The Sugar Barons

by Matthew Parker

  The arriving slaves immediately found that Jamaica offered much more hope of freedom than the smaller islands. On Barbados, there was no interior into which to flee, but Jamaica had hundreds of square miles of trackless waste and jungled mountains, where the maroons, the runaway slaves of the Spanish era, still had well-established strongholds and independent settlements. There was also the hope of escaping by sea, something not wise to undertake from isolated Barbados. Between 1673 and 1694 there were six sizeable slave revolts in Jamaica, which affected almost every plantation on the island. In December 1675, one planter reported, ‘many families were murdered’ and ‘now at this present there is at least one hundred Negroes up in arms at the north side, and have killed several white men, burnt and destroyed most the Plantations in St Mary’s parish’. Parties of militia were sent to track down the runaways, but in many cases they were unsuccessful, and the maroon population steadily grew. A further supposed plot was uncovered in 1677, and the following year a plantation only five miles from Spanish Town was taken over by its slaves, who then put in place a well-conceived plan to join up with slaves from other plantations, some as many as 16 miles away. The uprising was crushed, but this network among slaves caused great concern to the planters; even worse, a slave was implicated who had previously been judged by his master ‘so trusty a negro … I would have put my life in his hands’.

  The white leadership of Jamaica responded, as had the other sugar islands, by attempting to increase their white population. In the early 1680s, an Act of the assembly stipulated that the master of five black slaves had to keep one white servant, overseer or hired man for at least three months of the year or pay a penalty of £5 for each white man lacking. But this measure failed, in effect becoming a revenue act. Up until the late 1670s, white immigration to Jamaica had been steady, but thereafter it fell off sharply, due to issues at home, and because of the reputation the island had acquired for high mortality and brutality. It did not help that, as in Barbados, the planters were ‘verey severe’ to their white servants, as John Taylor,29 who visited the island in 1687, noted. While the ‘master live at ease at full feed tables’, Taylor reported, their poorly fed servants ‘are att hard labour in the open feild, almost burnt up by the sun’. Repeated efforts to attract New Englanders largely failed. As a visitor to Jamaica wrote to John Winthrop Junior, ‘All matters considered, I judge our husbandmen in Connecticut doe live better than a great part of the inhabitants here.’ In 1684, 164 of the Monmouth rebels were sent to Jamaica by James II, where they were to serve for 10 years, but these sorts of numbers were never able to compete with the thousands of enslaved Africans now being imported.

  According to John Taylor, it does not seem to have occurred to the typical Jamaican planter to deter rebellion by the enslaved population through better treatment. They paid no attention, he wrote, to the ‘misery of the slaves’, ‘whom the sun and tormenting insects in the feild are like to devour’. Instead, the planters attempted to deter runaways and rebellious slaves through the harsh punishments inflicted on those recaptured or deemed to have been plotting to escape. Because of the untamed interior of Jamaica, white settlers had more to fear from their slaves than in the smaller colonies; this resulted in Jamaica becoming the most stark and brutal of all of Britain’s West Indian slave colonies. For lesser offences, slaves were castrated or had a foot or hand chopped off. In 1677, a Joseph Bryan wrote to his brother about the ‘cruel death’ of a neighbour’s slave who had apparently planned a rebellion: his legs and arms were broken, then ‘he was fastened upon his back to the ground, a fire was made first to his feet and burned upwards by degrees. I heard him speak several words when the fire had consumed all his lower parts as far as his navel the fire was upon his breast he was burning near 3 hours before he died.’ Bryan, fresh from England, was clearly shocked. But a year later, ‘seasoned’ to the fearful garrison society of Jamaica, he described a similar punishment meted out to a runaway as ‘just rewards’.

