Dismantling a Colony: Samuel Pepys at Tangiers

By Mark Patton

A current exhibition at London's National Maritime Museum (open until 28th March) explores the life and times of one of England's best known diarists, Samuel Pepys. Concerned that he might be jeopardising his eyesight, Pepys gave up writing his diary in 1669. What is less well-known, however, is that, quite separately from the famous personal diary, Pepys also wrote an account of a visit that he made, on business as a naval administrator, to the North African city of Tangiers, in 1683.

The strategically important city, commanding the southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar, had been a Portuguese colony since 1471. In 1661, it was ceded, together with the Indian port of Bombay (modern Mumbai), to the English Crown, as part of the dowry of the Portuguese Infanta, Catherine of Braganza, on her marriage to King Charles II. Charles's advisers hoped that the new British colony would play a key role in controlling the passage from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and, more specifically, in suppressing the activities of the Barbary pirates, who, from the North African ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, were regularly harassing shipping along the coasts of both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and conducting slave-taking raids along the coasts of Italy, Spain, France and Southern England.

"A Sea-Fight with Barbary Corsairs," by Laureys a Castro, c1681, Dulwich Picture Gallery (image is in the Public Domain).

In 1662, work began on the fortification of Tangiers, including the construction of a harbour, or mole, projecting almost 1500 feet out into the Mediterranean, and, in 1668, Charles II declared Tangiers to be a "free city," to be administered by a mayor and corporation, similar to an English county town, a Southampton or a Plymouth, perhaps, planted on an African shore; a Christian enclave in a land that had been Muslim for around a thousand years; at liberty to trade with the world.

Tangiers, c1670, by Wenceslaus Hollar, University of Toronto (image is in the Public Domain).

The Mole of Tangiers, Kings Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster (image is in the Public Domain).

The reality, however, was quite different. The Alouite Sultan of Morocco, Mulai al-Rashid, who claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, had, by the mid-1660s, succeeded in uniting the diverse Berber and Arabic tribes of North-West Africa. His forces took the city of Fes in 1666, and Marrakech in 1669. Tangiers itself held out against them, but at the unsustainable cost of around £100,000 a year, any possibility of trade forestalled by an effective blockade imposed by the Sultan's forces. A survey conducted in 1676 showed that Tangiers had, at that time, just 2225 British inhabitants, of which 50 were military officers, 1231 other ranks, and 302 army wives and children.

Map of Tangiers in c1680, showing conflict with the Muslim armies in the surrounding hills, National Army Museun. Image: Lubiesque (Public Domain).

In 1683, the decision was taken to dismantle the colony of Tangiers, and Admiral Lord Dartmouth was sent out to oversee the process, assisted by Samuel Pepys, who has left us his impressions of the visit:

"The ship weighing anchor, up by break of day (entering the mouth of the straits) to see the shore on both sides, to my great pleasure; the Levanter [an easterly wind] still very strong ... Kirke, the Governor, saluted us with all the guns of the town, near which we found the Alcade [an envoy of the Sultan] encamped. But, Lord! how could anybody ever think a place fit to be kept at this charge, that, overlooked by so many hills, can never be secured against an enemy ... Amazed to think how the King hath lain out all this money upon it. Good grapes and pomegranates from Spain. Tonight, infinitely bit with chinchees [mosquitoes]."

"Du Pas tells me of Kirke's having banished the Jews without, or rather contrary to, express orders from England, only because of their denying him, or standing in the way of, private profits. He made a poor Jew and his wife, that came out of Spain to avoid the Inquisition, be carried back, swearing they should be burned; and they were carried to the Inquisition and burned ... Everything runs to corruption here."

"The Alcade and his company appeared like very grave and sober men. His discourse and manner were very good, and, I thought, with more presence of mind than our master's ... My Lord moved the Alcade, and he readilly, and very civilly, shook hands with Kirke ... They agreed on a treaty, to begin tomorrow, by persons chosen on both sides. His army was drawn up not so thick as ours, but very artificially, two deep, and that in but few places to make a greater show, though, we believe, they had not above 2500 in the field, but we few horse, and they a great many."

A Prospect of Tangiers, Queen's Royal Surrey Regimental Association (image is in the Public Domain).

Before leaving Tangiers, taking with them the remaining British personnel, Dartmouth and Pepys supervised the blowing up of the town's defences, including the mole, ensuring that these could never be used either by the forces of the Ottoman Empire (to which the Moroccan Sultan owed at least nominal allegiance), or by the Barbary Pirates, who posed, perhaps, the greater threat to British maritime interests. Pepys returned to London, his account largely forgotten, although it ought, surely, to have been essential reading for the future administrators of the British Empire, and for those who would, ultimately, have the responsibility of dismantling it. If the ghost of Samuel Pepys were peering over the shoulders of Lord Mountbatten, In India, or of Chris Patten, in Hong Kong, one suspects that he would have seen very little to surprise him.

