One example of a Royal Navy ship of the line they served on was HMS London, which between 1878 and 1883 was stationed in Zanzibar bay where she helped suppress the slave trade.
Horatio Bridge, a United States Navy officer in the 1840s, described them as follows: The Kroomen are indispensable in carrying on the commerce and maritime business of the African coast.
In their canoes, they deposit these girdles in the crowns of their hats; nor is it unusual, when a shower threatens them on shore, to see them place this sole garment in the same convenient receptacle, and then make for shelter.
It is usual, in these extemporary strains, for the Kroomen attached to a man-of-war to taunt, with good-humored satire, their friends who are more laboriously employed in merchant vessels, and not so well fed and paid.
Their object in leaving home, and entering into the service of navigators, is generally to obtain the means of purchasing wives, the number of whom constitutes a man's importance.