Apocalypse 1692
Page 13
Two possible references to the Suttons’ involvement in interloping survive. The first is merely an allusion: in 1684 a certain John Sutton of Barbados (perhaps the same John Sutton who had financed Thomas Sutton’s purchase of the Clarendon plantation in 1670 or perhaps a relative) had an unnamed ship seized by HMS Diamond for contravening the monopoly of the Royal African Company. The ship and its cargo of slaves were condemned and sold at Bridgetown by the governor, Sir Richard Dutton. According to protocol, the proceeds were divided into three shares: one for the crown, one for Captain Jones of the Diamond, and one for Dutton. Unsurprisingly for an age in which corruption was so commonplace as to be almost entirely unremarkable, Jones later complained that both he and the king had only received £100 while Dutton had taken £700.55 The other reference is more concrete, though also lacking in detail. In September 1689 Thomas Sutton made a petition directly to King William calling for an enquiry to be made into his recent arrest by order of the RAC’s agents at Port Royal “upon a charge of having traded to Guinea.” According to the records of the Board of Trade, Sutton “entered into a recognisance of £2,000 not to trade on the coast of Africa without leave of the African company” in order “to avoid a heavy fine.”56 As mentions of interlopers are considerably more frequent in the Royal African Company’s correspondence of the period than actual records of prosecution, it would seem plausible that Sutton considered the fine a reasonable outlay when weighed against the financial gains to be had when dealing with interlopers as opposed to relying on the intermittent offerings of slaves granted to planters by the RAC.
The majority of the slaves who arrived on Sutton’s plantation, whether by way of the auctions of the Royal African Company at Port Royal or the shadowy dealings of the interlopers, would have undertaken the penultimate leg of their journey via coastal sloop—the roads of the Jamaican interior, even those of the relatively well-developed central-southern parishes, were poor in the late seventeenth century. Sutton’s purchases would have disembarked at Carlisle Town, otherwise known as Withywood, the gateway to the interior of Clarendon Parish, where the estuary of the Minho River fed into the wide, sheltered reaches of Carlisle Bay. Called Port Emyas by the Spanish, the site was originally settled in 1660 by soldiers of Penn and Venables’s expedition. By the last decade of the seventeenth century, it was a thriving community of one hundred houses with a “small well-built chapel,” several “taverns and punch-houses,” and a number of warehouses which bordered the sandy bay where “the neighbouring planters,” Sutton not least among them, “lay up their commodoties . . . which they transport from hence to Port Royall.” Withywood was also known for its community of “wealthy Jewes merchants” and a “biannual faire” which featured a horse race pitting the residents’ best riders against those of the nearby town of Old Harbour. The winner received a silver cup.57
Chained together and supervised by Sutton’s overseer, the slaves were marched inland across the flat, grassy expanses of Clarendon Plain. Thought by some of the English inhabitants to have been originally cleared by the indigenous Tainos for the cultivation of maize, by the late seventeenth century Jamaica’s savannahs were home to the remains of once-mighty herds of feral cattle. Descendants of the animals which had been allowed to roam free by the Spanish, they had thrived on the thick grasses springing up from the rich, black alluvial soils washed down from the mountains to the north, but by the 1690s relatively few remained, the majority having fallen victim to the hunters who preyed on them in the aftermath of the English invasion.58
On arrival at Sutton’s plantation, new slaves were rebranded. Silver branding irons were common artifacts in seventeenth-century Jamaican inventories, while Spanish owners preferred gold ones. It is known that Sutton used a distinctive mark. The initials “TS, with a heart” were burned into each of his purchases, normally on the shoulder.59 The wound was then rubbed with palm oil to prevent infection.60 Newcomers were also renamed. Slave nomenclature varied according to the whims of their owners, but many fell into one of four categories: Anglicized versions of their original names; those considered humorous; names with classical or historical allusions; and those more commonly associated to the modern mind with animals or children, the latter an interesting insight into how the slaves were viewed by their masters.61 The only surviving references to the names of any slaves owned by Thomas Sutton are those recorded in his will of 1710. Among the thirteen men listed are Quashie, a corruption of an Akan or Coromantee “day name” suggesting its owner was born on a Sunday; Dick, Obee, Hector, Sambo, Yabboy, and Cromwell, the latter a hint that the Suttons may well have supported the crown during the Civil War. The children are unnamed, while the women included Nanny, Sukey, Daphne, Mulatta, Old Betty, Little Betty, Sox, Doll, and Daphne.62
During their first three months on the plantation, new arrivals underwent a period of “seasoning.” Each was assigned to an old hand, either of the same nation as the newcomer or of a comparable language group, to be educated in the routine that would come to dominate the remains of their days. During this period, many succumbed to disease.63 Although primarily concerned with the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, research conducted into two Jamaican slave populations, those of Worthy Park and Mesopotamia, is revealing. Tuberculosis, the bloody flux, and diarrhea were the biggest killers. Although Europeans often remarked on Africans’ propensity for personal hygiene, sanitation on board slave ships and in the squalid slave quarters of the plantations was appalling. The slaves drank contaminated water and ate half-rotten meat, while excrement and decomposing garbage littered the villages in which they lived. Dietary deficiencies were rife. In the West Indies slaves caught malaria and yellow fever. Others undergoing seasoning would have fallen victim to ailments they had acquired in Africa and harbored during the Middle Passage. These included yaws and parasitic infections such as hookworm. Entering the body via the feet, the hookworm burrowed into the intestine and sucked its victim’s blood, leading to lethargy and ravenous hunger which compelled many slaves to eat dirt.64 Suicide was common, especially among new arrivals. “[Slaves] believe in resurrection,” explained Richard Ligon in his 1673 travelogue A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, “and [think] that they shall go into their own Countrey again, and have their youth renewed [upon their death]. And lodging this opinion in their hearts, they make it their ordinary practice, upon any great fright, or threatening of their masters, to hang themselves.”65
