Apocalypse 1692

by Ben Hughes

  On May 30, Jamaica was spotted. At a little over 4,200 square miles, it was much larger than any other English colony in the Caribbean. The first sight to greet the visitors was the Blue Mountains. A lofty range, rising to a height of 7,400 feet, these rocky peaks dominated the eastern half of the island. Below, clinging to the middle and lower slopes, lay cloud forest, thick with vegetation. Lower down this gave way to woods, rainforests, and savannahs. As the Swan drew closer, Point Morant, the island’s easternmost tip, hove into view. From the deck, the passengers could make out a string of houses and a battery built on a bluff covering several ships in the bay. The fleet then skirted the south coast, passing the salt pans of St. David’s Parish and Cow Bay and, in the neighboring parish of St. Andrew’s, the estuaries of the Hope and Cane Rivers which were interspersed with pestilent swamplands and flanked by sugar plantations built on the rich alluvial plains that dominated Jamaica’s central southern coast. On the Swan’s approach, the seemingly endless rows of eight-foot-high canes were approaching maturity. Among this sea of green rose mills and boiling houses, the elegant homes of the planters and the squalid huts of their slaves. As the fleet was spotted, signal fires were lit on shore and the long-anticipated news of the new governor’s arrival spread westward toward Port Royal.

  The next landmark to appear to those watching from the deck of the Swan was Point Cagway, a low-lying sand spit which jutted out some ten miles into Kingston Bay. As the ships neared its western tip, firing a series of guns to alert the residents to their presence, Port Royal was spotted. The tower of St. Paul’s Church, each corner of which was decorated with a large pendant to mark the occasion, rose above the headstones of a nearby cemetery lying on the goat-cropped scrubland just beyond the town limits. A mile to the west, the flags of the union fluttered with the land breeze above the low, gun-studded ramparts of Fort Rupert, named after Charles I’s nephew, where two hundred militiamen dressed in bright scarlet coats lined with blue stood to arms. In the harbor to the north, guarded by Forts Walker, James, and Carlisle, a forest of masts rose above the warehouses lining the quayside; the star of David, mounted on the Jewish community’s synagogue deep in the heart of the town, glinted in the sun. The multistoried residences of the town’s chief administrators, merchants, and the factors of the Royal African Company abounded. Built in the English style, they appeared incongruous with the tropical clime. By the waterfront, fruit, vegetable, fish, and meat markets were alive with activity. Everywhere was industry, activity, and noise, while the smell of decay, a constant in a tropical town with little sanitation, wafted out to the ships on the land breeze. Mingling with the acrid tang of salt spray, the sweet, sickly stench permeated the air.26

  CHAPTER 2

  As Hot as Hell, and as Wicked as the Devil

  JAMAICA AND PORT ROYAL

  May–June 1690

  The Dunghill of the Universe, the Refuse of the Whole Creation, the Clippings of the Elements, a shapeless pile of Rubbish confus’ly jumb’d into an Emblem of the Chaos, neglected by Omnipotence when he form’d the World into its admirable Order. The Nursery of Heavens Judgements, where the Malignent Seeds of all Pestilence were first gather’d and scatter’d thro’ the Regions of the Earth, to Punish Mankind for their Offences. The Place where Pandora fill’d her Box, where Vulcan Forg’d Joves Thunderbolts, and that Phæton, by his rash misguidance of the Sun, scorch’d into a Cinder. The Receptacle of Vagabonds, the Sanctuary of Bankrupts, and a Close-stool for the Purges of our Prisons. As Sickly as a Hospital, as Dangerous as the Plague, as Hot as Hell, and as Wicked as the Devil.

  —Edward Ward, A Trip to Jamaica, 1698

  THE ENGLISH INVASION of Jamaica in 1655 was born out of failure. Admiral William Penn and General Robert Venables, the commanders in chief of the naval and army forces appointed by Oliver Cromwell to lead his great Western Design, had originally been ordered to capture the Spanish possessions of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Flushed with success following victories over the Scottish, Irish, and Dutch, in the mid-1650s England’s warmongering Lord Protector set his sights further afield. What better target than the Papists’ American colonies? While Louis XIV’s France was a fearful prospect, the Spanish possessions in the West Indies were believed to be both immensely wealthy and poorly defended. They promised great commercial opportunities and appeared ripe for the taking. Such Caribbean buccaneering also raised fond memories of the Elizabethan golden age. The stories of Hawkins, Raleigh, and Drake battling the Spanish in the tropics and returning home with their ships laden with booty for their virgin queen were regularly reprinted in the 1650s as safe patriotic fare after years of divisive civil war. The Black Legend of Spanish cruelty had been given further impetus by the first English-language release of Bartolomé de las Casas’s classic A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Under the title The Tears of the Indians, the publication was instigated by Cromwell himself. Not only would the Western Design bring territory and wealth to England, it would also free the inhabitants from the “Miserable Thraldome and bondage both Spiritual and Civill” of Spain.1

