Sunderland Point - Cotton and Slaves

by Annie Whitehead


According to Wiki, Sunderland point is "a small village among the marshes, on a windswept peninsula on the mouth of the River Lune and Morecambe Bay". Hardly a description to pique one's interest. But come with me on a little tour of a place that stands immune to the passage of time, beyond the fact that the ships no longer dock here, and the warehouses are now domestic dwellings...


On this virtual tour, your feet will stay dry, but in reality Sunderland Point is only accessible via a single-lane track, which, much like the Island of Lindisfarne, is submerged at high tide. (Although unlike Lindisfarne, it is not an island and is unique in being on the British mainland and yet dependent on the tides for access. The name Sunderland is reputed to mean "sundered from the land").

Local places nearby named 'Catchems' and 'Snatchems' hint at a murky past of Press Gang operation in the area.

Developed as an 'outport' for Lancaster by a Quaker named Robert Lawson in the 18thc, in its heydey, Sunderland Point was rivalled only by London, Bristol and Liverpool. Reputedly, it was the place where the first bale of cotton landed in Britain.

The stump of the Sunderland point cotton tree is preserved - According to legend, the Cotton Tree grew from a seed imported in a bale of cotton. Although the tree was not grown from a cotton seed, it might actually have come from the USA. It is not a tree normally found in this part of the country, and the female is relatively uncommon in England. It might have been brought as a cutting by one of the sea captains on a return voyage from America.The wood was also used for brake blocks, clogs and even arrows (a clutch was found in The Mary Rose.)

A short, circular walk from the end of the causeway takes you along 'First Terrace', from where you can turn and walk past Upsteps Cottage, where the 'slave Samboo (or Sambo) is said to have been lodging when he died there in 1736. The walk to his grave takes you past the chapel, where if you look closely at the sign you can see that services are 'subject to tides'.


The story goes that Samboo/Sambo was a slave. His grave is out on the middle of the point because as a non-Christian he had to be buried in non-consecrated ground. That much is probably true, but whether he died, as is rumoured, from a broken heart waiting for his master to return from sea, or whether he contracted an illness, is open to conjecture. It seems more likely that he was a crew member of a West Indian trading ship. Reverend James Watson's verse, written in 1796, is still visible on the grave, although the original plaque was, unfortunately, vandalised and had to be recast. It reads:

"Full many a Sand-bird chirps upon the Sod And many a moonlight Elfin round him trips Full many a Summer's sunbeam warms the Clod And many a teeming cloud upon his drips. But still he sleeps - - till the awakening Sounds Of the Archangels's Trump new life impart Then the GREAT JUDGE his approbation founds Not on man's COLOR but his worth of heart."

As you walk away from Sambo's grave, turn round and see a stark reminder of the current largest employer in the area: Heysham Power Station, looming on the horizon.


Returning to the village you can see across to Glasson Dock, which eventually came to serve Lancaster as Sunderland Point fell into disuse. In 1728, Robert Lawson went bankrupt. By 1830, over 10,000 tons passed through Glasson Dock, most of it taken then to the Lancaster canal, construction of which had begun in 1792.


But reminders of Sunderland Point's heyday remain. Rounding the point, one catches sight of Sunderland Hall, a now slightly faded building of grandeur, dating originally from 1683, but with a 'Colonial' style façade added at a later date.



Walking back along second terrace takes you past the old warehouses (pictured at the top of this page) and past walls and gateways that offer glimpses of otherwise hidden gardens. Many of the buildings here are Grade II listed, and the whole village is so untouched by modern building that it was used as a location for the television production of "Ruby in the Smoke".



A final reminder before we leave, is of the capricious nature of the elements. These elegant Georgian buildings testify to more than just their history; all have flood defences - modern technology which must surely be an improvement on the past.

But the village, still inhabited but with a large 'holiday home' population, remains quiet, undisturbed by modern development and has the air, especially 'out of season', of an abandoned film set. To walk here, especially on a quiet day, is to get a real sense of how it must have been centuries ago. But you must imagine the noise and bustle of the great days of the ships' cargo being unloaded into the warehouses. Today, an eerie silence is broken by the sound of seabirds calling, and the fishing boats seem to add to the air of abandonment.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Annie Whitehead is an historian, and the author of To Be a Queen, a story of 9th/10thc Mercia. She also writes regularly for magazines and is rarely happier than when discovering the little nooks and crannies of the British countryside and digging into their past.

Find Annie at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

Influences of the New World, Asia and Africa in Jane Austen's Novels

by Lauren Gilbert



Jane Austen was not obliging enough to leave footnotes or other references to her ideas and her writings.  Looking for outside influences on Austen’s writing was a challenge because, in my preliminary research, I found tantalizing hints but little concrete material.  As I studied more, I found more hints, more links, and more ideas and have managed to form certain conclusions.  Although influenced by the materials I’ve covered, these conclusions are my own, and no one else is to blame for any errors, misinterpretations and contradictions you may detect.

