young children, he moved to the Boston Today, the National Archives and Re- airline tickets for self and family, is met at suburb of Dorchester. There, he got a job cords Administation stores Strickland’s of- the airport, and is whisked to a furnished as an agent for Boston shipowner Mat- ficial dispatches as US Consul. Included residence leased by the embassy. The gov- thew Bartlett, who was sending a fleet of in the 272 reports are maps, photographs, ernment covers medical care and education merchant ships up and down the coast of postcards, newspaper clippings, telegrams, allowances for children and provides ame- West Africa. In 1877, Strickland took up and special reports. These records include nities through the embassy. Consul Peter residence in Africa. A daughter and a son inventories of American ships which un- Strickland, on the other hand, was on his eventually accompanied him, while his loaded and loaded cargo in the ports of own. From his home outside Boston, he wife remained in Dorchester with another Gorée and Dakar, Senegal, marine notes had to book passage on a vessel and pay for daughter. of protest lodged by American sea cap- it himself. He preferred passage under sail, In 1883, the State Department was tains, cases of relief to destitute sailors, which lasted about a month and cost him looking to expand its limited coverage of registers of official letters sent to and from $100, whereas the steamship voyage to West the African continent and sought out Peter the consulate, fees and invoices, and ma- Africa via Liverpool, Hamburg, or Bor- Strickland as the American most familiar rine insurance documents. deaux cost $300. Once in Senegal, he ne- with West Africa, American shipping, and Additionally, Strickland wrote a book, gotiated a lease with a local landlord for a transAtlantic trade. Strickland was offered A Voice from the Deep, published in 1873, residence with a separate room to serve as the first US consular post in the French giving his assessment of why sailors led the consulate. Peter Strickland was physi- colony of Senegal on the westernmost such low and dissolute lives—they lacked cally located in Africa, but administrative- tip of Africa. The contract allowed him the financial means to start a family, a ly he was living in France, for Senegal was to continue practicing his business and move that might have raised them from then a French possession. For his business keep any consular fees he received, but he their depths and nurtured them along the and administrative dealings, he worked would receive no official salary from the path toward strong religious belief and with the French, not with Africans. federal government. Strickland accepted. high moral principles. During his first trip to Africa in 1864 32 SEA HISTORY 114, SPRING 2006 Gorée Island, Senegal

in the schooner Indian Queen, Captain Dakar.” Gorée and Dakar constitute two Atlantic crossing to the US, the Carib- Strickland read over old log books and nearby, but distinct, places in Senegal. bean, and South America. Great Britain learned the horrific fact that the vessel “sel- Gorée is a forty-five-acre island off the had outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and dom made a voyage without losing one or coast, approximately two miles from the emancipated all slaves in the British Em- more of her crew by sickness, principally city of Dakar on the mainland. In 1883, pire in 1834. France outlawed slavery by what is called African fever. This seems to Gorée and Dakar made up one municipal- 1848. By the time Strickland arrived in have been caused by her going to different ity, hence the joint name. The island then Senegal, the slave trade had ceased, but places in the Rivers along the Coast where served as the major port, the reason why some domestic slavery still existed there. malarious influence is present all the time.”2 Strickland elected to live there. On Gorée, The commerce that Strickland- en Strickland took quinine as a prophylactic a natural strategic basalt rock fort with can- gaged in for most of his professional life against malaria and visited the local hos- non and ramparts is still visible today. The involved several other islands and trading pitals for vaccinations against yellow fever. island had been fought over as a strategic ports on the African mainland—western Washington and Boston paid close atten- military and economic outpost by the Por- traders rarely entered the interior. Border- tion to Strickland’s reports on health con- tuguese, Dutch, British, and the French ing Senegal to the south was Portuguese ditions in the territory—when yellow fever from the fifteenth to the nineteenth cen- Guinea with its main city of Bissau and or cholera was detected onboard an arriv- turies. Senegal remained French until the other trading towns of Cacheu and Bol- ing ship, word spread among shipowners country’s independence in 1960. Dakar is ama. Further south lay the British colony and captains to avoid the area or prepare to the national capital and, since 1900, has of Sierra Leone. American vessels stopped spend time in quarantine. “The Coast” was possessed the country’s largest port. at several islands forming the Cape Verde considered “the sailors’ graveyard.” Gorée is well known as a place from archipelago (then a Portuguese colony), The State Department assigned Cap- which Africans taken into bondage were three hundred miles west of Dakar. Strick- tain Strickland to a post known as “Gorée- packed onto slave ships to make the land moved freely from French to British to

