The English in the West Indies; Or, The Bow of Ulysses

Adventurers, buccaneers, pirates pass across the stage – the curtain falls on them, and rises on a more glorious scene. Jamaica had become the depôt of the trade of England with the western world, and golden streams had poured into Port Royal. Barbadoes was unoccupied when England took possession of it, and never passed out of our hands; but the Antilles – the Anterior Isles – which stand like a string of emeralds round the neck of the Caribbean Sea, had been most of them colonised and occupied by the French, and during the wars of the last century were the objects of a never ceasing conflict between their fleets and ours. The French had planted their language there, they had planted their religion there, and the blacks of these islands generally still speak the French patois and call themselves Catholics; but it was deemed essential to our interests that the Antilles should be not French but English, and Antigua, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada were taken and retaken and taken again in a struggle perpetually renewed. When the American colonies revolted, the West Indies became involved in the revolutionary hurricane. France, Spain, and Holland – our three ocean rivals – combined in a supreme effort to tear from us our Imperial power. The opportunity was seized by Irish patriots to clamour for Irish nationality, and by the English Radicals to demand liberty and the rights of man. It was the most critical moment in later English history. If we had yielded to peace on the terms which our enemies offered, and the English Liberals wished us to accept, the star of Great Britain would have set for ever.

The West Indies were then under the charge of Rodney, whose brilliant successes had already made his name famous. He had done his country more than yeoman's service. He had torn the Leeward Islands from the French. He had punished the Hollanders for joining the coalition by taking the island of St. Eustachius and three millions' worth of stores and money. The patriot party at home led by Fox and Burke were ill pleased with these victories, for they wished us to be driven into surrender. Burke denounced Rodney as he denounced Warren Hastings, and Rodney was called home to answer for himself. In his absence Demerara, the Leeward Islands, St. Eustachius itself, were captured or recovered by the enemy. The French fleet, now supreme in the western waters, blockaded Lord Cornwallis at York Town and forced him to capitulate. The Spaniards had fitted out a fleet at Havannah, and the Count de Grasse, the French admiral, fresh from the victorious thunder of the American cannon, hastened back to refurnish himself at Martinique, intending to join the Spaniards, tear Jamaica from us, and drive us finally and completely out of the West Indies. One chance remained. Rodney was ordered back to his station, and he went at his best speed, taking all the ships with him which could then be spared. It was mid-winter. He forced his way to Barbadoes in five weeks spite of equinoctial storms. The Whig orators were indignant. They insisted that we were beaten; there had been bloodshed enough, and we must sit down in our humiliation. The Government yielded, and a peremptory order followed on Rodney's track, 'Strike your flag and come home.' Had that fatal command reached him Gibraltar would have fallen and Hastings's Indian Empire would have melted into air. But Rodney knew that his time was short, and he had been prompt to use it. Before the order came, the severest naval battle in English annals had been fought and won. De Grasse was a prisoner, and the French fleet was scattered into wreck and ruin.