  Despite such promising propaganda, the expedition was a disaster. Poorly prepared, armed, and equipped and with a dizzying ignorance of both their opponents and their destination, Penn and Venables set out from Portsmouth in December 1654 with an army of roughly three thousand men. A mixed bag, comprising a core of veterans of the New Model Army mingled with the flotsam and jetsam of the poorer neighborhoods of the cities of the British Isles, the army was “bolstered” on its arrival in the Caribbean by six thousand men recruited at Barbados and St. Kitts. According to Venables’s wife, who accompanied her husband, these men were “the Devil’s instruments.” Many were indentured servants and of even worse quality than those recruited in England. By the time the fleet reached Hispaniola, the troops were already on half rations; issues of divided command and arguments over the distribution of plunder further lowered morale. Landing forty miles west of Santo Domingo on April 14, 1655, the troops found the conditions unbearable. A lack of fresh water and enervating heat and humidity decimated the ranks. The tatterdemalion band struggled eastward for three days only to find that their siege equipment was inadequate when they reached their destination of Santo Domingo. Skillfully timed sallies by the garrison’s cavalry made up of lance-wielding slaves, volleys from the great guns mounted on the city walls, and a constant drain on manpower brought about by dysentery resulted in just two thousand men being fit enough to fight by the end of April. Faced with the imminent fragmentation of his army, Venables abandoned his mission and on May 4, 1655, the remaining troops reembarked. Neither he nor Penn relished the prospect of returning to England empty-handed: the Lord Protector was not known for taking failure lightly. Penn and Venables decided to make a descent on another of the Spaniards’ Caribbean possessions instead.

  WHEN FIRST EXPLORED by Christopher Columbus in 1494, Jamaica had been home to as many as fifty thousand Tainos. After a hostile reception and a brutal demonstration of strength typical of early European encounters with the indigenous people, Columbus had departed only to return in 1503 when shipwrecked on the south coast. Later colonists, under orders of Columbus’s son, Diego, built a city on the north coast and forced the Tainos to dig for gold. Little was discovered, the workers died in droves from European diseases to which they had no immunity, and the town was abandoned for a more wholesome site in the south. Built on plains six miles from the sea, by the mid-seventeenth century San Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town) consisted of several churches, a monastery, and one hundred brick-and-timber houses, roofed with tiles and low-built to resist the earthquakes which frequently shook the island. The surrounding plains were cultivated with sugarcane, cacao, pimento, and cassava. The crops were principally for domestic consumption and, by 1655, were tended by African slaves, who had long since replaced the much diminished Tainos. Hides taken from the cattle which roamed free in the savannas were occasionally exported, but the island had little economic importance.


  Jamaica was soon overwhelmed by Penn and Venables’s troops. The island’s defenders fled on first contact and the governor, Juan Ramirez, surrendered. The terms were harsh, however, and led to a prolonged resistance. Orchestrated by Spanish officers leading bands of slaves, the guerrillas were ably supported by the maroons, escaped Africans who had established themselves in the heavily forested and mountainous interior. Their rapid strikes, combined with disease and a lack of provisions, took a heavy toll. Within twelve days of landing, Venables’s companies were at half strength and the guerrillas grew increasingly daring. English stragglers were picked off and found later with their throats cut and their bodies mutilated. At one stage the guerrillas even entered the capital, now known as Spanish Town, and burned several buildings before being driven off. First Penn and then Venables chose to sneak back to England with the majority of the fleet. Both were imprisoned in the Tower by Cromwell on their return.2

