Exploring 17th century Barbados

by Cryssa Bazos

Photo credit: D-Stanley on Visualhunt / CC BY

Fancy a vacation? Barbados would surely be up there as a top destination: powdery beaches, palm trees, clear water, hot temperatures, and plenty of luxury. But imagine if you were going to take that trip 370 years ago? Today, we’re going to step back in time to the 17th century and visit Barbados before there were resorts and sandy beaches, two decades after the island had first been colonized by English investors.

Getting there

Travelling by ship from England to Barbados would have taken us approximately eight weeks, possibly longer if we were sailing in unsettled weather. Victuals would have been poor and not everyone took to sea travel. If we were unfortunate enough to be shipped down as an indentured servant (we’re coming from England after all), the death toll would have been high and many of our shipmates didn’t make it. Don't expect an ocean view cabin. Indentured servants would have been riding in the hold with other cargo.

Arriving there

As it is today, Bridgetown was a centre of commerce on the island back in the 17th century. Richard Ligon, an Englishman who arrived in 1647, described the town as being the size of Hounslow. He referred to it as the Bridge (also the Town) because a land bridge was erected over bogland to link the harbour with the settlement. Ligon had much to say about the lack of foresight in the town planning:

“A Town ill scituate; for if they had considered health, as they did conveniency, they would never have set it there; or, if they had any intention at first, to have built a Town there, they could not have been so improvident, as not to forsee the main inconveniences that must ensue, by making choice of so unhealthy a place to live in. But the main oversight was, to build their Town upon so unwholsome a place. For, the ground being somwhat lower within the Land, than the Sea-banks are, the spring-Tides flow over, and there remains, making a great part of that flat, a kinde of Bog or Morasse, which vents out so loathsome a savour, as cannot but breed ill blood, and is (no doubt) the occasion of much sicknesse to those that live there.”

Bridgetown was a busy harbour, and there were numerous storehouses built close to the waterfront that collectively stored most of the island’s sugar.

An equally important settlement was Speightstown, situated to the north-west. The town was also called Little Bristol in honour of the regular trade it enjoyed with Bristol, England. Goods would also flow by ship between the two harbours of Bridgetown and Speightstown, which was a more efficient method of transport than maneuvering the roads.

Speightstown © Cryssa Bazos

Getting Around

17th century Barbados had a very different landscape than today. Then, the island was thickly wooded (and not by palms) and the roads deeply rutted and broken by tree stumps for people were slowly clearing the land. This made it difficult for carriages or wagons to traverse the roads, and while goods still needed to be brought to Bridgetown, the planters had to rely on four-legged transportation.

Were we travelling down rough roads in those days, we could expect to find donkeys and camels heading down to Bridgetown. Oil-skin tarps covered the sugar to protect the valuable cargo from a sudden rain shower. One camel alone was able to carry about sixteen hundred pounds of sugar.

Along the way, a traveller seeking to take shelter from a sudden shower would be careful not to sit under the native manchineel tree. The tree was poisonous and rain runoff caused extreme blistering. Today, the trees are still found on the island and are often found near the shore for they are excellent at protecting against erosion.  

Manchineel tree: ©  Cryssa Bazos

Resorts

St. Nicholas Abbey: ©  Cryssa Bazos

You might be a visitor, an indentured servant, or worse a slave, but plantations weren’t resorts. Concerns over tropical storms meant that houses were designed with north/south facing windows rather than east/west. Unfortunately, that construction didn’t allow for cooling breezes to circulate throughout the house.

In the mid-17th century, a large plantation would be about 500 acres, though there were numerous smaller plantations dotted across the island. A friend of Ligon’s purchased a plantation for 7,000 pounds, which was a breathtaking sum. Out of 500 acres, 200 would be devoted to sugar cane, 30 acres to growing tobacco, 120 acres for wood, 5 for ginger or cotton and 70 for other household crops such as plantains, corn, cassava and orchard fruit. Oxen had to be imported from England, but often succumbed to disease. Pigs and goats did well, and there were wild turkeys to be had.

What of the accommodations, you may ask? Seaside view or garden view? Neither. The slave and indentured servants’ quarters were thatched huts far from the main house. The slaves were expected to sleep on rough pallets  on the dirt floor while indentured servants (or Christian servants as they were known as then) were spared the discomfort of the creepy-crawlies and slept more comfortably off the ground in hammocks. The only luxury item, born of need rather than generosity, were wax candles instead of tallow. They didn’t have the wherewithal to make tallow candles, and Beeswax was readily available as an import from Africa.

Michelin star dining

Not so much for servants, though the owners and their guests could expect an excellent pork to grace their table. For workers, the first meal of the day would be around 11 am and then the last one after 6 pm. During the heat of the day, servants and slaves were given a two hour break to cook, eat and rest before heading back to the fields to continue their work. Their main staple was a gruel of cornmeal called loblolly.

