CHAPTER XXI
SIR HENRY MORGAN—LORD RODNEY—EDUCATION IN JAMAICA—CAPTAIN BAKER ON THE BRIGHT PROSPECTS OF JAMAICA
If Jamaica was known as the white man’s grave in a bygone age, it has now completely changed its character. Twenty-five years ago Chief-Justice Cockburn declared that “there was not a stone in the island of Jamaica which, if the rains of heaven had not washed off from it the stains of blood, might not have borne terrible witness to the manner in which martial law had been exercised for the suppression of native discontent.”
I was told only yesterday of the panic-stricken way in which the natives learnt of the death of the late Queen Victoria. A nonconformist minister, whose sphere of work lies amongst the mountains at the eastern end of the island, graphically described to me how the inhabitants of those isolated parts flocked into the nearest towns and to the parsonage houses, chattering anxiously together about the death of the great “Missus Queen.” Some native agitators had worked upon their ignorance and credulity, and they quite believed with the accession “of the new young man” slavery times would come again!
In the place of native discontent it would, at the present day, be difficult to find a more loyal, peaceful, and law-abiding people than this. And yet it is not more than two hundred and fifty years since the wildest of buccaneers figured upon the scene in Jamaica. In a biographical dictionary I note the somewhat amusing, though deeply satirical piece of information.
“Morgan, Sir Henry John, buccaneer, born about 1637, long ravaged the Spanish colonies, took and plundered Puerto Bello 1668; after a life of rapine knighted by Charles II. and made a marine commissary, died 1690.”
This great freebooter was as politic and shrewd as he was unscrupulous and daring. I cannot vouch for the truth of the following story, but it is characteristic of those days.
When summoned to England to answer for his piratical excursion on the Spanish Main, he offered King Charles such magnificent pearls for the adornment of his favourite ladies, that any thought of punishment was immediately banished from the royal brain. Instead, Sir Henry Morgan returned loaded with honours to the West Indies.
But I would like to relate how, by a brilliant stratagem, he extricated his ships from a position of great danger. In 1654, Maracaibo had been sacked by L’Olonnais, another notorious freebooter, but in 1668 it had regained its former reputation as one of the richest towns of Spanish America, and Morgan determined to attack it. Like Santiago in Cuba, it lay on the shores of a long bay with so narrow a mouth that almost one ship was sufficient to block it. Morgan entered the bay with three ships, stormed the town and took the fort. It seems that his victorious companions were celebrating their success with wine in the fort, left by their late enemies, when their indefatigable and valiant captain stepped outside to see how matters stood. All was silent, but Morgan despatched one hundred men into the woods to hunt up the late inhabitants, who had betaken themselves thither with their money and treasure. They returned with thirty prisoners, who were inhumanly tortured, to disclose the hiding-places of their wealth.
The Inquisition had taught the English mariners of those days how to rack and how to burn. When Morgan, after some thirty days of this cruelty, finally sailed away, to his consternation he found the mouth of the harbour blocked by three Spanish men-of-war, the crews of which had also rebuilt the fort at the entrance of the harbour. Full of resource, Morgan coolly ordered the plunder and prisoners to be removed from his largest vessel to the smaller ships. He filled the former instead with gunpowder, pitch, tar, and combustibles. He mounted wooden cannon upon the vessel and dressed up posts to resemble men. Having completed his preparations, he sent word to the commander of the Spanish warships saying, unless a heavy ransom was paid, he would burn Maracaibo to the ground. The reply of the Spanish Admiral was to the effect that unless Morgan surrendered in three days he would pay the ransom in lead. At this crisis the great freebooter next morning sailed in single file down the harbour, the dummy ship leading, in charge of some daring men, who, at a signal from their intrepid chief, were to light the fuses and escape in a small boat to the other ships.
When the Spanish Admiral thus saw Morgan’s first and largest vessel heading directly for him, he sailed into the harbour to meet him, grappling and making fast his ship to that of his enemy, expecting to fight hand-to-hand. Just at this moment the matches were applied, and in the noise and confusion the Spanish ship could not unfasten sufficiently quickly the grappling chains and irons which fastened the two ships together in a deadly embrace. The consequence was that it caught fire, and, in a few minutes, both were blazing from stem to stern.