  Determined to salvage some pride from the ruins of his Western Design, Cromwell’s reaction was swift. By promising every man who chose to immigrate to Jamaica twenty acres of land and offering ten to each woman, the Lord Protector attracted an eclectic combination of colonists: Quakers from Barbados who had made themselves unwelcome in Bridgetown by refusing to take up arms in the militia; Portuguese Jews expelled from Brazil; two thousand boys and girls sent out from Ireland as indentured servants; several dozen Scottish “robbers and vagabonds” rounded up by county sheriffs and transported; one thousand men from the English colonies in the Leeward Islands together with their women and slaves; and numbers of half-savage buccaneers of a variety of nations whose rudimentary bases on the island of Tortuga and the wild north coast of Hispaniola were coming under increasing pressure from the Spanish military. In exchange for a pledge to act as an auxiliary defense force in case of foreign attack, the latter were offered sanctuary in Jamaica from where they could refit their ships and sell the booty they captured. This unlikely amalgamation of settlers survived the guerrilla warfare waged by the Spanish holdouts in the first five years of Jamaica’s history as an English colony and, once Juan de Bolos, the leader of the Spanish maroons, had been encouraged to switch sides, the fear of reconquest by the Spanish waned. By 1660 the last of the holdouts had been expelled to Cuba and Jamaica was firmly in English hands.3

  With the colony’s survival assured, the next step was economic self-sufficiency. Several ex-soldiers turned their hands to farming. The soil was rich and land abundant, but the tobacco, indigo, and cotton produced by the scattered smallholdings brought little revenue. The island’s location offered a far better alternative. Strategically positioned at the heart of the Caribbean, Jamaica made an ideal base for raiding the Spanish Main, Hispaniola, and Cuba whilst also providing unparalleled access to the sea lanes used by the annual treasure fleets bound for Cadiz. For the veterans of Penn and Venables’s expedition and the recent influx of buccaneers, the temptation was irresistible. At first, these attacks had an official veneer. As well as the buccaneers’ vessels, the strike force consisted of a handful of English naval ships left behind on Admiral Penn’s departure commanded by Captain Christopher Myngs, an aggressive young officer from Norfolk related to the much-celebrated Sir Cloudesley Shovell. This motley crew proved the scourge of the Spanish Caribbean. In 1658 they destroyed the ports of Tolu and Santa Marta in present-day Colombia, and the following year Cumana, Puerto Cabello, and Coro in what would become Venezuela were sacked. In 1662 Santiago de Cuba was targeted. The following year Myngs gathered fourteen ships and 1,400 men and raided Campeche in Central America. About 150,000 pieces of eight were looted, but Myngs was severely wounded and returned to England to recuperate. He would never see Jamaica again.4

  THE RISE OF THE buccaneers fueled the growth of Port Royal, the island’s principal naval base. Situated on the end of a sand spit known to the English as Point Cagway which jutted out into Kingston Bay, the port boasted a superb natural harbor where “a ship of 1000 tunn may lay her sides to the shore . . . and load or unload with planks afloat.” The Spanish had used the area to careen their ships, but had left it undeveloped—perhaps due to its susceptibility to earthquake. Two months after Penn and Venables’s arrival, the English, ignorant of such concerns, began building a fort, which was named after the Lord Protector, on the southern shore from locally quarried limestone. Twenty guns were mounted on firing platforms of timber and sand, and in 1656 a round central tower was added. Houses were built to the north, and naval and merchant vessels began anchoring in the sheltered roads beyond. Warehouses and a quayside were built, sutlers (merchants or victualers who sold provisions to an army in the field) were granted licenses, and a fortified house was constructed for the commander in chief. By 1658 there were at least three rows of houses and a church was under construction, and by the following year the entire northern shore had been occupied. By 1662 the residents had begun to refer to the burgeoning settlement as Port Royal. New buildings crept ever southward across the point and Fort Cromwell was rebuilt in stone.5