  Sir Hans Sloane, the famous naturalist, like Ligon before him, was intelligent and sensitive enough to see the enslaved Africans as individuals, rather than as a group, and showed unusual curiosity about their spiritual beliefs and family relationships. During the 15 months he spent in Jamaica in 1687–8, he also documented the island’s slave punishments from this period, including mutilation and burning as described by Bryan: for the crime of negligence, Sloane wrote, ‘After they are whipped till they are raw, some put on their skins Pepper and salt to make them smart; at other times their masters will drop melted wax on their skins, and use several very exquisite torments. These punishments are sometimes merited’, he continued, the word ‘sometimes’ perhaps betraying his unease, but then concludes that the ‘blacks’ ‘are a very perverse generation of people, and though [the punishments] appear harsh, yet are scarce equal to some of their crimes’. John Taylor also details slave punishments, its victims ‘soe stuburn that with all this whiping, misserey, or torment, they shall seldom be seen to shead a tear, but rather at first laugh, and then afterwards stand scilent’. He also described the practices of forcing slaves to eat their own amputated limbs, and of rubbing molasses on to newly whipped slaves ‘for the wasps, merrywings and other insects to torment’. But Taylor concluded that ‘if you should be kinder to ‘em they would soner cutt your throat than obay you’.

  This deterrence seems to have worked for a short period, but in 1685 another serious rebellion saw 150 slaves up in arms. The Governor was forced to call up both regiments and more than 100 militia men, but more than 50 of the rebels escaped into the ‘unaccessible mountains and rocks’, from where they continued to launch attacks on outlying plantations. Of those captured, wrote John Taylor, ‘some were burnt, others roasted alive, others torn to pieces with dogs, and others hanged and their heads and quarters set everywhere here and there on poles’, but this now standard practice for unruly slaves failed to deter others. For the rest of the decade, the authorities were compelled to conduct an almost constant battle, with ‘great troble and expence’, against slave rebellions and the maroons of the interior.

  While threatened from within, the island’s leadership also feared the growing danger from France, and in the meantime struggled bitterly amongst themselves, with Peter Beckford, who would be elevated to the council in 1691, leading a planter faction that fought, with some success, to blunt the powers of governors sent out from London. One governor complained that ‘so scandalous an Assembly was never chosen. At least two thirds of them sit up drinking all night, and before they are cool next morning vote whatver is put into their hands by Beckford.’ Certainly the island, even by the standards of the West Indies, drank and caroused to an extraordinary extent, and no more so than in Port Royal, the ‘Wickedest Town in the West’.

  By 1680, Port Royal had grown into a town of considerable importance, in population second only in the English Americas to Boston. (Its value was underlined by its extensive defences – four forts, as well as a landward breastwork). Its fine harbour and central-Caribbean location had made it a hub of trade, with English, Portuguese, Spanish, Sephardic Jewish and Dutch merchants plying their goods, giving the town a distinctly cosmopolitan and tolerant as well as prosperous air. New England ships brought cheap provisions for the slaves, while ships from England brought goods for the master class (as well as a staggering amount of beer, ale, cider and English spirits). A visitor in 1682 called the town ‘the Store House or Treasury of the West Indies … always like a continual Mart or Fair, where all sorts of choice Merchandizes are daily imported, not only to furnish the Island, but vast quantities are thence again transported to supply the Spaniards’. In one year in the late 1680s, 213 ships docked at Port Royal, almost as many as in all the harbours of New England combined.

  The goods were loaded and unloaded at wharfs that ran along the landward side of the thin peninsula facing the harbour. On to this small area – less than 60 acres – were crowded some 800 buildings, many four storeys high to make the most o
f the limited space. Property in the town, according to an account from the 1670s, was ‘as dear-rented as if they stood in well-traded streets in London; yet it’s situation, is very unpleasant and uncommodious, having neither Earth, Wood, or Fresh-water, but only made up of a hot loose Sand’.

  Notwithstanding these disadvantages, visitors such as John Taylor in 1687 found much to admire, including the Exchange, with Doric pillars and twisted balustrades, where merchants and planters met to transact their affairs. The planters, in particular, competed with each other in ostentation and showiness: ‘the Gentrey’, wrote Taylor, ‘live here to the Hights of Splendor, in full ease and plenty … being sumptuously arrayed and served by their Negroa slaves, which always waite on ‘em in liverys’.