De Grasse had refitted in the Martinique dockyards. He himself and every officer in the fleet was confident that England was at last done for, and that nothing was left but to gather the fruits of the victory which was theirs already. Not Xerxes, when he broke through Thermopylae and watched from the shore his thousand galleys streaming down to the Gulf of Salamis, was more assured that his prize was in his hands than De Grasse on the deck of the 'Ville de Paris,' the finest ship then floating on the seas, when he heard that Rodney was at St. Lucia and intended to engage him. He did not even believe that the English after so many reverses would venture to meddle with a fleet superior in force and inspirited with victory. All the Antilles except St. Lucia were his own. Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Martinique, Dominica, Guadaloupe, Montserrat, Nevis, Antigua, and St. Kitts, he held them all in proud possession, a string of gems, each island large as or larger than the Isle of Man, rising up with high volcanic peaks clothed from base to crest with forest, carved into deep ravines, and fringed with luxuriant plains. In St. Lucia alone, lying between St. Vincent and Dominica, the English flag still flew, and Rodney lay there in the harbour at Castries. On April 8, 1782, the signal came from the north end of the island that the French fleet had sailed. Martinique is in sight of St. Lucia, and the rock is still shown from which Rodney had watched day by day for signs that they were moving. They were out at last, and he instantly weighed and followed. The air was light, and De Grasse was under the high lands of Dominica before Rodney came up with him. Both fleets were becalmed, and the English were scattered and divided by a current which runs between the islands. A breeze at last blew off the land. The French were the first to feel it, and were able to attack at advantage the leading English division. Had De Grasse 'come down as he ought,' Rodney thought that the consequences might have been serious. In careless imagination of superiority they let the chance go by. They kept at a distance, firing long shots, which as it was did considerable damage. The two following days the fleets manœuvred in sight of each other. On the night of the eleventh Rodney made signal for the whole fleet to go south under press of sail. The French thought he was flying. He tacked at two in the morning, and at daybreak found himself where he wished to be, with the, French fleet on his lee quarter. The French looking for nothing but again a distant cannonade, continued leisurely along under the north highlands of Dominica towards the channel which separates that island from Guadaloupe. In number of ships the fleets were equal; in size and complement of crew the French were immensely superior; and besides the ordinary ships' companies they had twenty thousand soldiers on board who were to be used in the conquest of Jamaica. Knowing well that a defeat at that moment would be to England irreparable ruin, they did not dream that Rodney would be allowed, even if he wished it, to risk a close and decisive engagement. The English admiral was aware also that his country's fate was in his hands. It was one of those supreme moments which great men dare to use and small men tremble at. He had the advantage of the wind, and could force a battle or decline it, as he pleased. With clear daylight the signal to engage was flying from the masthead of the 'Formidable,' Rodney's ship. At seven in the morning, April 12, 1782, the whole fleet bore down obliquely on the French line, cutting it directly in two. Rodney led in person. Having passed through and broken up their order he tacked again, still keeping the wind. The French, thrown into confusion, were unable to reform, and the battle resolved itself into a number of separate engagements in which the English had the choice of position.

Rodney in passing through the enemy's lines the first time had exchanged broadsides with the 'Glorieux,' a seventy-four, at close range. He had shot away her masts and bowsprit, and left her a bare hull; her flag, however, still flying, being nailed to a splintered spar. So he left her unable to stir; and after he had gone about came himself yardarm to yardarm with the superb 'Ville de Paris,' the pride of France, the largest ship in the then world, where De Grasse commanded in person. All day long the cannon roared. Rodney had on board a favourite bantam cock, which stood perched upon the poop of the 'Formidable' through the whole action, its shrill voice heard crowing through the thunder of the broadsides. One by one the French ships struck their flags or fought on till they foundered and went down. The carnage on board them was terrible, crowded as they were with the troops for Jamaica. Fourteen thousand were reckoned to have been killed, besides the prisoners. The 'Ville de Paris' surrendered last, fighting desperately after hope was gone till her masts were so shattered that they could not bear a sail, and her decks above and below were littered over with mangled limbs. De Grasse gave up his sword to Rodney on the 'Formidable's' quarter-deck. The gallant 'Glorieux,' unable to fly, and seeing the battle lost, hauled down her flag, but not till the undisabled remnants of her crew were too few to throw the dead into the sea. Other ships took fire and blew up. Half the French fleet were either taken or sunk; the rest crawled away for the time, most of them to be picked up afterwards like crippled birds.

So on that memorable day was the English Empire saved. Peace followed, but it was 'peace with honour.' The American colonies were lost; but England kept her West Indies; her flag still floated over Gibraltar; the hostile strength of Europe all combined had failed to twist Britannia's ocean sceptre from her: she sat down maimed and bleeding, but the wreath had not been torn from her brow, she was still sovereign of the seas.