Peter Strickland set up the consular office and his residence on the island of Gorée, just off the westernmost tip of the continent. This 1865 map from the Bouillet Atlas, published by Hachette in Paris, indicates by colors the West African towns administered by five European powers. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION AUTHOR’S SEA HISTORY 114, SPRING 2006 33 quantities and value domi- nating the manifest. Other items included a selection of manufactured house- hold goods and foodstuffs. On her return trip, the same ship carried mostly skins and rubber totalling just half the value of what she brought in. An examination of other Strickland records re- veals dozens of other types of American merchandise unloaded at Gorée-Dakar between 1884 and 1904, among them: whale prod- ucts, anchors and chains, AUTHOR’S COLLECTION AUTHOR’S From 1883 to 1905, Peter Strickland served as the first US consul to Senegal. He both lived and worked in cordage, pork, beef, and the white building to the left on Gorée Island, pictured in this vintage postcard. The building still stands and is ham, cattle, codfish and now painted crimson, a landmark visible to all ferry passengers from Dakar who disembark at the Gorée pier. herring, lobsters, oysters, oranges and apples, cat- Portuguese territories within a five hun- and down the west coast of Africa (117) sup, sarsaparilla, a sugar mill, a windmill, dred-square-mile area. Africans in these and voyages that made the crossing to and cigars and rum, baby carriages, bicycles, colonies were subjects of their respective from the United States (115).3 The ships washstands and cradles, rocking chairs, European powers. The colonization pro- for which Strickalnd kept records rarely organs and other musical instruments, cess was still taking place. The Berlin Con- sailed “non-stop,” and ships regularly clocks and lamps, and ice. Most of these ference organized by Bismarck to divide called at ports in the Caribbean, South products would be sold to the large French up African territories among European America, and the southeastern US before mercantile houses headquartered in Bor- powers took place the same year Strick- completing the circuit. deaux and Marseilles, which maintained land opened his consulate, 1883. No one These ships hailed from just six states: branch commercial outlets or “comptoirs” at that time envisaged decolonization, the New England states of Massachusetts, along the West African coast. The outlets, much less African independence, which Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, in turn, would sell wholesale to French would transpire less than a century later. plus New York and Pennsylvania. These merchants. data reveal the predominance of Massa- Between 1890 and 1901 twelve car- THE WEST AFRICAN TRADE: THE SHIPS chusetts in the West African trade. While goes of ice from Maine lakes and ponds During his twenty-one full years as of- Strickland noted merely the raw data re- were unloaded at Gorée-Dakar. The largest ficial consul (1884-1904), Peter Strickland garding stops by American vessels from quantity registered at five hundred tons, recorded information on 255 visits by sev- year to year, in the dispatches he sent the transported in the three-masted schoo- enty-eight American ships: two-masted State Department, and in letters and his ner José Oliviera in 1887, packed in 300 schooners (43), barques (13), brigs (11), journal, the consul explained the down- bags of sawdust for insulation. In 1901, three-masted schooners (6), and barquen- ward trend of American shipping, which a brig imported forty-two tons of ice, the tines (5). Each had been built between he witnessed over two decades. In the first last time this item was listed on consular 1858 and 1892 in shipyards located in ten years of his tenure, 176 American ves- records. Maine (45), Massachusetts (30), Connect- sels stopped at Gorée-Dakar, in the last The African products shipped aboard icut (1), New Hampshire (1), and New eleven years, only seventy-nine. Strickland Jennie Cushman, although not atypical, did York (1), with a range in tonnage from attributed the decline to increased compe- not necessarily reflect the primary exports 35 to 790 tons, averaging 304 tons. The tition from Western Europe and a dimin- from the region. Groundnuts or peanuts, highest tonnage belonged to the barque ished interest in West African trade from different types of fossil resins (gum ara- Willard Mudgett of Boston and the low- American merchants and shipowners. bic and gum copal), and palm oil kernels est was the schooner T.V.C. Hawes from dominated exports to the US. Gum arabic Chatham, Massachusetts. THE WEST AFRICAN TRADE: CARGO was used for candies and pills, gum copal For the most part, one can divide the An 1886 cargo list from the barque Jen- was used to make varnish. itineraries of the 255 arrivals into two nie Cushman reveals a varied, but typical, The stated value of inbound cargo to equal categories: voyages that moved up cargo with tobacco in disproportionate the port of Gorée-Dakar over the years 34 SEA HISTORY 114, SPRING 2006 1884-1904 averaged $11,792; the lowest of their business, either through their cor- number of visits by American vessels. value was $40 for a single cargo, the high- respondents in Europe or if the articles be Competition with European powers and est was $53,343. The outbound cargo dur- bulky sometimes direct from America.” high tariffs ultimately proved too stiff