Rather than fall into the hands of the buccaneers, the Spaniards jumped overboard. The crews of the two remaining ships ran them aground, and rushed to the woods to hide themselves. However, the fort further down had yet to be passed, but Morgan executed a manœuvre which so alarmed the garrison, who expected an attack in the rear, that they removed their cannon some distance from the fort. When this was done, Morgan sailed away out of the harbour, his crews jeering at the Spanish garrison, who were unable to bring their ordnance back in time to fire on the bold and resourceful pirate.
Passing on to events which took place in Caribbean waters over a hundred years later, one’s heart swells with pride when one remembers how Lord Rodney, of glorious memory, whose statue adorns Spanish Town, saved not only Jamaica, but our other West Indian possessions in 1782, upholding the honour of the nation at a most critical time in English history. The American colonies were lost. France, Spain, and Holland, our ocean rivals, had united to make one great effort to wrest from us our naval superiority. At home, Irish patriots clamoured then, as now, for what they conceived to be their rights.
Lord Rodney, who had taken the Leeward Islands from France, commanded in the West Indies. He had already punished the Dutch for taking part in the alliance by capturing the island of Eustachius and three millions’ worth of stores and money. Burke, whose policy somewhat resembled that of the little Englanders of these days, notwithstanding his successes, had him called home to account for his actions. In his absence the French fleet recaptured the Leeward Islands and Eustachius, and thereby became the paramount power in these seas. Things became so desperate that Rodney was immediately sent back to his post. After a mid-winter cruise of five stormy weeks he came upon the combined fleets off the mountainous coasts of Dominica. In number of ships the fleets were about equal, but in size and men the French were vastly superior, having 14,000 soldiers on board besides the ships’ full complement, destined for “the conquest of Jamaica.”
For two days the rival fleets manœuvred opposite each other, but during the night of the 11th of April 1872, Rodney signalled to the fleet to sail southwards. The French thought he was flying. Instead, he tacked at 2 A.M. on the next day. At dawn the French were on his lee quarter. At 7 A.M. the British fleet, Rodney leading in the Formidable, sailing in an oblique direction, cut the French line, thus throwing the ships into confusion. They were unable to reform. The conflict resolved itself into a series of separate contests. The cannons roared all day, the French ships one by one either foundered, or hauled down their flag. The Ville de Paris, De Grasses’ flagship, and the pride of the French navy, was the last to yield. The slaughter had been frightful, 14,000 are said to have been killed, besides prisoners. One half of the fleet was taken, or sunk; the rest of the ships, like the Spanish galleons after the Armada, staggered away to hide their wounds and humiliation.
Had Rodney received the hasty instructions a timorous-hearted Government despatched to him before this engagement, which were: “Strike your flag and come home,” the history of Jamaica would be a very different thing to-day.
On that ever memorable occasion the combined strength of France, Spain and Holland failed to wrest from Britannia her sovereignty of the seas. The laurels with which the heroes of Elizabethan days had crowned her still rested on her brow. Though sorely smitten, she could still hold aloft in untarnished glory the sceptre of ocean rule.
It is hard to tear one’s thoughts away from the glorious scenes where the history of the great British race has been made. I cannot, however, draw my remarks to a close on the West Indies without referring to another way in which we add to the glory and stability of the Empire to which we are proud to belong. I am alluding to the education which in Jamaica is provided by government for the younger generation of this colony.
By a law passed in 1890, all elementary schools must be undenominational, that is, if they are to be recognised by the Government, and special attention is to be directed to agriculture and manual training both in training and elementary schools. At this date, schools deemed unnecessary were closed, others were amalgamated to render efficiency and economy more practical. In 1900, 757 elementary schools, including infant schools, received grants from Government. Children from six to fourteen years attend. Grants are given according to marks gained at examinations and on average attendances. Subjects for examinations include, besides organisation and discipline, reading, recitation, writing, English, and arithmetic, also elementary science, the secondary subjects being morals, Scripture, drawing, manual occupation, geography and singing. Schools on the Annual Grant List are examined by special standards. A registered teacher gets in a school of 150 children £30; if certificated £36.