The bow of Ulysses was strung in those days. The order of recall arrived when the work was done. It was proudly obeyed; and even the great Burke admitted that no honour could be bestowed upon Rodney which he had not deserved at his country's hands. If the British Empire is still to have a prolonged career before it, the men who make empires are the men who can hold them together. Oratorical reformers can overthrow what deserves to be overthrown. Institutions, even the best of them, wear out, and must give place to others, and the fine political speakers are the instruments of their overthrow. But the fine speakers produce nothing of their own, and as constructive statesmen their paths are strewed with failures. The worthies of England are the men who cleared and tilled her fields, formed her laws, built her colleges and cathedrals, founded her colonies, fought her battles, covered the ocean with commerce, and spread our race over the planet to leave a mark upon it which time will not efface. These men are seen in their work, and are not heard of in Parliament. When the account is wound up, where by the side of them will stand our famous orators? What will any one of these have left behind him save the wreck of institutions which had done their work and had ceased to serve a useful purpose? That was their business in this world, and they did it and do it; but it is no very glorious work, not a work over which it is possible to feel any 'fine enthusiasm.' To chop down a tree is easier than to make it grow. When the business of destruction is once completed, they and their fame and glory will disappear together. Our true great ones will again be visible, and thenceforward will be visible alone.

Is there a single instance in our own or any other history of a great political speaker who has added anything to human knowledge or to human worth? Lord Chatham may stand as a lonely exception. But except Chatham who is there? Not one that I know of. Oratory is the spendthrift sister of the arts, which decks itself like a strumpet with the tags and ornaments which it steals from real superiority. The object of it is not truth, but anything which it can make appear truth; anything which it can persuade people to believe by calling in their passions to obscure their intelligence.

CHAPTER IV

First sight of Barbadoes – Origin of the name – Père Labat – Bridgetown two hundred years ago – Slavery and Christianity – Economic crisis – Sugar bounties – Aspect of the streets – Government House and its occupants – Duties of a governor of Barbadoes.

England was covered with snow when we left it on December 30. At sunrise on January 12 we were anchored in the roadstead at Bridgetown, and the island of Barbadoes lay before us shining in the haze of a hot summer morning. It is about the size of the Isle of Wight, cultivated so far as eye could see with the completeness of a garden; no mountains in it, scarcely even high hills, but a surface pleasantly undulating, the prevailing colour a vivid green from the cane fields; houses in town and country white from the coral rock of which they are built, but the glare from them relieved by heavy clumps of trees. What the trees were I had yet to discover. You could see at a glance that the island was as thickly peopled as an ant-hill. Not an inch of soil seemed to be allowed to run to waste. Two hundred thousand is, I believe, the present number of Barbadians, of whom nine-tenths are blacks. They refuse to emigrate. They cling to their home with innocent vanity as though it was the finest country in the world, and multiply at a rate so rapid that no one likes to think about it. Labour at any rate is abundant and cheap. In Barbadoes the negro is willing enough to work, for he has no other means of living. Little land is here allowed him to grow his yams upon. Almost the whole of it is still held by the whites in large estates, cultivated by labourers on the old system, and, it is to be admitted, cultivated most admirably. If the West Indies are going to ruin, Barbadoes, at any rate, is being ruined with a smiling face. The roadstead was crowded with shipping – large barques, steamers, and brigs, schooners of all shapes and sorts. The training squadron had come into the bay for a day or two on their way to Trinidad, four fine ships, conspicuous by their white ensigns, a squareness of yards, and generally imposing presence. Boats were flying to and fro under sail or with oars, officials coming off in white calico dress, with awnings over the stern sheets and chattering crews of negroes. Notwithstanding these exotic symptoms, it was all thoroughly English; we were under the guns of our own men-of-war. The language of the Anglo-Barbadians was pure English, the voices without the smallest transatlantic intonation. On no one of our foreign possessions is the print of England's foot more strongly impressed than on Barbadoes. It has been ours for two centuries and three-quarters, and was organised from the first on English traditional lines, with its constitution, its parishes and parish churches and churchwardens, and schools and parsons, all on the old model; which the unprogressive inhabitants have been wise enough to leave undisturbed.

