“For the army, I found them in as sad and deplorable and distracted condition as can be thought of: commanders, some left them, some dead, some sick, and some in indifferent health; the soldiery many dead, their carcases lying unburied in the highways and among bushes, to and again; many of them that were alive walked like ghosts or dead men, who, as I went through the town, lay groaning and crying out, Bread, for God’s sake!”
Sedgwick brought with him in four victuallers a thousand tons of provisions, which he secured in a store built for the occasion on the beach. Among his troops was Colonel Humphry’s regiment of 831 “lusty, healthful, gallant men, who encouraged the whole army.” But now we begin to see that the sickness at St Jago de la Vega had become infective or pestilential. The new-comers, healthy and well found as they were, began at once to sicken and to die. Of Humphry’s regiment, on November 5:
“There are at this day 50 of them dead, whereof two captains, a lieutenant, and two ensigns, the colonel himself very weak, the lieutenant-colonel at death’s door. Soldiers die daily, I believe 140 every week, and so have done ever since I came hither. It is strange to see lusty men, in appearance well, and in three or four days in the grave, snatched away in a moment with fevers, agues, fluxes and dropsies, a confluence of many diseases. We furnished the army now with 60 butts of Madeira wine, and to every regiment a butt of brandy, and a hogshead or two of sweet oil. Our soldiers have destroyed all sorts of fruits, and provisions and cattle. Nothing but ruin attends them wherever they go.” On January 24, 1656, Sedgwick again writes to Thurloe: “Did you but see the faces of this poor small army with us, how like skeletons they look, it would move pity; and when I consider the thousands laid in the dust in such a way as God hath visited, my heart mourns. Here hath come down to us from many of the Windward Islands divers people with intentions of sitting down with us, but at their coming hither, either fall sick and die, or are so affrighted and dismayed as that, although to their much impoverishing, yet will not be persuaded to stay with us.”
The men in the fleet were in better health; but among them also “some die and some are sick, in so much that we need a good recruit fully to man our ships as men-of-war.” On the same date (January 24, 1656) Admiral Goodson, writing to Thurloe, estimates the surviving officers and men at 2600, besides women and children; and in another despatch of that date from Sedgwick and Goodson jointly to Cromwell it is stated:
“The numbers of the army are much lessened since our last letters [November 5]; the whole not extending to 3000, many of them sick and weak, the best and soundest much abated of their strength and vigor, and God goes on every day to shorten our number. We die daily, not less than fifty every week, which is much considering our small numbers.”
As the season advanced the health of the troops on shore improved. A letter of March 12 says that the condition of the army is much mended; the soldiers are far more healthful, but much dejected and averse to the place. The fleet was in good spirits, and impatient for action; however, there was sickness also on board the ships; they had lost some fourscore men since the last despatch; and on April 30 the report is: “our seamen are indifferently well in health; yet some few are sick, and God is daily shortening them, so that our fleet will want a recruit of men.” Several of the frigates were wormeaten, and careened for repairs. Sickness is reported in the ships as late as October 10, 1656.
The sickness among all ranks had been so general and severe that it was hardly possible to find senior officers to undertake the government. Fortescue died in October, 1655, and was succeeded temporarily by D’Oyley and others, the sole government being at length given by Cromwell to Sedgwick, who died a few days after receiving his unwelcome commission. Brayne, transferred from Lochaber to Jamaica, also died, and it fell at length to D’Oyley, an effective person in whom all on the spot had confidence, to carry the colony through its troubles. Cromwell spared no effort at home. Immense quantities of provisions were shipped; planters, with their families, ‘servants’ and slaves, to the number of some 1700, were removed to Jamaica from Nevis, under Stokes, the governor of that island; the New Englanders were also encouraged to resort to the new colony; and a thousand or so of young men and marriageable young women were furnished from Ireland, together with pioneers, described as of a rougher kind, from Scotland. “And so at length,” says Carlyle, “a West-Indian interest did take root; and bears spices and poisons, and other produce, to this day.”
The sickness and mortality among the first English colonists of Jamaica gave the island a bad name, and must have added not a little to the confusion of ideas already existing as to the pestilent character of tropical climates[1186]. The older sugar-colonies, such as Barbados, which saw in Jamaica a formidable competitor, would appear to have encouraged the notion that climates varied much, that of Jamaica being bad. Soon after the Restoration, Charles II. was urged to give back Jamaica to Spain, and is said to have seriously entertained that purpose. Among the state papers is a document, supposed to have been written in November, 1660, which sets forth the natural advantages of Jamaica, together with two sets of reasons why England should retain it[1187]:
“The air here is more temperate than in any of the Caribee Islands, being more northerly and as sufferable hot as in many places.... The winds here constantly all day blow easterly, so coolly that it renders any labour sufferable at midday.... We find here is not such antipathy between the constitution of the English and the climate that sickness is not inevitable and contingent; for we have experimentally found that persons observing a good diet and using moderate exercise, enjoy a somewhat (?) measure of health. The said causes of the mortality of the Army at their first arrival were want of provisions, unwillingness to labour or exercise, and inexcusable discontent to be constrained to stay here. The diseases that strangers are most incident to are dropsies (occasioned often by evil diet and slothfulness), calentures (so frequently produced of surfeit), and fevers and agues, which, although very troublesome, are never mortal.... Cagway [Port Royal] is the place where all the merchants reside, being the most healthy place in the island; whither resort all the men that frequent the Indies, which makes houses so dear that an ordinary house in this town is worth £40 or £60 per annum. There are about 200 houses there, all built by the English. About 50 houses have been built by the English at the fort of the Passage [at the head of the harbour and the nearest point to Spanish Town]; of the houses in the old capital, St Jago de la Vega, about 800 are ruinous. As to the number of English in the island, the relics of the six regiments do muster 2200, and it is probable that the planters, merchants, sailors and others may be as many.”
The above statements about the healthiness of Jamaica in 1660 were repeated by Dr Trapham, in his work on the climate and diseases of the colony in 1678[1188]. This earliest medical writer is, indeed, more optimist than those who followed him, as to contagious or infective sickness; there was no smallpox, or very rarely, saving sometimes brought from Guinea by negroes; and “no depopulating plague that ere I have heard of,” saving a pestilential fever brought in by the victorious fleet returned from the signal Panama expedition in 1670. The experiences of yellow fever at Port Royal and Kingston were mostly, if not entirely, subsequent to these dates. But, as there had been yellow fever at Barbados, St Christopher, and Guadeloupe as early as 1647-48, it has been thought probable that the enormous mortality in Jamaica in 1655-56 was from the same endemic cause[1189] Undoubtedly the epidemic at Spanish Town became at length more than the dysentery which had been brought by some of the troops from San Domingo, or had been induced among others of them by bad food and water; it became a virulent specific infection, attacking the healthy and well-found reinforcements from England and the new arrivals from the Windward Islands, and destroying them quickly, “in three or four days.” Fevers are specially named, as well as fluxes and dropsies; and the question arises whether the pestilential fever was not yellow fever.