It was in March 1758 that Mr. Cummings saw his idea put into practice. A small squadron, under Captain Henry Marsh, sailed on the 9th of that month, carrying the Quaker with it. On the 30th April (the month in which Hawke scattered the French convoy in the Basque Roads), St. Louis de Senegal was taken, and the supply of slaves for the French colonies much reduced. An attack on the island of Gorée in May failed, and then the commodore sent on to the West Indies with the trade, which in plain English meant the kidnapped negroes.
So far the enterprise had been successful enough to encourage a repetition and to earn Mr. Cummings “the gratification of a handsome pension.” It was decided to complete the conquest begun by Commodore Marsh. The officer chosen for the task was Keppel. On the 26th October he sailed from Cork with four line-of-battle ships, one 50-gun ship, six smaller vessels, and a body of troops. He was driven back by bad weather, but started finally on the 11th November. On the way out the 50-gun ship, the =Lichfield=, was lost on the coast of Morocco. The loss was of no great importance to the squadron, but it is to be mentioned because we afterwards, and that at a time when Pitt took a tone of haughty superiority to the civilised powers of Europe, condescended to pay the bloodstained savage, whom we termed Emperor of Morocco, a heavy ransom to save the crew from slavery. It was one of the worst passages in our long ignominious toleration of the pirates of Barbary. On the 14th December Keppel was at the Canaries, and on the 28th he reached Gorée a little island near the Cape de Verd. The French post soon surrendered under the combined pressure of bombardment by the ships from the sea and attack by the troops under Colonel Worge on shore. Worge remained as governor of Senegal, and Keppel returned home.
While Marsh and Keppel were expelling the French from the slave-producing region of West Africa, the navy had taken a foremost share in delivering the first great blow at the French dominion in North America. Boscawen and Amherst had taken Louisbourg, and had thereby cleared the way for the capture of Quebec by Wolfe and Saunders in the following year. The incapable Government of France was now fairly launched into a war in Germany, and could spare neither attention nor adequate forces for the defence of its colonies.