From the late eighteenth century onward, Krumen began working on European ships. By the 1790s the inhabitants of their original region were being hired as free sailors on European ships engaged in the slave trade. As the so-called "legitimate trade" replaced the slave trade in the nineteenth century and as trade along the West Africa coast increased, many Krumen signed on to the new vessels as seamen. In the process there developed Krumen communities around all the major trading factories of the coast, from Sierra Leone around to the mouth of the Congo River.