A true personal account of the capture of a slave-running ship by a United States gunship in the fleet assigned for the suppression of the slave trade. It is told in 1900 by John Taylor Wood, who, 50 years earlier, had been a young midshipmen on the United States brig Porpoise in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of West Africa, at the mouth of the Niger River.The captain and crew of the Porpoise sight a slave-running ship, give chase, fire upon it, capture, board, and take its captain and crew into custody, in irons and under guard. Wood describes: "From the time we first got on board we had heard moans, cries, and rumblings coming from below, and as soon as the captain and crew were removed, the hatches had been taken off, when there arose a hot blast as from a charnel house, sickening and overpowering. In the hold were three or four hundred human beings, gasping, struggling for breath, dying; their bodies, limbs, faces, all expressing terrible suffering.