Forty male students are supported by Government at the Mico training college to be trained as school-masters.
At Shortwood, in the parish of St Andrew, thirty girls are trained to be school-mistresses, also at the expense of the Government, which pays the manager of certain voluntary training colleges £25 a year each, for a specified number of resident students under training.
The Mico College is one of the handsomest buildings in Kingston. Jane, Lady Mico, widow of Sir Samuel Mico, a city knight, and member of the Mercers’ Company, died in 1666, and bequeathed £1000 “to redeem poor slaves.” This sum, invested by the Court of Chancery in London property, grew to the large amount of £120,000, when, in 1834, Sir T. F. Buxton thought the interest might very properly be applied to educating West Indian children. Of several schools in the West Indies established for this purpose, the only one remaining is the Mico College of Jamaica. The Government of the island is also very liberal in the way of offering scholarships, the best of which is one for £200 tenable three years, granted to a candidate who shall have passed in Honour Lists in the Cambridge Senior Examination, and who shall fulfil the rest of the conditions attached to it.
There is a Theological College in Kingston, where students are trained for holy orders: a very necessary institution, for about one-third of the island clergy represent the coloured and black element of the population.
Another very useful and charitable institution in Kingston is the Deaconess Home, where the education is specially intended for the coloured children of a class superior to those who attend the elementary schools, and who are not gratae personae at the ladies’ schools in Kingston. This is really a work which is much needed, since it is unpractical to educate coloured men to fill responsible posts, if an equivalent effort is not made with the girls of the same class to render them companionable and helpful as wives. Nurses are trained in this Home, and all good works, such as temperance meetings, are undertaken. I was present myself at a service held by the Sisters, exclusively for the sailors who come to this port of Kingston. It did one good to see how at home these poor fellows seemed with the kindly women who addressed them. Each asked for his favourite hymn to be sung, and they were in no hurry to quit at the close of the proceedings. At a temperance meeting, held a few days afterwards, I was present when eight of them signed the pledge. Unfortunately, this good work is direfully in need of funds.
In conclusion, I cannot do better than give the gist of an article in which the bright future of Jamaica is looked forward to confidently, by one who must know, far better than myself, the financial attitude of the country. The writer is Captain L. D. Baker, a Bostonian, the head of the United Fruit Company, to whom, in company with Sir Alfred Jones of the Elder Dempster line, Jamaica owes much of its recent return to comparative prosperity. He says to those wanting to invest: “Investments in this country are safe, if in land for agricultural purposes. Values are normal; titles are as good and as well protected as any in the world. Our Governors have been the best that Britain can give to her colonies. By them we enjoy guaranteed safety and success.”
Speaking of the advance Jamaica has made since the days of Governor Darling, 1868, Captain Baker reviews the benefits the island has derived from each successive governor; he says: “To Sir J. P. Grant we owe the irrigation of the parched lands of the Spanish Town district. He turned them into a fertile plain. We next had Sir Anthony Musgrave. He gave the telegraph, and he gave steamship lines and railway extensions and general enterprise such an impetus that they have not ceased,” etc. Next came Sir Henry Norman, whose “steady brain kept the enthusiastic and the erratic man in check, so that there should be no regrets.” After him came Sir Henry Blake, and the writer of this article cannot praise that popular Governor too highly: “Ever full of indomitable enterprise and push—exhibitions, hotels, agricultural societies, agricultural schemes, willingly launching out his own money, riding through the country hither and thither, stirring up everyone that had a bit of enterprise in his nature. He left us, throwing his burden at the feet of Mr Chamberlain, to be taken up by him.” The present Governor, Sir A. Hemming, took up the work with equal zest and push. He presented the situation to his “double steam-engine friend, Sir Alfred Jones, thereby inaugurating the direct line, and consummating what may be justly termed a grand success for the future of the island.” It is good reading to hear this successful American business man say that neither he “nor his companies know anything but kindness from this Government.”
Jamaica is one of our oldest colonies; she has been rich, but now is poor; still, with patience, prosperity will revisit her shores. What one can say best to one’s country people is, Come and make her acquaintance; the beauty of the scenery will repay you for your trouble. Her associations with the past will kindle your sympathy and evoke your interest.
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