The modern city of Calabar was founded by Efik families who had left Creek Town, further up the Calabar river, settling on the east bank in a position where they were able to dominate traffic with European vessels that anchored in the river, and soon becoming the most powerful in the region. In 1767 there was a massacre when the crews of six British slavers intervened in a dispute between the rulers of two competing slaving centers on the river, Old Town and New Town, or Duke's Town: 400 men were killed. Akwa Akpa (Duke's Town) became a center of the trade where slaves were exchanged for European goods.
Due to public petitions against slave trading, the British House of Commons held a hearing on the 1767 massacre in 1790. The British banned the slave trade in 1807 and began to actively intervene in suppressing the trade by ships of other nations. Between 1807 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron seized around 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade. HMS Comus appears to have been the first warship to have sailed up the Calabar River as far as Akwa Akpa in 1815. Her boats captured seven Portuguese and Spanish slavers carrying some 550 slaves.
On 6 January 1829 the Brig Jules was captured by HM Eden on the bar of the Old Calabar River with 220 slaves on board, who had been shipped in the river. On 26 February 1829 the Hirondelle was captured by the Eden within the entrance of the river with 112 slaves on board. On 5 January 1835, boats from HMS Pelorus captured the Spanish polacca-bark Minerva, which was armed with two 18-pounder and two 8-pounder guns. The ship's boats had sailed 60 miles (97 km) up the Calabar river and laid in ambush. Skillful handling resulted in the capture of the slaver with no casualties to the boarding party although the vessel's guns were double-shotted and the crew and the boarding party exchanged small arms fire. The slaver had some 650 slaves aboard.