Caribbee

by Thomas Hoover

  Afterword

  In the foregoing I have attempted to distill the wine of history into something more like a brandy, while still retain­ing as much authentic flavor as possible. Many of the epi­sodes in the novel are fictionalized renderings of actual events, albeit condensed, and the majority of individuals de­picted also were drawn from life. The action spans several years, from the first major slave auction on Barbados, thought to have occurred slightly before mid-century, to the English seizure of Jamaica in 1655. The structure of race and eco­nomics in England's Caribbean colonies changed dramati­cally in those short years, a social transformation on a scale quite unlike any other I can recall. The execution of King Charles and the Barbados war of independence also took place during that crucial time.

  All documents, letters, and broadsides cited here are essentially verbatim save the two directly involving Hugh Win­ston. Of the people, there naturally were many more involved than a single novel could encompass. Hugh Winston is a composite of various persons and viewpoints of that age (such as Thomas Tryon), ending of course with the famous bucca­neer Sir Henry Morgan, later appointed Governor of Jamaica in recognition of his success pillaging Spanish treasure. Gov­ernor Dalby Bedford is a combination of Governor Philip Bell and his successor Francis, Lord Willoughby. (Neither was actually killed in the Barbados revolution. The revolt col­lapsed when, after defectors had welcomed Parliament's forces ashore, five days of rain immobilized the planters, whereupon a stray English cannon ball knocked down the door of a plantation house where the island's militia com­manders were gathered and laid out one of the sentries, de­moralizing them into surrender.) Katherine Bedford was inspired by Governor Bell's wife, "in whome by reason of her quick and industrious spirit lay a great stroak of the gov­ernment." Benjamin Briggs is an embodiment of many early settlers; his installation of the first sugar mill on the island and his construction of a walled compound for protection recall James Drax and Drax Hall, and his later career is not unlike that of Thomas Modyford, a prosperous Barbados planter who later became governor of Jamaica.

  Anthony and Jeremy Walrond are vaguely reminiscent of the prominent royalists Humphrey and George Walrond. Ed­mond Calvert was drawn for some portions of the story from Sir George Ayscue and for others from Admiral William Penn. Richard Morris is a combination of Captain William Morris and General Robert Venables, and James Powlett re­calls Vice Admiral Michael Pack. Most of the Council and Assembly members appearing here were actually in those bodies, and my Joan Fuller is homage to a celebrated Bridge­town brothel proprietor of the same name; of them all, I sincerely hope I have done most justice to her memory.

  Jacques le Basque was modeled on various early boucaniers—beginning with Pierre le Grand, the first to seize a Spanish ship (using dugouts), and ending with the much-hated French buccaneer-king Le Vasseur, who built Forte de la Roche and its "dovecote." Tibaut de Fontenay was the latter's nephew, who murdered him much as described over the matter of a shared mistress.

  Although Serina, as mulatto "bed-warmer" to Benjamin Briggs, had no specific prototype at that early time (a condition soon to change, much to the dismay of English wives at home), Atiba was inspired by a Gold Coast slave named Coffe who led an unsuccessful revolt on Barbados in the sev­enteenth century, intending to establish a black nation along African lines. As punishment he and several others were “burned alive, being chained at the stake." When advised of his sentence, he reportedly declared, "If you roast me today, you cannot roast me tomorrow." A contemporary broadside depicting the affair retailed briskly in London. Atiba's subsequent career, as a Maroon leader with whom the English eventually were forced to negotiate, also had various historical models, including the fearsome Cudjoe, head of a warlike nation of free Negroes still terrifying English planters on Jamaica almost eighty years after it was seized.

  Very few physical artifacts survive from those years. On Barbados one can see Drax Hall, on which Briggs Hall was closely modeled, and little else. On Tortuga, this writer chopped his way through the jungle and located the site of Le Vasseur's Forte de la Roche and "dovecote." A bit of digging uncovered some stonework of the fort's outer wall, but all that remained of the "dovecote" was a single plaster step, almost three and a half centuries old, once part of its lower staircase and now lodged in the gnarled root of a Ban­yan tree growing against the huge rock atop which it was built. On Jamaica there seems to be nothing left, save a few relics from the heyday of Port Royal. Only the people of those islands, children of a vast African diaspora, remain as living legacy of Europe's sweet tooth in the seventeenth century.

  The story here was pieced together from many original sources, for which thanks is due the superb Library and Rare Book Room of Columbia University, the Rare Book Room of the New York Public Library, the Archives of Barbados, and the Institute of Jamaica, Kingston. For information on Yoruba culture and practices, still very much alive in Brazil in parts of the Caribbean, I am grateful to Dr. John Mason of the Yoruba Theological Seminary, the Caribbean Cultural Center of New York, and friends in Haiti who have over the years exposed me to Haitian vodun. For information on Tor­tuga and the boucaniers, including some vital research on Forte de la Roche, I am indebted to the archeologist Daniel Koski-Karell; and for their hospitality to an enquiring nov­elist I thank Les Freres des Ecoles chretiennes, Christian Brothers missionaries on the Isle de la Tortue, Haiti. I am also grateful to Dr. Gary Puckrein, author of Little England, for his insights concerning the role slavery played in Barba­dos' ill-starred attempt at independence.

  Those friends who have endured all or portions of this manuscript, pen in hand, and provided valuable criticisms and suggestions include, in alphabetical order—Norman and Susan Fainstein, Joanna Field, Joyce Hawley, Julie Hoover, Ronald Miller, Ann Prideaux, Gary Prideaux, and Peter Radetsky. Without them this could never have been completed. I am also beholden to my agent, Virginia Barber, and to my editor, Anne Hukill Yeager, for their tireless encouragement and assistance.

  BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER

  Nonfiction

  Zen Culture

  The Zen Experience

  Fiction

  The Moghul

  Caribbee

  The Samurai Strategy

  Project Daedalus

  Project Cyclops

  Life Blood

  Syndrome

  The Touchdown Gene

  Also see www.thomashoover.info