Little is known of the island before we took possession of it – so little that the origin of the name is still uncertain. Barbadoes, if not a corruption of some older word, is Spanish or Portuguese, and means 'bearded.' The local opinion is that the word refers to a banyan or fig tree which is common there, and which sends down from its branches long hairs or fibres supposed to resemble beards. I disbelieve in this derivation. Every Spaniard whom I have consulted confirms my own impression that 'barbados' standing alone could no more refer to trees than 'barbati' standing alone could refer to trees in Latin. The name is a century older than the English occupation, for I have seen it in a Spanish chart of 1525. The question is of some interest, since it perhaps implies that at the first discovery there was a race of bearded Caribs there. However this may be, Barbadoes, after we became masters of the island, enjoyed a period of unbroken prosperity for two hundred years. Before the conquest of Jamaica, it was the principal mart of our West Indian trade; and even after that conquest, when all Europe drew its new luxury of sugar from these islands, the wealth and splendour of the English residents at Bridgetown astonished and stirred the envy of every passing visitor. Absenteeism as yet was not. The owners lived on their estates, governed the island as magistrates unpaid for their services, and equally unpaid, took on themselves the defences of the island. Père Labat, a French missionary, paid a visit to Barbadoes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a clever, sarcastic kind of man, with fine literary skill, and describes what he saw with a jealous appreciation which he intended to act upon his own countrymen. The island, according to him, was running over with wealth, and was very imperfectly fortified. The jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in Bridgetown were brilliant as on the Paris boulevards. The port was full of ships, the wharves and warehouses crammed with merchandise from all parts of the globe. The streets were handsome, and thronged with men of business, who were piling up fortunes. To the Father these sumptuous gentlemen were all most civil. The governor, an English milor, asked him to dinner, and talked such excellent French that Labat forgave him his nationality. The governor, he said, resided in a fine palace. He had a well-furnished library, was dignified, courteous, intelligent, and lived in state like a prince. A review was held for the French priest's special entertainment, of the Bridgetown cavalry. Five hundred gentlemen turned out from this one district admirably mounted and armed. Altogether in the island he says that there were 3,000 horse and 2,000 foot, every one of them of course white and English. The officers struck him particularly. He met one who had been five years a prisoner in the Bastille, and had spent his time there in learning mathematics. The planters opened their houses to him. Dinners then as now were the received form of English hospitality. They lived well, Labat says. They had all the luxuries of the tropics, and they had imported the partridges which they were so fond of from England. They had the costliest and choicest wines, and knew how to enjoy them. They dined at two o'clock, and their dinner lasted four hours. Their mansions were superbly furnished, and gold and silver plate, he observed with an eye to business, was so abundant that the plunder of it would pay the cost of an expedition for the reduction of the island.

There was another side to all this magnificence which also might be turned to account by an enterprising enemy. There were some thousands of wretched Irish, who had been transplanted thither after the last rebellion, and were bound under articles to labour. These might be counted on to rise if an invading force appeared; and there were 60,000 slaves, who would rebel also if they saw a hope of success. They were ill fed and hard driven. On the least symptom of insubordination they were killed without mercy: sometimes they were burnt alive, or were hung up in iron cages to die.3 In the French and Spanish islands care was taken of the souls of the poor creatures. They were taught their catechism, they were baptised, and attended mass regularly. The Anglican clergy, Labat said with professional malice, neither baptised them nor taught them anything, but regarded them as mere animals. To keep Christians in slavery they held would be wrong and indefensible, and they therefore met the difficulty by not making their slaves into Christians. That baptism made any essential difference, however, he does not insist. By the side of Christianity, in the Catholic islands, devil worship and witchcraft went on among the same persons. No instance had ever come to his knowledge of a converted black who returned to his country who did not throw away his Christianity just as he would throw away his clothes; and as to cruelty and immorality, he admits that the English at Barbadoes were no worse than his own people at Martinique.