  ENGLAND, MEANWHILE, was undergoing dramatic change. Cromwell had died, Charles II had been restored to the throne, and peace had been made with Spain. Unwilling to antagonize his new allies, the king forbade further Caribbean raids. The Jamaican buccaneers, unconcerned about official policy, continued regardless. So lucrative was the business that the king’s officials got involved, and Lord Windsor, governor from 1661 to 1663, was recalled to answer for his complicity. His replacement, Sir Thomas Modyford, proved no more compliant. After twenty years’ residence on Barbados, Modyford was one of several of the island’s planters who had decided that their future lay in Jamaica. Barbados’ lands had all been claimed and its soils were nigh-well exhausted. In his seven years in office, Modyford proved a capable and energetic administrator. He granted over 1,800 land patents totaling upward of 300,000 acres—triple that of the total available land in Barbados, and encouraged the immigration of a thousand poor, white Barbadians to oversee the new allotments. Each man was granted thirty acres and given an additional thirty for each member of his family. Sugar production took off as large-scale plantations emerged from the former pattern of smallholdings, especially along the fertile southern-coast parishes of St. Catherine, St. John’s, and Clarendon. By 1670 forty-four planters held 1,000 or more acres, and sixteen held 2,000 or more—larger individual estates than any seen in the Lesser Antilles. The island’s rising plantocracy began importing African slaves to raise the labor-heavy crop. They also moved into local government. The thirty-two-man island Assembly, Jamaica’s equivalent of England’s House of Commons, held the power to veto any new laws proposed by the island’s Council. The latter bore some resemblance to the House of Lords. A body of thirteen “of the Gravest and Chiefest Gentlemen of the Island,” the council was made up primarily of members of the plantocracy chosen by the king on the governor’s advice. The same planters dominated the judiciary system and militia. Appreciating the wealth they brought to the island, Modyford also tacitly supported the buccaneers, thus enabling the twin developments of agriculture and government-sponsored piracy that would characterize the island’s early history.6

  In the 1660s the most notorious of all Jamaica’s buccaneers rose to prominence. A Welsh farmer turned Caribbean immigrant, Henry Morgan is thought to have been among those who invaded Jamaica under Venables. Turning his hand to buccaneering, Morgan rose to the rank of captain and took a leading role in Myngs’s raid on Campeche. Between 1665 and 1669 attacks on Providence Island, Portobelo, and Maracaibo followed. Morgan used surprise, speed, ruthlessness, and daring to deadly effect. The Spanish authorities, slaves to central command and incapable of acting on their own initiative, proved unable to stop him. By selling plundered trade goods to Port Royal’s growing merchant class, Morgan and his men became rich while squandering the Spanish pieces of eight they stole in the town’s ever increasing number of taverns and brothels. They thus not only boosted Jamaica’s economy but also provided a much-needed source of coinage
in a colony that was frequently bereft of currency. Modyford was only too happy to accommodate such high-living guests. As well as aiding the colony’s growth and hindering that of its colonial rivals, the actions of the “brethren” personally benefited the governor to the tune of £1,000 per year.7

  Morgan’s greatest filibustering exploit, the sacking of Panama in 1670–1671, also proved his last. With England and Spain having ratified a new peace treaty in the same year, the conquering hero of Jamaica was arrested not long after his return with a reputed £70,000 in loot and conducted back to England. As Charles II was desperate to regain control of the situation in the Caribbean and anxious to mollify his Spanish friends, Modyford was also recalled. While Morgan’s popularity saw him granted the freedom of the City of London, the ex-governor spent two years in the Tower only to return to Jamaica in 1675 as a change in the political climate once more saw England distancing itself from Spain. Although he never again held public office, Modyford remained an influential figure and his plantation became the wealthiest on the island. Morgan had returned one year before. As well as being knighted by the king, the former buccaneer was also the proud bearer of a new title: lieutenant governor of Jamaica. Besides protecting the island from foreign attack, Morgan was charged with controlling his former comrades in arms.

  Modyford’s successor, Sir Thomas Lynch, who was governor from 1671 to 1675 and again from 1681 to 1684, took up the cause of the rising plantocracy. As the sugar trade grew, the planters saw the buccaneers as a threat to their livelihoods: they destabilized the region, raised insurance costs on merchant shipping, and interrupted trade. The two parties were also in direct competition for white labor. While the planters required overseers to keep their slaves in check, they struggled to compete with the profits and adventure to be had from a life at sea. Lynch, himself one of the leading landowners with over 6,000 acres, turned Jamaica away from its privateering past and toward a sugar-fueled future. The former champions of Port Royal were pardoned on condition they abandoned their free-booting ways, forced to relocate to Hispaniola where they received tacit protection from the French, or hunted down to end their days swinging from the hangman’s noose erected at Gallows Point. During Lynch’s governorship, the population of Jamaica increased by eighteen thousand, two thirds of them African slaves. More land was parceled out until few choice plots remained, although considerable tracts to the north and west of the island were as yet uncultivated. Among the beneficiaries were one hundred families led by Major Thomas Banister who had been forced to leave their sugar plantations in Suriname in 1671 following its capture by the Dutch.