Many factories lay on the east shore of the Brass just inside the entrance, handling the extensive trade in palm oil and ivory.

[10] At that time Akedo, about 26 miles (42 km) above cape Nun, was the market place for traders from the Brass river.

[7] In the 17th and 18th centuries the Portuguese controlled the Brass River, which was closed to British traders and was an outlet for shipping slaves to the Americas.

Don Pablo Frexas, in alliance with the chiefs of Brass and Bonny, was the main organizer of the river's slave trade.

... Brass, properly speaking consists of two towns of nearly equal size, containing about a thousand inhabitants and built on the borders of a kind of basin, which is formed by a number of rivulets, entering it from the Niger, through forests of mangrove bushes.

[16] In June 1830 the explorer Richard Lemon Lander and this brother John reached Bussa on the Niger, the place where Mungo Park had died.

[19] An account of the journey says, On the evening of the 17th of November, Richard Lander, who had preceded his brother, arrived in the "Second Brass River," which is a large branch of the Quorra; and, half an hour afterwards, heard :the welcome sound of the surf on the beach."

At seven o'clock on the following morning he arrived in the "First Brass River," (or the main branch of the Quorra,) which proved to be the stream already known to Europeans by the name of the Nun...[20] In 1838 the boats of H.M.S.

"[22] The report included the testimony of Captain Gentle Brown, who said, The slave trade is carried on by Spanish vessels, of from 80 to 200 tons, who procure false papers, and proceed from Havannah to Brass and other rivers in the Bight, there procure a cargo which is on shore at the town, ready to be shipped at an hour's notice, or when the vessel arrives.

"[23] On 17 November 1856 Thomas Joseph Hutchinson, Her Britannic Majesty's Consul for the Bight of Biafra and the Island of Fernando Po, concluded a treaty with the kings of the territories adjacent to the Brass River.

[24] Hutchinson reported of a visit to Brass on 9 July 1857, Through the whole passage of tortuous creeks that lead up to Brass there is not an inch of terra firma for human residence; and there is no trace of an abode at the town where any members of the human family (save the wretched negro denizens of this part of the world) could locate themselves.

The ruin of an old slave-trading establishment, with partitions made of tin-plates, and so dilapidated as not to afford shelter even for a lizard, constitutes the only relic of the Traffic in the town.

[28] S. A. Crowther, Bishop of Niger Territory, reported in 1885 that the native converts at Nembe, Brass River, had contributed towards building an iron church.

[29] At one time the town of Twon-Brass was the main port of the Nembe Kingdom, called by one historian "the Venice of the Niger Delta", and was dominant in the palm oil trade of the region.