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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.

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