Although technically coordinated with a British West Africa Squadron based in Sierra Leone, in practice the American contingent worked on its own.

The squadron was generally ineffective, since the ships were too few, and since much of the trading activity had shifted to the Niger River delta area (present-day Nigeria), which was not being covered.

However, the squadron's supply depot was in Cape Verde archipelago, approximately 2,500 nautical miles (4,600 kilometers) from the northernmost centers of the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra and southward.

The navy department did not move the depot location until 1859, when it was set up at São Paulo de Luanda, in Portuguese Angola, about eight degrees south latitude.

This however, did not stop the board of directors of the American Colonization Society from writing the President of the United States to bolster the Africa Squadron's "fleet" in 1855 in accordance with the Webster-Ashburton treaty in an attempt to crack down on sailors and slavers use of sea-letters to claim American nationality in their attempt to further the slave trade on the African coast.