sentences:  After the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act became British law in 1807, the slave trade became illegal so slavers valued fast ships that were more likely to evade patrolling Royal Navy vessels intent on capturing them.In the late 18th to early 19th century, Sir Humphry Davy performed many experiments to determine how to lessen the corrosion that the seawater caused on unprotected copper sheathing.To this end he had various thicknesses of copper submerged on the shore and then measured how much the sea water had degraded each one.