 The Halifax Vice Admiralty Court, under Chief Justice Alexander Croke, condemned "Severn" as an illegal slave ship as both Britain and the United States had recently outlawed the Transatlantic Slave Trade.The court then ordered her sold at auction and Enos Collins and other investors purchased her in October 1811.They renamed her "Liverpool Packet", although she sometimes bore the nickname "The Black Joke", a name of several infamous slave ships.