Qualla: HMS Monkey (1826)

HMS Monkey (1826): Introduction

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 7 April 1829, somewhere among the Berry Islands in the Bahamas, a small British schooner overtook a Spanish vessel called the Josefa. The schooner was HMS Monkey, and she was outgunned - Josefa carried a 12-pounder and a crew of 21. What Monkey found belowdecks changed the arithmetic: 206 captive Africans, crammed into the hold. Seventy-nine men, 36 women, 48 boys, and 43 girls. During the capture, one woman died. Shortly after, one girl was born. The British Navy recorded the head count, paid bounty money per captive freed, and sailed on. HMS Monkey was not a famous ship. She was a Jamaican-built schooner, small and fast, assigned to the West Indies squadron during the years when Britain was trying to stamp out the Atlantic slave trade it had recently helped create. Her service lasted five years. In that time, she freed hundreds of people.

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HMS Monkey (1826): Built for the Chase

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Vice Admiral Lawrence Halsted, Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies Station, ordered Monkey built in Jamaica in 1826, designed along the lines of captured slaving vessels - fast, shallow-drafted, able to navigate the reef-strewn waters where slave ships hid. A sister vessel was ...

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HMS Monkey (1826): The Captives of the Josefa and the Midas

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sherer's first significant action came in March 1829, when Monkey captured the American vessel Borneo. But the April seizure of the Josefa near the Berry Islands was the engagement that mattered. The 206 people found aboard were documented with the clinical precision the Royal Na...

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HMS Monkey (1826): Promotion and Its Price

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Navy rewarded success. On 30 December 1829, Lieutenant Joseph Sherer was promoted to Commander for his captures - a significant career advancement earned through the grim work of boarding slave ships and cataloging human suffering. The promotion system was straightforward: in...

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HMS Monkey (1826): Wrecked on the Bar at Tampico

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 13 May 1831, Monkey was under the command of Mate Thomas Downes - not even a full lieutenant, which says something about how the Navy valued the aging schooner by that point. A local steamboat attempted to tow her across the bar at Tampico, Mexico, but instead ran her aground....

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HMS Monkey (1826): The Arithmetic of Liberation

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

HMS Monkey's record is preserved in Admiralty prize records and the correspondence of the Havana Slave Trade Commission. The numbers are specific: 206 captives from the Josefa, head money paid February 1831. Four hundred captives attributed to the Midas action, same payment date ...

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