England during Jane Austen’s time reflected the culture of empire. Even though the American colonies were lost, England was just approaching the golden age of the empire on which the sun never set. England’s presence in Asia, India, the West Indies, Africa and other parts of the world brought influences from many areas and many viewpoints together.

In Miss Austen’s time, the issues of slavery and the abolishment of the slave trade in Britain were significant, even though the practice of owning slaves was not yet abolished. Slavery, empire and marriage (at least to some degree, in Miss Austen's era) involve relationships of "superior beings" with "inferior beings"--all three conditions require that the dominant (i.e. stronger, better educated, richer--superior or male) being takes care of the subordinate or inferior being (or female) for his or her own good as well as the dominant being’s profit (whether monetary, emotional or other). The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 reflects the changing views of society.

The rise of female authors, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, also reflects change. Miss Austen’s letter to Cassandra of 1/24/1813 refers to an author Clarkson--this author is considered to have been Thomas Clarkson who in 1808 wrote a history of the slave trade, among other things. Much has been made of the mentions of Antigua and slavery in Mansfield Park. It’s difficult from a 21^st century perspective to consider these issues from the perspective of Jane Austen’s time. However, I don’t think it’s too much to consider the possibility that Fanny’s lowly, subservient  (slave-like) position in the household initially, and her elevation as her value (and the flaws of other, more highly-regarded persons) becomes clear is a metaphor for the changing order of things in society. The subordinate role of women in the late Georgian era is a topic Austen explores repeatedly.

In considering the influences of Asia, I took the obvious approach by starting with Miss Austen's link to India in the form of her aunt, Philadelphia Austen, who (after being a milliners apprentice for 5 years) sailed to India in 1752, married Tyso Saul Hancock on Feb. 22, 1753, and had a daughter, Jane’s cousin, Eliza de Feuillide. Although no letters written by Philadelphia detailing her life and adventures seem to exist, it’s difficult to believe that no information was shared among the family regarding her experiences and life in India, if not from Philadelphia herself, at least through Eliza.

The fashions of the time heavily involved muslin, calico and silk from India. India and the Orient were the source of trade goods, and information (whether true or otherwise) would have travelled with these goods. Park Honan’s biography of Jane Austen specifically refers to an exotic play, The Sultan, or a Peep into the Seraglio (attributed to Isaac Bickerstaff), as a play in which Miss Austen's brother Henry played the part of the Sultan in 1790 at Steventon, when Jane was 14.  The plot of this play presents a plucky English slave woman resisting the role specified for her by Islam, winning over the sultan, becoming queen and freeing the rest of the harem from bondage.

Jane Austen wrote of the plight the poor young woman in need of a husband going to India in Catherine, or The Bower, written in 1792: a friend of Catherine’s, upon the death of her father, accepted the offer of a cousin to send her to India (against her own inclinations) and was “splendidly, yet unhappily married.”, an obvious reaction to her aunt’s situation. Even before her own circumstances were an immediate issue, Miss Austen had obviously given a great deal of thought to the difficulties of a young woman with little money, and the ramifications of marriage seen solely as a solution to that problem. The choices made by Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet, and their subsequent rewards in Pride and Prejudice, as well as Jane’s own decision to break her engagement to Mr. Bigg-Wither clearly illustrate Jane Austen’s views on marriage and concerns with the results of a woman marrying solely for an establishment versus a marriage based on affection and respect.

Even the word “sopha” used in Persuasion and her own letters shows an eastern influence.  Laurie Kaplan pointed out that the words “couch” or “settee” would have been more common during this time.  The word sopha derived in part “from a part of the floor in Eastern countries raised a foot or two, covered with rich carpets and cushions”, a couch for reclining. She quotes Ackerman’s Repository for 1809 that “the sofa is recommended ‘when tired and fatigued with study, writing and reading’”. Mary Musgrove and Lady Bertram are pictured vividly on their sofas, languid or bored or dissatisfied or idle or ill, as the case may be. Miss Austen uses the sofa specifically to illustrate certain ideas about her characters’ qualities. In letters where she refers to her illness, she refers to her own sofa.

The influence of America (as an important part of the New World) was, for me, harder to trace. In her letter to Martha Lloyd of 9/2/1814, Miss Austen does not reflect a favorable view of America (“…I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation inspite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.”)  In considering the West Indies as part of the  Americas as the New World, it is somewhat different--her aunt Mrs. Leigh-Perrot brought a plantation in Barbados with her when she married Jane Austen's uncle, so the issues of slavery and income as discussed in relation to Mansfield Park would have had a great deal of immediacy for her family. The War of 1812 (the circumstance under discussion in the letter previously cited) would have been a concern but does not make an appearance in her novels (as with so many other politically-charged events of her time).