Slaves who survived seasoning were assigned a specific role. The majority, 65 percent at Mesopotamia, became field workers. These were divided into work groups or “gangs.” The first, or Great Gang, as it was known in Mesopotamia, was the largest and hardest working. Consisting of the strongest and healthiest males in their mid-to-late twenties and early thirties, the Great Gang was responsible for digging the deep, square holes in which the new cane shoots were planted, and for cutting the ripe stalks. Members of the second gang, also exclusively male at Mesopotamia, performed other hard labor such as weeding the cane fields, cleaning the pastures, and assisting the first gang at crop time. The third gang, consisting of weaker or older men, women, and older children, was responsible for relatively light tasks such as hoeing the cane shoots. The fourth, known as the “hogmeat gang” at Mesopotamia, consisted mainly of children between the ages of six and ten.66 As Hans Sloane explained, they were given relatively light tasks, such as carrying fodder to the livestock, “clean[ing] the Paths, [and] bring[ing] Fire-wood to the kitchen.”67 Fieldwork was the most grueling of all occupations on a plantation. In Mesopotamia members of the gangs had an average working life of under twelve years during which they were in “able” health only 51 percent of the time.68
Each gang was governed by a number of drivers, one being typically assigned to every twenty field hands. Armed with a “Wand or white Rod” and a cowhide whip, they ensured their charges worked in unison and on schedule.69 In the early days of the sugar plantations drivers were almost exclusively white, but by
the late seventeenth century, as white workers grew increasingly scarce, slaves whom their masters deemed worthy of a modicum of trust were promoted into the role. Sloane mentions two such characters: The first was Henry, a “negro . . . much given to Venery,” who worked on Colonel Thomas Ballard’s plantation in St. Catherine’s Parish. Sloane treated Henry successfully for blindness thus allowing him to return to his former role. “[I] never heard he had a Relapse, which in all likelihood I should have done had his Distemper return’d,” Sloane noted, “for Planters give a great deal of Money for good Servants, both black and white, and take great care of them for that Reason.”70 The second individual was “Hercules, a lusty black Negro . . . [driver], and Doctor.” Hercules worked on Colonel Fuller’s plantation, also in St. Catherine’s, where he had acquired a certain fame for the treatment he gave to his patients—fellow slaves and white masters alike.71
Besides the role of driver, a number of other “skilled” or “craft” occupations existed to which slaves could “aspire.” Roughly 10 percent of the population of a sugar estate were tasked with such roles. Millmen, boilers, distillers, clarifiers, clayers, potters, coopers, carpenters, and smiths were all required. Judging by the records of eighteenth-century estates, these positions were almost invariably filled by males who had worked in the field for some time before rising to their position of responsibility. Although such jobs were less taxing than fieldwork, with the working life of those holding such positions in Mesopotamia averaging seventeen years, some craft roles came with their own inherent risks.72 A few other slaves would have been assigned to fish or hunt “wild hog and fowles” to supplement the diet of the masters and the white indentured servants on the estate. Indigenous slaves acquired from the Mosquito Coast (the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and the southern Caribbean coastline of Honduras), Florida, or the English colonies of North America were highly prized in such roles. “The [Indian] men we use for . . . killing of fish,” Richard Ligon noted. “With their own bow and arrows they will go out; and in a dayes time, kill as much fish, as will serve a family of a dozen persons, two or three dayes.”73
About 14 percent of Sutton’s slaves worked as domestics.74 This was almost exclusively a female role. Their tasks including washing, cooking, and cleaning as well as making and repairing clothes for the field workers. While domestics avoiding the backbreaking work of the cane fields, they were more exposed to the desires, cruelty, and culture of the whites. Field workers retained their African traditions; domestics lost their roots and acquired white cultural traits.75 Mulatto offspring, the result of unions between white masters or indentured servants and slaves, became increasingly common. Born into slavery as the children of black mothers, some had their freedom purchased by guilt-ridden fathers. Others remained enslaved for life.76 Thomas Thistlewood, the eighteenth-century overseer and diarist, left a comprehensive account of his sexual adventures while working as an employee on two different sugar estates in Westmoreland Parish (formed from the westernmost parts of St. Elizabeth’s Parish in 1703) and as a self-employed farmer on the livestock pen he later owned on Breadnut Island. During his thirty-seven years in Jamaica, Thistlewood engaged in 3,852 sexual encounters with 138 different slave women.77 Although most, if not all, of these acts were forcibly consummated, some master-slave relationships were mutually beneficial. After a particularly promiscuous period in his thirties, when he had as many as twenty-six different partners per year, in 1754 Thistlewood “settled down” with one particular favorite, a mulatto named Phibba, with whom he cohabited for most of his remaining thirty-two years. Phibba was emancipated by Thistlewood and became the de facto mistress of his livestock pen on Breadnut Island. The couple had one child, a son named John who died at the age of twenty, an event about which the normally loquacious Thistlewood was unusually reticent.78
