G. Salisbury.
OFFICER. Review Order. PRIVATE. Field-day Order. OFFICER. Stable Dress.
1817–1823.
CHAPTER VIII
GRENADA AND ST. DOMINGO, 1796
1795.
While these two troops of the Seventeenth were making a name for the regiment in Jamaica, the remainder were very differently engaged. On the 6th August four troops embarked at Cork, 189 men being present and 194 absent in Jamaica and elsewhere, and sailed to Portsmouth, where they joined the cavalry camp at Netley, under Lord Cathcart. On the 21st September (according to the official record) they embarked for St. Domingo. From that date, if it be correct, it is extremely difficult to trace them. They formed part of the great expedition for the reconquest of the West Indies beyond all doubt; but that expedition did not sail until November, when the huge fleet of transports, under the convoy of Admiral Christian’s squadron, was one of the most wonderful sights ever seen by Englishmen. The ships were not clear of the Channel before they were dispersed, many of them being lost, with appalling loss of life, by a storm. The fleet, all that was left of it, sailed again on the 9th December, and was again met by a storm, greatly damaged, and compelled to return to Spithead on the 30th. On the 26th December 100 transports were missing, of which no one knew whether they were afloat or gone to the bottom. It was not until the following March that Sir Ralph Abercromby, the Commander-in-Chief of the expedition, after having been a third time driven back to England by gales in February, contrived finally to reach Barbados, the headquarters of the British forces in the West Indies.
The Seventeenth, or at any rate some of them, appear to have reached the West Indies earlier than this. 1795. Two troops were employed, we are told, as marines on board H.M.S. Hermione, the ill-fated ship which in 1797 was the scene of one of the most disgraceful mutinies in the history of the British navy. Fortunately the Seventeenth had no share in the massacre of officers and delivery of the ship to the Spaniards, which make the name of the Hermione a byword. The two troops were landed at Martinique; but in order to understand why they were needed there it is necessary to glance at the history of the West Indies during the year 1795.
It has already been said that Mr. Pitt made early attack on the French Antilles. In addition to the expedition to St. Domingo, he in 1794 sent General Grey and Admiral Jervis to reduce the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which object they successfully accomplished. The adjacent islands of Grenada and St. Vincent had already been surrendered to us by France in previous wars, and were known as the French Ceded Islands. In 1795, however, the French contrived to stir up revolt against the English in the whole of these islands; and as in those days the French Revolutionists stuck at nothing, they did not hesitate to rouse the whole negro population, free and slave, against the British and ally themselves with it. The result was a quasi-civil war of the most barbarous kind—in fact, a turning loose of all the worst characters in the West Indies on the track of massacre and plunder. The garrisons of the British islands were so weak that in some cases, as in St. Lucia, they were overpowered and in others pressed to extremity. Grenada being the island wherewith the Seventeenth was engaged, it is necessary to glance at the course of the revolt therein.
Grenada, like most of the West Indian Islands, is simply a rugged, confused mass of volcanic hills, rising at their highest to three thousand feet. For the most part it is covered with jungle, but in the valleys and on the less precipitous ground the soil is fertile, and grows fine crops of sugar-canes and cacao. In shape the island is elliptical: it measures at its longest, from north to south, about twenty miles; at its broadest, from east to west, about ten miles. 1795. There are two little ports, St. Andrews and Grenville, on the windward or east side; another at the north point, Sauteurs; and two more on the leeward or western side, Charlottetown and St. George’s, the capital. The garrison in 1795 consisted of 150 men of the 58th Foot, quartered in the barracks at St. George’s, and in the old fort, called Fort George, which still commands the entrance to the harbour.
It was on the 2nd March 1795 that the revolt broke out in Grenada. None of the English had the least idea that it was coming. The Governor himself had gone away on a trip to the leeward side of the island, unconscious of any mischief. Before the morning of the 3rd of March had dawned the negroes had massacred the whites at Grenville Bay to windward, captured those at Charlottetown to leeward, and held forty-two of them, including the unlucky Governor, as prisoners in their hands. The civilian next in rank to the Governor at once took command of the island, sent to Martinique, Barbados, and Trinidad for assistance, and called out the local militia. This done he sent the 150 men of the 58th, together with the militia, to attack the insurgent post at Charlottetown. But when it came to the point the militia was not to be found—every man had fled on board the coasting vessels. The insurgents’ position being very strong, the 58th could not attack it, and were compelled to return to St. George’s.