[2] Formed in 1808 after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807 and based out of Portsmouth, England,[3] it remained an independent command until 1856 and then again from 1866 to 1867.

The small British force was empowered, in the context of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, to stop any ship bearing the flag of an enemy nation, making suppression activities much easier.

With the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, Viscount Castlereagh had ensured a declaration against slavery appeared in the text of the Congress of Vienna, committing all signatories to the eventual abolition of the trade.

[7] In order to prosecute captured vessels and thereby allow the Navy to claim its prizes, a series of courts were established along the African coast.

Far from the Pax Britannica style policing of the 1840s and 1850s, early efforts to suppress the slave trade were often ineffectual due to a desire to keep on good terms with other European powers.

Most of the enslaved Africans freed by the squadron chose to settle in Sierra Leone, for fear of being re-enslaved if they were simply landed on the coast among strangers.

By the 1840s, the West Africa Squadron had begun receiving paddle steamers such as HMS Hydra, which proved superior in many ways to the sailing ships they replaced.

[13][14] As the 19th century wore on, the Royal Navy also began interdicting slave trading in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean.

[21] Journalist Howard W. French has argued that the impact of the Squadron has been overstated, calling it a "central prop" in encouraging a positive image of British history instead of "remorse or even meaningful dialogue about their slave-trading and plantation-operating past.

"[22] A 2021 paper in the International Journal of Maritime History argued that, despite the enthusiasm of some individual commanders, "the Royal Navy was not wholly committed to ending the slave trade," stating that the Squadron "accounted for less than five per cent of the Royal Navy's warships, comprising a flotilla that was unfit and inadequate given the vast area under patrol.

[24] John Rankin of East Tennessee State University has stated that "African and diaspora sailors made up one-fifth of shipboard personnel" and that Kru sailors "were self-organized into collectives, serving on board individual vessels under a single headman who functioned as an intermediary between the British naval and petty officers and his 'Kroo.

'"[25] James Watt has written that crews of the Squadron "were exhausted by heavy rowing under extreme tropical conditions and exposed to fevers with sequelae from which they seldom recovered," and that it had significantly higher sickness and mortality rates than the rest of the Royal Navy.

Patrick O'Brian centers the plot of his 1994 novel The Commodore, the seventeenth installment in his Aubrey–Maturin series, on his Royal Navy captain, Jack Aubrey, being given command of a squadron to suppress the slave trade off the coast of West Africa near the end of the War of the Sixth Coalition.