Criterion, and the Saucey Jack. Built for speed, and manned by men who had seen service in voyages for legal plunder, these privateers were the ideal slavers. They went down the slave-coast flying any flag that pleased the fancy. If they fell in with a slaver of less force than their own they transferred her cargo to their own decks. If they met a small cruiser they cleared for action, and it is a matter of record that they made such a good fight, in many cases, that they beat off armed agents of the law. Of the five, four were captured, but, each of the brief reports says, "after a severe action." The Saucy Jack seems to have justified her name, for she not only escaped capture but "convoyed several vessels to and from the coast."
The Paz was a noted Yankee slaver. "Under the American flag" she "beat off the Princess Charlotte and killed several of her men." The Camperdown, an English slaver brig, of sixteen guns, "destroyed the sloops Rambler and Trial, of Sierra Leone, and carried off their black crews as slaves," and "made slaves of all the people going off in canoes."
And then there was the slaver Velos Passagero. She carried twenty guns and a crew of one hundred and fifty men. Having five hundred and fifty-five slaves on board, she fell in with the British sloop-of-war Primrose, but not until forty-six of her crew had been killed and twenty wounded by the war-ship's close-range fire, would she yield. The sloop lost three killed and twelve wounded.
Extended reports of these battles are not now to be found, but the brief statements of losses show how stubbornly the outlaws resisted arrest when they were of a force to give hope of success.