The ideals of democracy espoused by America, and later in the French Revolution, were a more direct influence on earlier authors with whom Miss Austen was familiar, such as Edmund Burke and Charlotte Turner Smith, but suffered an eclipse when in France the Terror erupted and the King and Queen were executed.  Park Honan wrote that, in The Loiterer, Jane’s brother James printed a story reflecting the Tory view of France and America in which a Scottish soldier fighting against Washington becomes a democratic  fool, loses his values, marries a rich vicious mean-born widow, and becomes miserable, ruined by the American Revolution. There is a strong probability that Miss Austen would have read the story. Her novels reflect a more prudent, Tory approach to advancement: her heroines who make advantageous marriages, and heroes who successfully advance clearly have worth of their own in terms not only of character, but also of birth. Elizabeth Bennet is a “gentleman’s daughter”, so her marriage to Mr. Darcy is not totally inappropriate. Fanny and William Price’s mother is Lady Bertram’s sister, so there is good blood there (however diluted) to supplement their individual merits. In spite of Emma’s improvements, Harriet (who is, we discover, the illegitimate daughter of a tradesman) is matched appropriately with the farmer Mr. Martin, and her friendship with Emma evolves into a more suitable relationship. Captain Wentworth's brother is a clergyman which argues a family of at least a respectable level. A case could be made for America being a negative influence, in Miss Austen's view. She tends to uphold the traditional values and structures, even while she makes her concerns about women’s role and place in life apparent.

Even though Jane Austen set her tales on a small stage and never referred directly to the great political and military events of her time, it is a mistake to conclude that her view was a narrow or restricted view. She was observant and read widely. Her own family exemplified the issues and upheavals of the time and encouraged her to develop her talent, in itself an anomaly. She was also very subtle. The activities and events that took place on the broader stage were absorbed and distilled to blend the colors with which she painted her little bits of ivory.

Sources include:
Honan, Park.  Jane Austen Her Life.  Ballantine Books Edition, New York, NY: May 1989.
LeFaye, Deirdre.  Jane Austen The World of Her Novels.  Frances Lincoln Ltd, London, UK: 2002.
Le Faye, Deirdre, ed.  Jane Austen's Letters (Third Edition) Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 1997.
MacDonagh, Oliver.  Jane Austen Real and Imagined Worlds.  Bath Press, Avon, UK: 1991.
Mitton, G. E. Jane Austen and Her Times, 1775-1817. (Originally published 1905) Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, NY: 2007 (reprint).
Tomalin, Claire.  Jane Austen A Life.  First Vintage Books  Edition, division of Random House, New York, NY: May 1999.

On-Line Research:
Persuasions On-Line : Numerous articles read, including:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol26no1/ray.htm  Vol. 26, No. 1  Ray, Joan Klingel.  “The Amiable Prejudices of a Young  [Writer’s] Mind”: The Problems of Sense and Sensibility”.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no2/ailwood.htm  Vol. 27, No. 2  Ailwood, Sarah.   “”What are men to rocks and mountains?” Romanticism in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice”.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no1/tontiplaphol.htm  Vol. 27, No. 1  Tontiplaphol, Betsy Winakur.  “Justice in Epistolary Matters: Revised Rights and Deconstructed Duties in Austen’s Lady Susan.”

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol25no1/sheehan.html  Vol. 25, No. 1  Sheehan, Colleen A.  “To Govern the Winds: Dangerous Acquaintances at Mansfield Park”.

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol24no1/ellwood.html  Vol.24, No. 1  Ellwood, Gracia Fay.  “”Such a Dead Silence:” Cultural Evil, Challenge, Deliberate Evil and Metanoia in Mansfield Park”.

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol25no1/kaplan.html  Vol 25, No. 1  Kaplan, Laurie.  “Sir Walter Elliot’s Looking Glass, Mary Musgrove’s Sofa, and Anne Elliot’s Chair: Exteriority/Interiority, Intimacy/Society.”

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol26no1/ford.htm  Vol. 26, No. 1  Ford, Susan Allen.  “”No business with politics”: Writing the Sentimental Heroine in Desmond and Lady Susan”.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/opno1/mosel.htm  Mosel, Tad.  “Jane Austen’s Two Inches of Ivory”.
Persuasions (Printed):
Showalter, Elaine.  “Retrenchment.”, Persuasions, No. 15, pp. 101-110, 1993.

Kaplan, Laurie (PhD) and Richard S. (MD, FACP). “What is Wrong with Marianne? Medicine and Disease in Jane Austen’s England.”  Persuasions, No. 12, pp. 117-130, 1990.

