Africa's Hong Kong

On the map Africa looks like a fat pistol holster, and about where the lower extremity of the butt would nestle lies the British Protectorate of Sierra Leone. This little nook of Empire has suddenly become important--because of its only port.

In the late 18th Century, when Great Britain frowned on the slave trade, the port became the sanctuary of Africans who feared chains and the slave driver's whip; and so the place was called Freetown. But because of its malarial climate this black man's refuge was also called "The White Man's Grave." In World War II Freetown has earned a new distinction: it is the busiest spot in West Africa.

The harbor of Freetown, which is Britain's best between Cape Town and home, lies on the south side of the River Rokell's estuary, five miles from the open sea, landlocked by forest-smothered, humidity-choked countryside. It is a huge roadstead, capable of mooring the largest fleets. It has a seaplane landing as well as facilities for watering, coaling and minor repairs. For the last few weeks its ample anchorage has been taxed by a constantly shifting flotilla of about 100 merchant ships of all pro-British registries.

The Battle of the Atlantic first made Freetown improtant--as an assembly point and stopover for north and southbound supply ships. With the necessity of concentrating on convoys in the North Atlantic, the Royal Navy was unable to give heavy protection to ships very far south of Dakar. Convoys gathered at Freetown, 500 miles to the southeast.

But last week the Freetown base suddenly became more important than ever. With Dakar and Casablanca reportedly about to be turned over to the Nazis, it was Britain's--and might be the Americas'--most strategic base on the east shore of the South Atlantic. If raiding action were to come from Dakar and Casablanca, counteraction would have to come from Freetown.

Word reached the U.S. last week that the British, conscious of Freetown's new strategic importance, were taking steps to strngthen it. The 22,424-ton Monarch of Bermuda, late of the pleasure trade deposited "between 3,000 and 5,000 troops" there, adding to the port's reputed garrison of 30,000. Freetown would never become a Singapore, but it was repidly becoming Africa's Hong Kong--a base dedicated to defensive harassment and delay.

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