Samuel Chidwick, 74, has donated photographs taken by his father Able Seaman Joseph Chidwick, born in 1881, on board HMS Sphinx off the East African coast in about 1907. The photographs, on display at the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, show a sailor removing the manacle from a newly-freed slave as well as the ship’s marines escorting captured slavers.

Mr Chidwick, of Dover, Kent, said: “The pictures were taken by my father who was serving aboard HMS Sphinx while on armed patrol off the Zanzibar and Mozambique coast. “They caught quite a few slavers and those particular slaves that are in the pictures happened while he was on watch. “That night a dhow sailed by and the slaves were all chained together.

He raised the alarm and they got them on to the ship and got the chains knocked off them. “They then questioned them and sent a party of marines ashore to try to track the slave traders down. “They caught two of them and I believe they were of Arabic origin. “My father thought the slave trade was a despicable thing that was going on, the slaves were treated very badly so when they got the slavers they didn’t give them a very nice time.”