Without a profit for almost a century, the escalation finally made the political balance shift in favour of the liberal faction, which wanted to sell the colony to Britain, and away from the nationalist faction, which wanted to retain the colony for reasons of national prestige.

On 5 March 1867, the Convention between Great Britain and the Netherlands for an Interchange of Territory on the Gold Coast of Africa was signed, which stipulated that all forts on the Gold Coast to the east of Elmina were to be handed over to Britain, while all forts to west of the town were to be handed over to the Netherlands.

[1] To give effect to the treaty, the ship first departed to Accra, to hand over Fort Crèvecoeur to the British.

[1] Matters took a turn for the worse on 26 May 1869, twelve days after the arrival of the new governor Cornelis Nagtglas, when several Dutch able seamen from the war ship Amstel, which had taken over the duties of Het Metalen Kruis, were taken hostage by the people of Komenda.

British negotiators managed to buy the hostages out for 15.000 Dutch guilders of ransom, but the public outcry in the Netherlands over the affair was so great that the minister felt obliged to send a military expedition to "chastise" the people of Komenda and Kwassie.