Looking for some bread to make a sandwich? No wheat, but a flatbread made from a root vegetable called cassava will have to do. Cassava was a major staple; boiled and ground into meal, it went a long way.

At the end of the work week (Saturday), servants and slaves would be given the following extra food allotment: two mackerel for the men and one for the women. Bone meat would be given perhaps a couple of times a week. Animals that died (even if diseased) would be given to the servants and slaves to eat, although the slaves mostly received the head and entrails.

And as for drink, the most common grog was a drink called mobbie, made of sweet potatoes. It had the strength of Rhenish wine and could be coloured red if red potato skins were used in the fermentation process. As a by-product of the sugar production, rum or kill-devil was distilled and given to the servants and slaves. Excess rum could be sold in Bridgetown to the ships. The best imported brandies and spirits would be reserved for the master's table.

Currency

Sugar was king. There was no hard currency on the island so people relied on bartering and the currency of sugar for every major purchase, including the payment of fines. In 1651 when there was an influx of Scottish PoWs arriving as indentured servants, the going rate to purchase their bond was 800 pounds of sugar. To put this in perspective, this would have been the approximate yield of a quarter acre of sugarcane. A large plantation at that time with 200 acres of sugarcane would have yielded one million pounds of sugar over a twenty month cycle. And there’s your luxury.

17th century Barbados was not for the faint of heart. It was wild, exciting,  and offered the potential for huge profits for investors. In the early days, indentured servants were lured with the promise of land, and when that became too valuable, an allotment of sugar or passage home were given instead for several years work. Those who stayed, indentured and slaves, were survivors and eventually built up the island to the tropical jewel that is today.

References:

A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbados, Richard Ligon (originally published 1657)