King, Gaye.  “Jane Austen’s Staffordshire Cousin:  Edward Cooper and His Circle.” Persuasions, No. 15, pp. 252-259, 1993.
Other On-Line Sources:
BBC HISTORY:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/paine_print.html Belchem, Professor John.  “Thomas Paine: Citizen of the World.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/burke_edmund.shtml  “Edmund Burke (1729-1797)”
The Literary Encyclopedia:
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4112   “Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)”First Published June 23 2003.  Citation: Antje Blank, University of Glasgow.
Other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Turner_Smith  “Charlotte Turner Smith”
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol24no1/ellwood.html  Vol.24, No. 1  Ellwood, Gracia Fay.  “”Such a Dead Silence:” Cultural Evil, Challenge, Deliberate Evil and Metanoia in Mansfield Park”.
http://www.tilneysandtrapdoors.com/mollands/etexts/jasb/jasb7.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Gilbert is a member of JASNA and lives in Florida with her husband. Her first published book HEYERWOOD: A Novel is available at Amazon.com, Jane Austen Books, and other sources.

Sir Francis Drake and the African Slaves, by Tim Vicary

As a boy, growing up in Devon, I was taught that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were great Elizabethan heroes.  Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world, to return with untold riches and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind; Hawkins was the founder of the Royal Navy, the man who designed and built the fast, weatherly galleons which sailed rings around the Spanish Armada.

These men were pioneers, adventurers, founders of the British Empire. Everything they did seemed admirable. They had saved the nation once; if England were ever in danger of invasion again all we had to do was to sound Drake’s Drum (which was hidden somewhere in Plymouth) and like King Arthur, he would rise from the dead and sail back to our rescue. As schoolboys, we basked in the reflected glory of these men. The symbol for the county of Devon was an Elizabethan galleon – Drake’s ship - sailing proudly across a blue sea.

It’s different today. Look up Devon County Council on the web and what do you find? No ship – just a logo of two green leaves. Terrific. (So Devon has trees and the rest of England does not?) But it’s a sign of the times. The environment is fashionable, the British Empire is no longer something to be proud of. 

Do today’s school children learn much about Francis Drake and John Hawkins? I wonder. If they do, I’m sure they are taught a different version of British history differently to the one I learned; and to an extent, that’s quite right. For Sir Francis Drake was not just a hero; he was also a pirate and a thief. He was licensed by the Queen to steal, burn and destroy Spanish ships and colonies in the New World. He was as feared and hated by the Spanish just as much as the Vikings once were by English monks, or Somali pirates are by sailors today.  

So what about his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, the founder of the British Navy, the man who built Queen Elizabeth’s galleons to defend us against the Spanish Armada? Surely he was no pirate; he was a respectable merchant, a shipowner,  a businessman, a senior civil servant.

Well, yes. He was all of those things. But he was a slave trader too. That’s where much of his wealth came from.

Oh dear. If there’s one thing that’s really really bad about the British Empire, that has be it: the slave trade. African prisoners torn from their homes, chained and packed like sardines into the stinking holds of wooden ships for month-long voyages across the heaving Atlantic. Then poked and prodded, naked and trembling, in a marketplace where they stood waiting to be sold.

Everyone knows this. I’m sure if there’s one thing that British school children DO learn about in their history lessons it’s the slave trade. And quite right too. It was horrible. It was also one of the greatest forced migrations in history. It’s because of the slave trade that British and American classrooms today don’t just contain white children who can identify with men like Drake and Hawkins, but also black children whose African ancestors were enslaved by men just like them.

You might think John Hawkins was ashamed of being a slave trader, but he wasn’t. Not at all. After all he hadn’t started it; the Portuguese were selling slaves long before him; they regarded the whole of the west African seaboard as exclusively their own, granted to them by the Pope. They sold slaves across the Atlantic to Spanish colonists in New Spain, the part of the New World the Pope had granted exclusively to them. Hawkins was just trying to get some of this commerce for himself, in the spirit of free trade. He made three slave-trading voyages, and he was so successful that he commissioned a coat of arms, proudly featuring – of all things – a black man bound with a rope.

Not very politically correct. Not the sort of public relations we can celebrate in our schools today, where racism is rightly regarded with anathema. And it wasn’t just John Hawkins who was involved with this; his young cousin Francis Drake sailed with him too, on the third and most troublesome of his three slaving voyages.

Clearly, these men were no angels. They were slave-traders, pirates, thieves – how can we possibly regard them as heroes? Surely we should just condemn them outright; and say there was nothing good about their lives at all?

 Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. These men, like most historical figures, were more complex than they first appear.

John Hawkins was both a slave trader AND the Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth’s Navy. He was the man who commissioned and built the ships which defeated the Spanish Armada. And by doing that, he saved many English men from becoming slaves themselves, bound for years to an oar in a Spanish galley, or being burned alive by the Inquisition at an Auto-da-Fe.

Francis Drake was both a pirate AND a great explorer, consummate navigator, circumnavigator of the world. He, like Hawkins, saved England from invasion by Spain.

But the life of Francis Drake also shows us something else. Astonishingly, it seems that it was possible to be both a slave trader AND the friend of escaped African slaves!