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

Ice by Appointment

by Geoff Woodland

What do you think of when you see the word ice? Is it a high-speed European train (Inter-City Express) or some mind destroying addictive chemical? For most people it is frozen water, but for Frederic Tudor in 1806 it was the beginning of a new venture.

At twenty-two he had a vision to sell the pure frozen water from a lake and ponds outside Boston to the people of the French Caribbean colony island of Martinique. He was ridiculed by fellow traders, because they couldn’t imagine the ice surviving the month long voyage and the heat of the tropics. He failed to find any ship owner who was willing to carry his cargo of ice, so he bought his own brig for $4,750.

Tudor was not the first man to see the benefit of selling ice. There had been an ice trade in the 16^th century. It had been harvested from the mountains around the Mediterranean, where they were high enough to retain snow through the summer months. Donkeys transported this snow and ice, which was packed in straw baskets for the journey to the coast.

In South America this ‘cold’ trade flourished wherever the locals had access to high mountains, again with summer snow, and a demand for the product in local towns near the coast. In India they collected ice in a different way. The hills and mountains around Calcutta were too far away for the ice to be carried to the coast before it melted, so they used to boil water and placed a small amount in earthenware jars which were placed in pits packed with straw. During the night the cold wind would cause a thin film of ice (slush) on top of the water.

Huge numbers of natives were required to harvest this slush and transport it to ice houses to keep for the hotter months. This system was very expensive and it was estimated that 2,000 workers working on a huge tract of land could collect 25 to 30 tons of ice a night. During the summer it would only be available for a few weeks, and sold at around 4 pence for a pound.

In 1834 Frederick Tudor shipped clean fresh Boston ice to the British in Calcutta and offered it for sale at 3 pence per pound. He made a fortune. Remember the ice was free, because nature supplied him with virtually endless amounts during the Boston winters. Later, as a trial, he shipped apples and butter along with the ice, to see if the fruit and other foodstuff would survive the voyage; the food did survive the voyage.

In 1806 the US exported 130 tons of ice; by 1856 they exported 146,000 tons of clean sparkling ice. It is noted that Queen Victoria enjoyed Boston ice. Her majesty’s ice was not supplied by Tudor, but by one of his rivals.

Tudor was a trader, with his cousin, who persuaded him to go in to coffee futures in 1831. Frederick committed himself to buying between five and six million pounds of coffee, which was about 15% of the annual consumption in the US at that time. He did not have to outlay any cash, but he was required to put up the ice business as surety.

The population of America at that time was expanding at around 750,000 people a year, and they all liked coffee. At the beginning coffee prices were rising at between 20 and 30% a year, so he kept buying to the tune of $250,000, plus the assets of the ice venture.

By the end of 1834 he began to realise that his coffee ventures were not going as well as he planned. Toward the end of the year his cousin, who had persuaded him to go in to coffee futures, went bankrupt owing $200,000. Tudor had bought and sold seven million pounds of coffee and still had 500,000 pounds left. He knew he would have to sell at a loss and he anticipated this loss to be around $175,000; it was in fact $210,000.

He still had his ice business, which was expanding in India from Calcutta to Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Madras (now called Chennai), and he was making about $40,000 a year profit. He persuaded his creditors to allow him to run his ice business and he would repay his debts with interest. Fortunately for Tudor they agreed.

By 1849 he had paid his coffee debt, plus interest, which amounted to $280,000. In addition he had become a very wealthy man and had created a whole new industry.

His wealth was not just due to the selling of ice, but was linked to the value of his land that he had bought along the shoreline of lakes and ponds to protect his access to ice. An acre of land was bought for $130 on the shoreline of Fresh Pond, Tudor was offered $2000 for just part of his Fresh Pond holding. Frederick Tudor died on the 6^th February 1864 at the age of eighty.

I read about Tudor some years ago, and the ice trade was always in the back of my mind. When I wrote Triangle Trade (published by Pen and Sword of the UK http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Triangle-Trade/p/3865/ ), which is about a Liverpool slave-trading family, I used certain aspects of the ice trade in the story. It is surprising how many readers have commented about how the ice trade was used in Triangle Trade. The original title of Triangle Trade was Ice King. The current publisher changed the title, so if you see Ice King as an e-book, it is the same story.

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Geoff Woodland was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, to English /Welsh parents. He grew up with the smell of the sea and the sound of deep-sea ships plying their trade from Liverpool to the world. He emigrated, with his wife Maureen, and his two children to Melbourne, Australia in 1980. He currently lives in Sydney.