The remainder of the four to five hundred slaves at Sutton’s, some one hundred individuals, were nonworkers.79 A small proportion would have been new mothers, whom Richard Ligon noted with begrudging respect were normally back in the fields just “a fortnight” after giving birth, a rare occurrence among the chronically overworked and malnourished slave women of the field gangs. A proportion of the rest were “pickaninnies”—young children under six years old among whom mortality rates were appallingly high. Principal among the causes were fatal blood infections caused when the umbilical cord was cut with unsanitary instruments. Up to the age of three, slave children would accompany their mothers in the fields. “As they work at weeding, which is a stooping work,” Ligon noted, “[they will] suffer the hee Pickaninny, to sit a stride upon their backs, like St. George a Horse-back; and there hee Spur his mother with his heels, and sings and crows on her back, clapping his hands, as if he meant to flye; which the mother is so pleas’d with, as she continues her painful stooping posture, longer than she would do, rather than discompose her Jovial Pickaninny of his pleasure, so glad she is to see him merry.”80
When old enough to walk, slave children roamed the plantation naked, playing or seeking out scraps to eat. They were excused from work until the age of six when they typically joined the fourth gang. The rest of the nonworkers were those too sick, old, or infirm to fulfill any useful role. These individuals would spend their days languishing in the slave villages which sprouted up beside the cane fields.81 Although some estates employed a resident physician who would be tasked with maintaining their health, in the late seventeenth century medicine was a rudimentary blend of superstition, herbalism, and brutal practices which were often counterproductive. Many patients would eventually succumb to sickness or disease.
By one contemporary account, Thomas Sutton had just “six or seven” whites working on his sugar plantation.82 When set beside the plantation’s five hundred slaves, this gives a ratio of roughly one white to every ninety blacks. Contemporaries stipulated that a much higher proportion of whites was desirable. Richard Ligon recommended would-be sugar magnates begin their plantations with one hundred slaves, fifty of each sex, twenty white male servants, and ten white females—a ratio of one white to every three or four blacks, while the Council of Jamaica passed a law in 1689 stating that “all gentlemen, merchants, planters and other inhabitants . . . shall keep, have and mantaine one English servant in his house or plantation for every nine Negro slaves which he hath . . . and in default herein to forfeit one hundred dollars to ye king.”83 Considering the frequency of slave revolts on the island, this was a wise piece of legislation. The law, however, was difficult to enforce. Worthy Park, an estate in Lluidas Vale, St. John’s Parish, operated with a similar ratio to Sutton’s.84 Also, the fact that the Council deemed it necessary to pass such a law in the first place suggests that planters generally had few whites on their estates. The reasons were numerous. The West Indies were increasingly unattractive for poor white settlers, hence the tendency to “spirit” or kidnap indentured servants in England. Disease was rife; the islands were far from home and unstable militarily and politically; they offered little opportunity for a social or family life; and, as the plantocracy bought up all available land, there were precious few opportunities for servants to establish a livelihood once their terms of indenture had expired.85
Free white workers were even harder to acquire. Notorious among employers for their nomadic nature, few lasted in any job more than a matter of months. One contemporary example was William Dampier, a curious young man who arrived in Port Royal in April 1679 to work at the previously mentioned Bybrook estate. Given a cordial welcome by William Whaley, the manager of Bybrook, Dampier was initially buoyant, believing his “future fortune” would soon be within his grasp. His relationship with Whaley deteriorated, however, when Dampier realized that he would not be employed as a bookkeeper as he had been led to believe back in England, but would instead be expected to indenture himself and learn one of the trades of the plantation. Dampier “thought it an under valuing of him to handle either skimmer or ladle.” An impasse of four months ensued. Dampier neither worked nor
was paid. Instead he spent his time with his neighbors, a certain Doctor Foster and his wife, whom Whaley damned as “the nastiest wasting slut as ever came into a House . . . and one fit to do nothing at all.” Meanwhile, Dampier’s relationship with Whaley reached new lows. On one occasion, the manager even gave his employee “a good box or two,” which Dampier “returned” before he was finally released from his contract with six weeks’ wages, most of which was promptly squandered on drinking binges with the doctor and his wife. Within six months, Dampier had left Jamaica.86 In what proved the most unlikely of careers, Dampier worked for a time as a logwood cutter in Campeche and later became a pirate, botanist, and world explorer. He was the first person to circumnavigate the globe three times, landed in Australia eighty years before Captain Cook, visited the Galapagos one hundred and fifty years before Darwin, and wrote a series of best-selling travelogues which would inspire both Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.87