  According to Taylor, the rich planters with houses in Port Royal and nearby Spanish Town now did little work, but instead had ‘English servants to manage their chiefe affaire and supervise their Negroa slaves’. In the comparative cool of the early morning and evening, they rode out in their carriages to plantations behind the towns, with the Liguanea region a favourite destination, ‘as those of London doe to Isslington, Hackney and the Spring Gardens’. There, they enjoyed hunting, hawking and socialising, all accompanied by ‘a regalla of cream tarts, fruites, or what else they thinck fitt, but above all be sure they won’t faill of a good glass of wine, and a jolly bowle of punche’. The less wealthy ‘have noe other recreation, butt by enjoying their friends att the tavern … Also in the evening many young sparks and the common sort resort to musick houses [most, in essence, brothels] to devert themselves.’

  In Port Royal, legitimate and illegal traders alike, along with the privateer fleet, created a demand for provisions – brought in from neighbouring farms – and for maritime services provided by rope-makers, carpenters, coopers, armourers and many other trades. In turn, the prize cargoes were sold on in the town, and luxury items purchased with the proceeds. Gold-and silversmiths did good business, as did shoemakers, tailors, hatters, and comb and jewellery-makers, who worked with the local tortoiseshell. All, apparently, ‘live here very well, earning thrice the wages given in England, by which means they are enabled to maintain their families much better than in England’, wrote Taylor. Even a cooper’s wife could ‘go forth in the best flowered silk and the richest silver and gold lace … with a couple of Negroes at her tail’.

  However, it did not take long for visitors to Port Royal to realise that they were in the rowdiest city in the Americas. Taylor commented on the ‘many taverns, and an abundance of punchy houses, or rather may be fitly called brothel houses’. In fact, there were an astonishing number of drinking establishments,30 more than 100, and few activities in the town strayed far from the tavern, bawdy house or cockpit. Sir Henry Morgan had been deposed from his official positions in 1682 (with Peter Beckford taking his role as commander of Fort Charles, and, it appears, living with his young family in Port Royal),31 but Morgan continued to stir up trouble in Port Royal. ‘In his debauches, which go on every day and night, he is much magnified’, complained Governor Lynch. Morgan had a brief return to favour under the governorship of the second Duke of Albermarle, a fellow fast-liver who was more interested in sunken Spanish treasure than good government; both, however, drank themselves to death. Sir Hans Sloane treated Morgan shortly before his demise in 1688, aged 53: the doctor found him ‘Lean, sallow coloured, his eyes a little yellowish, and belly a little jutting out or prominent. Not being able to abstain from company, much given to drinking and sitting up late.’ Morgan rejected Sloane’s treatment, instead turning to a black doctor who gave him injections of urine and plastered him all over with wet clay. He died soon afterwards.

  But even with Morgan gone, his lawless, violent and self-destructive spirit lived on in Port Royal. John Taylor described the town as ‘very loose … by reason of privateers and debauched wild blades which come hither’. The favourite activity of the buccaneers, still operating as official, and sometimes unlicensed, privateers (in spite of constant orders from London for the suppression of their ‘mischief’), was to buy a pipe of wine or a barrel of beer, place it in the street, and force all the onlookers at pistol point to drink. A buccaneer might spend 2,000-3,000 pieces of eight in one wild Port Royal bacchanalia ‘in Taverns and Stews [brothels] … by giving themselves to all manner of debauchery, with Strumpets and Wine’. Taylor warned that the town, ‘fill’d with all manner of debauchery’, was ‘now more rude and antic than ‘ere was Sodom’ and might well share that city’s fate.