In the collapse of West Indian prosperity which followed on emancipation, Barbadoes escaped the misfortunes of the other islands. The black population being so dense, and the place itself being so small, the squatting system could not be tried; there was plenty of labour always, and the planters being relieved of the charge of their workmen when they were sick or worn out, had rather gained than lost by the change. Barbadoes, however, was not to escape for ever, and was now having its share of misfortunes. It is dangerous for any country to commit its fortunes to an exclusive occupation. Sugar was the most immediately lucrative of all the West Indian productions. Barbadoes is exceptionally well suited to sugar-growing. It has no mountains and no forests. The soil is clean and has been carefully attended to for two hundred and fifty years. It had been owned during the present century by gentlemen who for the most part lived in England on the profits of their properties, and left them to be managed by agents and attorneys. The method of management was expensive. Their own habits were expensive. Their incomes, to which they had lived up, had been cut short lately by a series of bad seasons. Money had been borrowed at high interest year after year to keep the estates and their owners going. On the top of this came the beetroot competition backed up by a bounty, and the Barbadian sugar interest, I was told, had gone over a precipice. Even the unencumbered resident proprietors could barely keep their heads above water. The returns on three-quarters of the properties on the island no longer sufficed to pay the expenses of cultivation and the interest of the loans which had been raised upon them. There was impending a general bankruptcy which might break up entirely the present system and leave the negroes for a time without the wages which were the sole dependence.

A very dark picture had thus been drawn to me of the prospects of the poor little island which had been once so brilliant. Nothing could be less like it than the bright sunny landscape which we saw from the deck of our vessel. The town, the shipping, the pretty villas, the woods, and the wide green sea of waving cane had no suggestion of ruin about them. If the ruin was coming, clearly enough it had not yet come. After breakfast we went on shore in a boat with a white awning over it, rowed by a crew of black boatmen, large, fleshy, shining on the skin with ample feeding and shining in the face with innocent happiness. They rowed well. They were amusing. There was a fixed tariff, and they were not extortionate. The temperature seemed to rise ten degrees when we landed. The roads were blinding white from the coral dust, the houses were white, the sun scorching. The streets were not the streets described by Labat; no splendid magazines or jewellers' shops like those in Paris or London; but there were lighters at the quays loading or unloading, carts dashing along with mule teams and making walking dangerous; signs in plenty of life and business; few white faces, but blacks and mulattoes swarming. The houses were substantial, though in want of paint. The public buildings, law courts, hall of assembly &c. were solid and handsome, nowhere out of repair, though with something to be desired in point of smartness. The market square would have been well enough but for a statue of Lord Nelson which stands there, very like, but small and insignificant, and for some extraordinary reason they have painted it a bright pea-green.

We crept along in the shade of trees and warehouses till we reached the principal street. Here my friends brought me to the Icehouse, a sort of club, with reading rooms and dining rooms, and sleeping accommodation for members from a distance who do not like colonial hotels. Before anything else could be thought of I was introduced to cocktail, with which I had to make closer acquaintance afterwards, cocktail being the established corrective of West Indian languor, without which life is impossible. It is a compound of rum, sugar, lime juice, Angostura bitters, and what else I know not, frisked into effervescence by a stick, highly agreeable to the taste and effective for its immediate purpose. Cocktail over, and walking in the heat being a thing not to be thought of, I sat for two hours in a balcony watching the people, who were thick as bees in swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were pure black; you rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction being written on the features of every one. The women struck me especially. They were smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and tricked out with ribands and feathers; but their figures were so good, and they carried themselves so well and gracefully, that, although they might make themselves absurd, they could not look vulgar. Like the old Greek and Etruscan women, they are trained from childhood to carry heavy weights on their heads. They are thus perfectly upright, and plant their feet firmly and naturally on the ground. They might serve for sculptors' models, and are well aware of it. There were no signs of poverty. Old and young seemed well-fed. Some had brought in baskets of fruit, bananas, oranges, pine apples, and sticks of sugar cane; others had yams and sweet potatoes from their bits of garden in the country. The men were active enough driving carts, wheeling barrows, or selling flying fish, which are caught off the island in shoals and are cheaper than herrings in Yarmouth. They chattered like a flock of jackdaws, but there was no quarrelling; not a drunken man was to be seen, and all was merriment and good humour. My poor downtrodden black brothers and sisters, so far as I could judge from this first introduction, looked to me a very fortunate class of fellow-creatures.