Here is the evidence. In 1567 the young Francis Drake sailed to Sierra Leone in a fleet commanded by his cousin, John Hawkins. Here they bought, stole and captured some 500 African slaves which they transported to the Spanish Main and sold to Spanish colonists. But although the colonists were happy to buy the slaves, they were less happy about the vendor; their King, Philip of Spain, had made it very clear that English and French merchants should be kept out of his New World Empire, and treated as pirates.

So when Hawkins’s fleet was caught in a hurricane, and forced to seek shelter in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulloa, he knew he was in trouble. While he was there, repairing his ships, the new Viceroy arrived from Spain with a fleet of 13 ships. At first, Hawkins negotiated an uneasy truce with the Viceroy: hostages were exchanged, and the Spanish fleet entered the harbor, mooring a short distance from the English. But the Spanish Viceroy had no intention of doing deals with a pirate. The truce was broken, and after a fierce battle most the English ships were sunk or captured. Hawkins escaped in one ship, Drake in another. Hawkins’s ship, the Minion, was so overcrowded with sailors from his other ships that he was forced to maroon several hundred men on land, where they were taken prisoner by the Spanish. When the Minion eventually reached England, only 15 men were still alive on board.

This incident made it crystal clear, as the Spanish Viceroy intended, that there was no possibility of English merchants trading with the Spanish colonists. Over the next few years Hawkins tried to negotiate with Spain for the return of his imprisoned sailors, even pretending, at times, that he was a Catholic. But Francis Drake took a more direct method. Since it was no longer possible to trade with the Spanish colonists, he decided to raid them instead. He set out to steal the gold and silver from the mines of South America which made the Spanish king so rich.

Francis Drake was very successful at this. In fact, he became one of the most successful pirates in all history. Historians estimate that each shareholder in his voyage of circumnavigation round the world made a profit of £47 for each £1 they invested. Queen Elizabeth got more money from that one pirate ship, than all other Exchequer receipts for a year.

But Francis Drake couldn’t have done all this on his own. Many of his most successful raids were due to some very important allies – the Cimarrons. These Cimarrons were escaped African slaves; people exactly like those whom he and John Hawkins had captured in Sierra Leone. Some of them may have actually travelled in Hawkins’s ships. But a lot of the Africans who were sold as slaves to the colonists had escaped. So many of them escaped, in fact, that they became a major threat to the Spanish colonists – just as big a threat as the English and French pirates. But unlike the pirates, the Cimarrons didn’t want gold and silver; they didn’t have much use for it.  They wanted freedom, and revenge, and the ability to defeat their Spanish masters.

All the accounts suggest that Francis Drake got on really well with these people. In a famous raid in Panama Drake presented the Cimarron leader, Pedro, with a gold encrusted scimitar which had previously belonged to Henry II, king of France. A true pirate’s sword! His Cimarron allies also took him to a hilltop in Panama, and showed him a famous tree. They climbed this tree with Francis Drake and his friend, John Oxenham, and showed them a marvelous sight: the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific to the west. It was this vision which inspired Drake’s later voyage round Cape Horn.

Some of these Africans liked Drake so much that they even chose to sail with him. As the wounded Drake was getting back into his pinnace after a raid on Nombre de Dios in 1573, a black man called out to him from the shore: ‘Are you Francis Drake? Then I am coming with you!’ This man, an escaped African slave called Diego, became one of Drake’s longest-serving seamen, and stayed with him until he died on the Golden Hind’s round-the-world voyage six years later. And in 1586, at the siege of Santo Domingo, Drake sent a different black servant to receive a Spanish officer who carried a flag of truce. When the Spaniard, apparently insulted by this, callously ran the black man through with his sword, Drake was so incensed that he insisted that the Spanish hanged their own officer before any further negotiations took place.

So perhaps, even though he was once a slave-trader, we can exonerate Drake from the modern slur of racism. Slavery, after all, was common in the sixteenth century, and not necessarily linked to race. Thousands of slaves were chained to the oars of the galleys on both sides, Spanish and Turkish, at the battle of Lepanto; that was how Mediterranean sea-battles were fought. Moorish sailors from North Africa raided the coasts of Cornwall and southern Ireland for slaves to sell in the markets of Constantinople. For sailors and people who lived near the coast, slavery was an unfortunate hazard of life. It could happen at any time, out of the blue, and transform a person’s life forever.

For someone writing a historical novel about Drake and Hawkins today, what does all this mean? Surely the story can’t, or shouldn’t, be only about the heroic English sailors, as books were when I was young. John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage transformed the lives of hundreds of unlucky Africans – more Africans, probably, than there were English sailors on his ships. So in a novel about these events, surely the Africans should have a prominent place too. What was life like for them, as well as for the English sailors who captured them?