  Then came what seemed like Judgement Day. On 7 June 1692, the Rector of Port Royal, Emmanuel Heath, having been at church reading prayers ‘to keep up some show of religion among a most ungodly and debauched people’, was partaking of a glass of wormwood wine with the president of the council, John White, ‘as a whet before dinner’. He was sitting smoking his pipe when the catastrophe started. ‘I found the ground rolling and moving under my feet, upon which I said to him [the President] “Lord, Sir, what is that?” He replied, being a very grave man, “It is an earthquake; be not afraid, it will soon be over.” But it increased, and we heard the church and tower fall, upon which we ran to save ourselves.’

  Outside was a scene from the end of the world: ‘I saw the earth open and swallow up a multitude of people’, wrote Heath, ‘and the sea mounting in upon them over the fortifications.’ A Captain Crocket, another eyewitness, saw ‘whole streets sinking under Water, with Men, Women and Children in them … such Crying, such Shrieking and Mourning I never heard … a whole Street Tumbling down … this Town is become a heap of Ruins’. According to a later report by the council, ‘a great part of the inhabitants [were] miserably knocked on the head or drowned’. Within three minutes the earthquake had plunged half the town into the harbour. Two more shocks followed, each more violent than the last, until much of the town was underwater, with only the tops of houses and the masts of vessels sunk at the same time showing above the surface. One man, a Dr Trapham, survived by ‘hanging by the hands upon the Rack of Chimney, and one of his Children hanging about his Neck’, but his wife and the rest of his family perished. Others had miraculous escapes, ‘swallowed up in one place, and by the rushing of Waters to and fro by reason of the agitation of the Earth at that time, were cast up again by another Chasm at places far distant’.

  The rector found an open street and led a group of citizens in prayer for nearly an hour – ‘the Earth working all the while with new motions, and tremblings, like the rowlings of the Sea … I could hardly keep myself on my knees’ – before being rescued by boat.

  The violent tremors had the effect of liquefying much of the sand on which the town was built. The horror for anyone alive caught in this soupy mix was that it solidified rapidly: ‘some inhabitants were swallowed up to the Neck, and then the Earth shut upon them; and squeezed them to death’, wrote the rector, Emmanuel Heath. ‘And in that manner several are left buried with their heads above ground.’ One so trapped was Colonel Peter Beckford; fortunately there was someone nearby to dig him out in time.

  The next day saw the harbour choked with perhaps 1,000 bodies, bobbing up and down, causing an ‘intolerable stench’. Included among the dead, noted Captain Crocket, were ‘Mr Beckford’s two daughters’, Priscilla aged 17, and 14-year-old Elizabeth. Joining those killed by the earthquake and now floating in the harbour was a large number of corpses washed from their sandy graves on the nearby Pallisades.

  Many saw the dreadful hand of God’s punishment on the city, that ‘the Lord spoke terrible things in righteousness … as a Fore-runner of the Terrible Day of the Lord’. The council reported the disaster as ‘an instance of God Almighty’s severe judgment’ and vowed thereafter to better enforce laws relating to piety. Everyone could agree that the wicked city, and the most ‘ungodly people on the Face of the Earth’, had got what they deserved.

  Crocket observed that in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, ‘many of the old Reprobates are become New Converts; those that use to
Mock at Sin, Now Weep bitterly for it’. But he also noted that in no time, some were ‘at their old Trade of Drinking, Swearing and Whoreing; breaking up Ware-houses; pillaging and Stealing from their Neighbours’. Indeed, even before the tremors had ceased, men were at work robbing the dead, emptying their pockets or cutting off fingers to get at rings, while dogs gnawed at the heads sticking out of the ground.

  The earthquake, which also ‘threw down all the churches, dwelling houses and sugar works in the island’, was followed by widespread looting, and unsurprisingly, considering the gruesome scene, severe attacks of disease, including malaria, attributed at the time to ‘the hurtful Vapours belch’d from the many openings of the earth’. At least another 1,000 died in the aftermath from the general lawlessness and sickness. The large number rendered homeless attempted to build crude shelters on the mainland on the site of what is now Kingston, but ‘lying wet, and wanting medicines … they died miserably in heaps’.