The author recounts a maritime mission along the West African coast undertaken to enforce anti–slave-trade measures and safeguard commerce, combining operational narrative with vivid onshore observations. Shipboard duties, interceptions, and local encounters illustrate the practical difficulties of patrolling the coast, while extended chapters examine indigenous slavery and foreign trafficking, coastal piracy, geography, natural history, languages, social institutions, and the effects of colonization by resettled populations. Statistical details, ethnographic sketches, and anecdotal incidents are woven together to present a multifaceted portrait of regional conditions and the interactions between seafaring forces and the societies they contact.