In my book, Nobody’s Slave, I try to imagine what this may have been like. Nobody’s Slave is the story of two teenage boys, one African, one English, whose lives collide on John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage. I have tried to write an adventure story which, I hope, can be read by anyone, white or black, as part of our shared and troublesome history. It’s a work of fiction, but all the main events really happened; they are based on original sources, and as true and accurate as I can make them.

Sources:  Much of the original source material can be found in The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt. Hawkins’ own account of his voyage (written and approved by John Sparke, who sailed with him) is in Volume 7; two other very colorful accounts, by Miles Philips and Job Hortob, both of whom sailed with Hawkins and were captured by the Spanish, are in Volume 6.

Links: Amazon US

Amazon UK

Tim’s website

Lloyds-- Lifeblood of British Commerce and Starbucks of its Day

by Linda Collison

Ships have always played a major role in the import and export of goods; even today, ninety percent of world trade travels by sea.[i]  Yet there are obvious risks to be assumed when deep water and Mother Nature, pirates and enemy ships are involved. 

HMS Lutine

The concept of maritime insurance is as old as civilization.  Thousands of years ago Chinese river traders minimized their risk by deliberately spreading their cargo throughout several ships.  The Babylonians practiced bottomry, an arrangement in which the ship master borrowed money upon the bottom of his vessel, and forfeited the ship itself to the creditor, if the money with interest was not paid upon the ship's safe return.
[ii] 

About 600 AD, Danish merchants began forming guilds to insure its members against losses at sea, and merchant cities such as Venice and Florence started using a form of mutual insurance recorded in documents.  The Lombards brought the concept of marine insurance to northern Europe and England in the 13^th Century where the Hanseatic League further developed the means to protect their joint economic interests.
[iii] 

Permit me to fast-forward four hundred years to the 17^th century; the rise of English merchants and the search for new markets abroad.  Let’s pop in to visit London, now an important trade center, and walk along the waterfront…

    

Lloyd’s of London began as a coffee shop on Tower Street, founded by Edward Lloyd in 1688.  His establishment, located near the waterfront, soon became a popular meeting place where ship owners and merchants could meet with financiers to discuss ways to match the risks they faced at sea with the capital needed to insure them.[iv]

Coffeehouses were then enjoying a great popularity in London and many other European cities.  By 1675 there were more than 3,000 of them throughout England.[v]  Coffeehouses were social places where men with similar interests met to exchange news and do business, while enjoying the stimulating brew.  Much like your corner Starbucks where friends surf for jobs on their laptops while sipping Frappuccino’s and interviews are conducted over Venti Iced Skinny Mochas, 17^th century Londoners did business while getting buzzed on the bean.

Lloyds was never an insurance company, per se, but instead was a market – a regular gathering of people for the purchase and sale of provisions or other commodities.  At Lloyds coffeehouse merchants and shipmasters caught up on latest shipping news, bid on cargos of captured prizes, and obtained insurance for their ventures.  The underwriters, wealthy men referred to as “Names,” were the individuals who pledged their own money to insure a particular voyage.

In 1691 Edward Lloyd relocated his coffee house from Tower Street to Lombard Street, where a blue plaque hangs today.  The business carried on in this location until 1774 when the participating individuals moved to the Royal Exchange on Cornhill and called themselves the Society of Lloyds.  An Act of Parliament in 1871 gave the business a sound legal footing, incorporating it.  Although Ed Lloyd died in 1713, his name remains and is eponymous with the insurance of one-of-a-kind treasures, including Betty Grable’s legs and Bob Dylan’s vocal cords.
[vi]

The present Lloyd’s building, designed by architect Richard Rogers, was completed in 1986 on the site of the old roman forum on Lime Street.  In the rostrum hangs the original Lutine Bell.  Back in the days of the coffee shop, one of the waiters would strike the bell when the fate of an overdue ship became known.  If the ship was safe, the bell would be rung twice and if it had gone down, the bell would be rung only once, to stop buying, or selling of “overdue” reinsurance on that vessel.  ( To see an early Hollywood recreation of Lloyds watch the 1936 movie, Lloyds of London, with Tyrone Power in his first starring role.)

In his book, The Romance of Lloyd’s, Commander Frank Worsley (of the Shackleton Expedition) sings the praises of Lloyds, crediting the association with various philanthropic efforts, including the development of the lifeboat service in Britain.  In 1802 Lloyds members voted a donation of one hundred guineas to Henry Greathead, the inventor of the first practical lifeboat and set aside two thousand pounds for the provision of lifeboats on English and Irish coasts.
[vii]  

Modern lifeboat in Howth, Ireland

Lloyds was also instrumental in the creation of a Patriotic Fund in 1803, granting bounties or annuities to wounded men and the dependents of those killed in battle. Lloyds headed the fund with twenty thousand pounds, although the record shows that laborers, servants, schooled children, soldiers and sailors, sent their pence and more.  Officers and men of the Army and Navy contributed sums ranging from one day’s pay to a whole month.  A provisional committee was appointed to manage the Fund, which became a national institution.”
[viii]

Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on 
The Slave Ship -- J.M.W. Turner artist

On a much darker note, Lloyds was heavily involved insuring ships in the slave trade as Britain became the chief trading power in the Atlantic.  Between 1688 and 1807, when slave-trading was abolished, British shipping carried more than 3.25 million people into slavery.[ix]  It may be argued that the individual men who underwrote slave ships acted within the laws of the time and reflected the values of the society in which they lived, yet descendants of black American slaves have accused the Lloyd’s of London insurance market (and two United States companies) of profiting from the slave trade in a lawsuit seeking billions of pounds in damages.[x]  The past can indeed come back to haunt us.

Lloyds has always worked closely with the Royal Navy to the benefit of both.  Historian Steven Maffeo relates how the insurance market and the British Post Office were important to the Navy’s intelligence gathering throughout the Napoleonic Wars, the news of the victory at Trafalgar being posted at Lloyd’s even before the London newspapers broke the story.  During the 18^th century Lloyds developed a unique system of maritime intelligence of arrivals and departures which was sent immediately to the Admiralty, who in turn forwarded convoy and other useful information to Lloyds.
[xi]

Bark Endeavour, a vessel similar to Canopus in Barbados Bound

Convoy, the practice of escorting groups of merchant ships by a naval warship, was common practice during the war years of the 18^th, 19^th, and early 20^th centuries, to reduce the loss of ships and cargo to the Enemy.  At the beginning of my novel Barbados Bound the merchant ship Canopus is carrying gunpowder and traveling in convoy from England to Madeira during the Seven Years War.  From Madeira Canopus must strike out alone across the Atlantic to delivery the gunpowder on time – and of course Murphy’s Law intervenes.  Shipmaster Blake says that his ship’s guns are his insurance, though of course they would be no real match against a French privateer, hungry for prize.

Lloyds Register is filled with stories of profit -- and disaster.  The sinking of the “unsinkable” Titanic in 1912 represented one of Lloyd’s biggest losses, along with other major catastrophes such as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the attack on New York’s World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, Asbestos damage claims, and the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami.[xii]  The history of Lloyds is a fascinating one, and still evolving.  Wherever there is risk and money to be made, you’ll find the name Lloyds. 

Linda Collison is the author of Barbados Bound and Surgeon's Mate; the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series (Fireship Press.)  Read more on her website, lindacollison.com.  Linda is one of the speakers at the 2012 Historical Novel Society Convention in London.

---

[i] http://www.netherlandsembassydhaka.org/newpdf/Speech%20final%20PRESS.doc%20[Compatibility%20Mode].pdf

[ii][ii] ibid

[iii] http://jvhirniak.hubpages.com/hub/Privateers-Puritans-and-Merchant-Capitalists-The-rise-of-England-and-Holland

[iv] http://www.lloyds.com/Lloyds/About-us/What-we-do/Insurance-and-Lloyds

[v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee

[vi] http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/9-odd-things-insured-by-lloyds-of-london.htm

[vii] Worsley, Frank and Griffith, Glyn.  The Romance of Lloyd’s; from coffee-house to palace.  New York; Hillman-Curl Inc., 1937; pp.16, 99.

[viii] Worsely, pp 164-166.

[ix] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_of_London

[x] http://www.sableverity.com/lloyds-of-london-slapped-with-slavery-lawsuit/

[xi] Maffeo, Steven.  Most Secret and Confidential; Intelligence in the Age of Nelson. London; Chatham, 2000, pp30-31.

[xii] http://www.lloyds.com/News-and-Insight/News-and-Features/Lloyds-News/Lloyds-News-2012/Remembering-Titanic-100-years-on

Unrequited Love: Jane Austen and America

by Lauren Gilbert

Jane Austen had little to say about America, and that little was not good. In her letter to Martha Lloyd of 9/2/1814, she did not reflect a positive view of America (as in the new United States), saying “…I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation inspite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.” The ideals of democracy espoused by America, and later in the French Revolution, were a more direct and positive influence on earlier authors with whom Jane was familiar, such as Edmund Burke and Charlotte Turner Smith, but suffered an eclipse when, in France, the Terror erupted and the King and Queen were executed. Park Honan wrote that, in THE LOITERER, Jane’s brother James printed a story reflecting the Tory view of France and America, in which a Scottish soldier fighting against Washington becomes a democratic fool, loses his values , marries a rich vicious mean-born widow, and becomes miserable, ruined by the American Revolution. There is a strong probability that Jane would have read the story.