A German Indentured Servant in Barbados in 1652: The Account of Heinrich Von Uchteritz

~~~~~~~~~~

Cryssa Bazos is an award-winning historical fiction author and 17th-century enthusiast with a particular interest in the English Civil War. Her debut novel, Traitor's Knot, was the Medalist winner of the 2017 New Apple Award (historical fiction), a finalist for the 2018 EPIC eBook Awards (historical romance) and the RNA Joan Hessayon Award. Her second novel, Severed Knot, was longlisted for the Historical Novel Society 2018 New Novel Award and tells the story of a Scottish PoW transported down to Barbados as an indentured servant.

Connect with Cryssa through her Website, Facebook, and Twitter (@CryssaBazos). Traitor's Knot is available through Amazon, and Severed Knot is available through Amazon and other Online Retailers. 

Pirate Prince of the Caribbean: Rupert of the Rhine

by Cryssa Bazos

Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

One of the most dashing and iconic figures of the War of the Three Kingdoms is Prince Rupert of the Rhine. The son of Frederick V, Elector of Palatine, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James VI of Scotland and I of England, he fought for King Charles I’s against Parliament. The force and swiftness of his cavalry charge usually struck terror in the Parliamentarians. To this day, portraits of Rupert still causes hearts to flutter.

While Rupert is mostly known as a Royalist cavalry commander, he did move the fight from land to sea around 1648, leading his own fleet against the Parliamentary navy. He started in the Mediterranean before skipping over to Ireland to support the Irish Royalists for a time. While Rupert sailed in the West Indies briefly in 1651 before returning to the North African coast, it was the period between May 1652 and December 1652 when he effectively turned Pirate Prince, sailing through the West Indies hunting for Parliamentarian ships.

Rupert's travels by Akhritov derivative work
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Traveling the West Indies

When Prince Rupert left the North African coast and Cape Verde on May 9, 1652, he had in his fleet a total of six ships: the Swallow, his flagship; the Defiance, commanded by his brother, Prince Maurice; the Honest Seaman, captained by a man named Craven; the John, the Sarah, and a Cape Verde prize (name unknown).

It had been Rupert’s intention to seek Barbados, but their navigation was off, and on May 29th, they landed instead in Saint Lucia. There, his fleet was able to restock their water supplies and take on ample fresh meat in the form of wild hogs and wild goats. Over the next days, they sailed northward along the Leeward Isles and ended up in Martinique, where they received the poor news that Parliament was in possession of Barbados. Good thing he didn’t go there!

The problem, Rupert quickly realized, was that during the time that he spent exploring the African coast, Parliament had moved to establish their presence in the West Indies and shore up control of English colonies, especially those, like Barbados, who had Royalist leanings. Where he expected to be welcomed by fellow Royalists, he found himself in hostile waters. This made it harder for him to find safe harbour, and therefore, replenish supplies. But he wasn’t there for the beaches, so he resolved instead to be the hunter instead of prey, a Prince Pirate of the Caribbean on the lookout for Commonwealth and Spanish ships.

On the lookout for rich prospects, at the beginning of June 1652, Rupert’s fleet headed for Montserrat, an English colony known for its sugar plantations. Thanks to the sugar being in high demand, merchant ships were thick in the area. Rupert was like a shark streaming through waters teeming with fish. His strategy worked, and he managed to capture two English prizes, one loaded with a hold full of sugar. But it wasn’t without loss. During a heated exchange near Nevis, Rupert’s personal secretary was killed, as was the captain of the Defiance.

A pirate prince couldn’t spend all his days ravaging the Caribbean without trying to make a few friends. Around June 8th, Rupert’s fleet arrived at St. Christopher’s (St. Kitts) where he attempted to trade with the Dutch merchants in the town, but the English settlers threatened retaliatory measures against the Dutch if they assisted Rupert, including the confiscation of their goods. In response, Rupert anchored in the French controlled harbour and traded there briefly.

Rupert’s fleet continued northward to the Virgin Islands where he finally found a bit of respite. There, he established a temporary base and spent the next several weeks outfitting his ships and fortifying the harbour against the Spanish. Food supplies were poor and everyone, including Rupert, were forced on mean rations. At the end of August, several men had enough of the conditions. The last anyone saw of them, they were sailing toward the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico on a stolen pinnace.

This ended Rupert’s sojourn. He had hoped to wait out hurricane season in a sheltered cove, but with the defectors heading towards his enemies, with full knowledge of where to find him, he pulled up anchor and headed for Anguilla.

On September 13th, catastrophe struck in the form of a hurricane. This hadn’t been the first time that Rupert had encountered the power of a Caribbean hurricane. A year earlier, his fleet had encountered one. After three days of trying to keep her afloat, his first flagship, the Constant Reformation, was destroyed with the loss of all her crew (333 souls). Before she went down, Prince Maurice brought the Defiance close along the Constant Reformation to try to save his brother and as many crew members as they could, but conditions were too dangerous to launch a full-scale rescue. Rupert had resolved to stay with his crew and go down with his ship, and he would have, were it not for his men forcibly bundling him into the only boat and sending him across to the Defiance.

Now a year later, another storm was coming down hard on them. This hurricane was an absolute beast. Rupert’s Swallow ran before the storm for four days. They could barely see one end of the ship to the other, and they lost their mainsails. At the worst of the storm, the ship was being propelled toward jagged rocks, but in a last-minute reprieve, the wind shifted and steered them clear of the rocks. They survived, barely.

When the hurricane passed, Rupert realized the extent of the storm’s devastation: his fleet was lost, and most heart-rending for him, there was no sign of the Defiance. Rupert’s best friend, his brother Maurice, was lost at sea.

Prince Maurice
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Four days, on September 17th, the Swallow limped into St. Ann’s in the Virgin Islands, and took on fresh water and supplies, which were scarce because of the hurricane. Everyone was on reduced rations and starvation was a real threat. Over the next week, they sailed south looking for supplies.

Rupert searched fruitlessly for word of his brother and the rest of his fleet. For years, rumours circulated of Maurice being sighted across the West Indies, from Puerto Rico to Hispaniola, but they amounted to nothing. The Defiance was never heard from again. The Honest Seaman was also lost, but there were a few survivors. Several months later, Captain Craven turned up in France.

The loss of his fleet spurred Rupert to recoup some of his losses. In early October, he returned to Montserrat and captured a small English prize and tried to pick off a Spanish ship but couldn’t catch her.

On October 10th, Rupert arrived in Guadeloupe where he received word that the English Commonwealth was now at war with the Dutch Federation over a trade dispute. More tantalizing, he learned that there were rich prizes in Antigua, another English colony.

At the end of the month, the Swallow arrived in Antigua, but instead of sailing into Five Island Harbour, he approached with uncharacteristic caution. Rupert sent an advance party of fifty men, led by Captain Holmes, to scale the hill where an embankment of guns protected the harbour.

Holmes and his men spiked the guns then gave the signal for Rupert to sail into the harbour to capture the two English ships anchored there. The Swallow fired on one of the ships and crippled her, but the other surrendered without resistance. For the next couple of days, while the English soldiers created barricades on the beach to prevent a Royalist landing party, Rupert plundered the crippled ship then set sail with his prize.

Rupert would stay only another month in the West Indies. On December 12,1652, the Pirate Prince of the Caribbean closed off this chapter of his life and headed back to Europe with far less than he had hoped to return with. But at least Rupert would live to see another adventure.

Further reading
Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier, by Charles Spencer

~~~~~~~~~~

Cryssa Bazos is an award-winning historical fiction author and 17th-century enthusiast. Her debut novel, Traitor's Knot, was a Medalist winner of the 2017 New Apple Award for historical fiction, a finalist for the 2018 EPIC eBook Awards for historical romance, and a finalist for the RNA Joan Hessayon Award. Her upcoming novel, Severed Knot, was longlisted for the HNS 2018 New Novel Award. 

Connect to Cryssa through her Website, Facebook, Twitter (@CryssaBazos), or sign up for her Newsletter. Traitor's Knot is available through Amazon.