Britain and the US believed in the use of sea power to meet immediate threats to commerce, but their respective political and economic considerations shaped their naval response to pirates and privateers during the 1820s. The US Navy (USN) protected American shipping, arranged convoys and hunted pirates in their lairs. The squadron protected the Gulf of Mexico and provided West African colonial support, but the former was the priority, and the government left West African issues to the American Colonization Society (ACS). The reality was that USN deployment was sporadic rather than the “constant cruising” Washington promised to placate the British. For its part, the Royal Navy (RN) policed the seas for pirates and privateers and monitored American naval activity. London dispatched naval reinforcements to the Gulf of Mexico, but they spent little time in the region. British naval deployment was more complicated and laboured under domestic political constraints.

Britain was suspicious of the American presence; nevertheless, the RN refrained from provoking the USN, or the vessels of other nations, in the Gulf of Mexico. London and Washington were wary of each other but kept the peace. In the Gulf, the only plan for cooperation depended upon circumstances and the discretion of local commanders. While the White House hoped that the British would cooperate with the naval force that the US was able to dispatch to West Africa, when piracy declined in the Gulf the Americans reduced their naval commitment. Consequently, there were even fewer USN cruises to the West African coast. When American vessels left the coast, Britons wondered when the US might return.

In contrast, in West Africa the RN was free to act as it chose against privateers, pirates and slavers. While the British wanted to suppress the slave trade for humanitarian reasons, officers also reported on the region's economic potential, in particular places like Fernando Po that could rival the West Indies. Still, divergent American and British policies, and accompanying domestic and global restraints, affected Anglo-American naval deployment and Britain's goal of achieving greater American activity along the West African coast. Again, cooperation was limited to that undertaken as the opportunity arose. But while their relations were tense, Britain and America co-existed in the equatorial Atlantic. Both sough to control their use of sea power rather than ignite a conflict, while furthering their growing objectives.