Austen’s novels reflect a more prudent, Tory approach to advancement than the Scottish soldier in question pursued: her heroines who made advantageous marriages and the men who advanced clearly have worth of their own in terms of character, but also of birth. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Elizabeth Bennet was a “gentleman’s daughter”, so her marriage to Mr. Darcy was not totally inappropriate. In MANSFIELD PARK, Fanny and William Price’s mother was Lady Bertram’s sister, so there was good blood there (however diluted) to supplement their individual merits. In spite of Emma’s improvements, Harriet (born, as we come to discover, the illegitimate daughter of a tradesman) was matched appropriately with the farmer Mr. Martin, and her friendship with Emma evolved into a more suitable relationship. The War of 1812 (the circumstance under discussion in the letter previously cited) would have been a concern but does not make an appearance in her novels (as with so many other politically-charged events of her time). It seems clear that America was a negative influence in the world, in Austen’s view. She tended to uphold the more traditional values and structures currently in place in England, even while she makes her concerns about women’s role and place in those structures apparent.

In considering the West Indies as part of the Americas, the situation and viewpoint are somewhat different but not more favorable. The combination of the West Indies and trade led directly to slavery. Her aunt Leigh-Perrot brought a plantation in Barbados with her when she married Jane’s uncle. Austen’s father, George Austen, was a trustee for a plantation owned by James Nibbs, a former classmate. Austen’s brother Charles’ naval career included five years in the North American Station, searching ships and interfering with trade between France and the United States. Charles married Fanny Palmer, the daughter of an official in Bermuda while stationed in the West Indies. The issues of slavery and income mentioned in MANSFIELD PARK would have had a great deal of immediacy for her family, as discussions of plantation business matters, including slavery, would have been fairly common. Austen’s disgust for slavery were made apparent, however discreetly, by the references in MANSFIELD PARK, previously mentioned, as well as in EMMA. In EMMA, Austen’s character Jane Fairfax referred to her role as a governess as a form of slavery of the mind, if not the body, and was extremely reluctant to embark on her career. Even the reference to Mrs. Elton's family in Bristol with wealth coming from trade has a dark connotation, due to Bristol having been a significant port involved with the slave trade. (The slave trade was outlawed in 1807 but slave ownership in the British Empire was still legal, during Austen's life.)

I was unable to find any positive references to the Americas in Jane Austen’s letters or novels. Even though Austen’s novels carry a subtle undertone of the injustices to women in the current English system, the democratic ideals that lead to the American and French revolutions clearly did not resonate with her. There is no indication she espoused the radical transformation of her society. While bearing in mind that the letters remaining are a fraction of what she had written, available information indicates that Austen viewed the Americas as a dangerously radical, unreligious place where people of low birth and poor character could be advanced socially and materially, in spite of their unworthiness. Given the fairly recent loss of the colonies and subsequent revolution and Terror in France, a jaundiced view of America by Austen and her contemporaries would not be unreasonable or surprising. One can only hope that subsequent developments would have found favor with her, especially in view of the continuing popularity of her novels here.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books:
Honan, Park. JANE AUSTEN Her Life. Ballantine Books Edition, New York, NY: May 1989.
LeFaye, Deirdre. JANE AUSTEN The World of Her Novels. Frances Lincoln Ltd, London, UK: 2002.
Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. JANE AUSTEN’S LETTERS (Third Edition) Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 1997.
MacDonagh, Oliver. JANE AUSTEN Real and Imagined Worlds. Bath Press, Avon, UK: 1991.
Mitton, G. E. JANE AUSTEN and Her Times, 1775-1817. (Originally published 1905) Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, NY: 2007 (reprint).
Ray, Joan Kilingel, PhD. JANE AUSTEN FOR DUMMIES. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, N.J. 2006.
Tomalin, Claire. JANE AUSTEN A Life. First Vintage Books Edition, division of Random House, New York, NY: May 1999.
On-Line Reading:
PERSUASIONS ON-LINE : Numerous articles read, including:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol25no1/sheehan.html Vol. 25, No. 1 Sheehan, Colleen A. “To Govern the Winds: Dangerous Acquaintances at Mansfield Park”.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol24no1/ellwood.html Vol.24, No. 1 Ellwood, Gracia Fay. “”Such a Dead Silence:” Cultural Evil, Challenge, Deliberate Evil and Metanoia in Mansfield Park”.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol24no1/ellwood.html Vol.24, No. 1 Ellwood, Gracia Fay. “”Such a Dead Silence:” Cultural Evil, Challenge, Deliberate Evil and Metanoia in Mansfield Park”.

BBC HISTORY:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/paine_print.html Belchem, Professor John. “Thomas Paine: Citizen of the World.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/burke_edmund.shtml “Edmund Burke (1729-1797)”
The Literary Encyclopedia:
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4112 “Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)”First Published June 23 2003. Citation: Antje Blank, University of Glasgow.
Other:
http://www.tilneysandtrapdoors.com/mollands/etexts/jasb/jasb7.html Hubback, J. H. and Edith C. JANE AUSTEN’S SAILOR BROTHERS (Chapter 7)