for ing this same time averaged $8,461, with In 1891, Strickland lamented that the American commerce to thrive past the a low of $40 for one cargo and a high of Europeans were conquering the West Afri- turn of the century. When he traveled in $34,260 for another. American ships made can market with their large fast steamships 1883 from Boston to Gorée on his own stops in Cape Verde, Bathurst, Bissau, Si- while the United States was still sending a dime to take up the job as consul, he erra Leone, the Rivers, and or St. Louis or few meager sailing vessels. In a letter to a sailed as a passenger on a 274-ton barque. Rufisque in Senegal. friend in New York City, he wrote in met- When Strickland retired from consular aphoric terms, “Uncle Sam is taking the service and returned to New England on PETER STRICKLAND’S OBSERVATIONS sleep of Rip van Winkle while the parasites his last sea voyage in 1905, he traveled ON AFRICAN TRADE of Europe are corrupting his blood.” by steam. He and his daughter took the As part of his consular duties, Peter In the 1880s and 1890s the United 6,379-ton French steamer La Cordillère Strickland included his assessment of the States exported a long list of products to from Gorée to Bordeaux and transferred general commercial situation in the region. West Africa; by the turn of the century to the White Star Line’s RMS Republic in In an 1884 dispatch, Strickland estimated the inventory had declined substantially. Liverpool to sail to Boston. Bracketing the annual amount of American trade in Strickland wrote to a business colleague his career abroad was the transition from West Africa. He pointed to the fierce com- in Providence in 1903, “There is nothing sail to steam—a shift in the maritime petition with the French. “The amount American sold here except tobacco, petro- world that was nearly complete upon his of American trade cannot be less than leum, and cotton seed oil.” retirement. one million dollars in value, but of this In 1895, Strickland reported that only about one fifth part is brought here the stability of American commerce in by Americans who have been constantly the region was threatened by a new “dis- RMS Republic driven off by the competition because the criminating duty of seven percent levied conditions of the trade are against them. by the Government of this Colony and, I French agents in Boston and New York believe, by the Government of nearly all buy such goods as can be obtained and the French colonies on all imported goods ship them directly in foreign vessels.”4 that are not produced in France. This tariff When Strickland established the con- came into existence in just three months sulate, he recognized that the US con- after our own McKinley tariff began to trolled only about twenty percent of the take effect.” Ten years later, Strickland left local import market—the rest belonged Senegal for good, not only in ill health, but RMS REPUBLIC.COM COURTESY to France. In his reports as consul, he disillusioned with the decreased American Peter Strickland booked passage to Senegal to explained that, when he first arrived in commercial presence. set up the US Consul’s office in 1883 aboard West Africa, the large French commercial Strickland’s first merchant trip to the barque Jennie Cushman. Twenty years houses employed agents in the United West Africa brought back animal hides later, he traveled home to Boston on the States to buy goods and transport them in to make shoes for Civil War soldiers. He steamship RMS Republic. American ships. In the 1860s and 1870s, moved there to set up business because he the French in Senegal employed the few was awed by the expanse and accessibility Notes American commercial agents working of Africa—ten million inhabitants living 1Repositories in Washington, DC, Mystic, in West Africa (Strickland was one) and within his jurisdiction with an immense CT, and Newark, DE. placed their orders through them. Two de- coastline. He saw the promise of vast mar- 2Peter Strickland journal, 21 April 1864. cades later, the French handled each stage keting opportunities for his country with- University of Delaware, Special Collec- of the trade operation themselves. out losing sight of the risks associated with tions, folder 3. 3 In an 1887 dispatch, Strickland ex- living and trading in Africa. Not all data were recorded for the 255 panded his list of competitors from Strickland’s records reveal many rich arrivals. Averages were calculated for the “French” to “European.” He confirmed details concerning the historic trade be- ships with complete information, in this that American merchants were being tween the east coast of the US and the example 232 ships. 4Department of State, NARA RG 59, bypassed. “It is for the interest of all large west coast of Africa, plus the types of sail- Strickland dispatch no. 8, 10 April 1884. European concerns to discourage as much ing vessels that engaged in this trade and as possible direct trade with America: the value and precise quantities of their Stephen Grant, a native of Boston, served as hence they curtail their dealing with resi- diverse cargoes. a diplomat in West Africa for twenty years. dent American merchants and import While recognizing the boon to Ameri- The author of three books on old postcards, such articles of American production as can industry in a post-Civil War economy, he is currently writing a biography of Peter are absolutely needed in the prosecution Strickland noted a steady decline in the Strickland. SEA HISTORY 114, SPRING 2006 35