As we pick through the surviving documents
in chronological order, we find evidence of the progress of the cotton industry. In 1712, the Surveyor General of Barbados and
the Leeward Islands reported to the Council that Anguilla and Virgin Gorda made
between 50,000 and 60,000 lbs of ginned cotton-wool per year.[1] He complained that the majority of this was
traded for household essentials either in the Danish island of St Thomas or in
the Dutch islands of Statia and Saba.
These islands remained important depots for inter-island trade for
centuries. Statia was only closed as an
international free port, with which the British West Indians illegally traded
in breach of the Navigation Acts, by Admiral Rodney in 1781. St Thomas remained open to the Anguillians
until recently.
The Surveyor General proposed that a
customs officer be placed on each of these islands to ensure that this illegal
trade was stopped. No customs officer
was, however, appointed in Anguilla for another sixty years. The deputy governor was expected to perform
this function as part of his duties. We saw
that deputy governor Arthur Hodge collected the powder money from incoming
vessels, and never accounted to anyone for it, occasioning a suit against his
estate in later years. Deputy governor
Benjamin Gumbs describes himself in the occasional document as the customs
collector for Anguilla.[2] Such customs duties as he collected were
likely kept by him for his private use as there were no public buildings or
other infrastructure.
Some light is shed on the system of
government in the short period when Anguilla was informally grouped with the
Virgin Islands by the Colonial Office.
In early 1716, the Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations requested
that Governor Hamilton send them an account of the state and nature of the
Virgin Islands. He was also to give his
opinion on how far each of the islands might be made useful to the United
Kingdom. He was to give the fullest
details on what type of trade was carried on between the British islands and
the island of St Thomas. He was also to
explain how the deputy governors of Anguilla and Virgin Gorda were appointed,
whether they received any salary, how many people were under them, and what controls
existed over them.
Governor Hamilton replied to this enquiry
on 3 October.[3] From his response it is clear that government
in Anguilla at that time was rudimentary.
The deputy governor, he wrote, functioned alone without the assistance
of any Council. He was never appointed
by Royal Warrant, as was normal in the other islands. He was instead informally appointed by the
Governor-in-Chief. The practice was for
the Governor to choose one of the best persons available in the community. He sent the deputy governor his instructions
from time to time. It was, he explained,
sometimes difficult to select someone who was tolerably suitable from amongst
them to put in authority. There was only
a handful of persons available to choose from.
He submitted in support of this statement a copy of the 1717 census of
Anguilla. The list showed Anguilla's
population in 1717 to be a total of 1,354 persons. He commented that at that time Anguilla was
the heaviest populated of the Virgin Islands.
Indeed, he wrote, there were more people on it than all the rest of the
Virgin Islands put together.
The chief produce of the island, he wrote,
was the raising of small stock and a small quantity of cotton. It is clear from his remarks that sugar was
not yet produced in Anguilla. With this
dispatch, the Governor enclosed the 1716 list of the inhabitants of Anguilla
that we have previously examined.[4] The population at that time consisted of 89
white men, 103 white women, 342 white children, and 820 black slaves, of whom
414 were described as ‘working negroes’.
This is a more detailed and exact figure than the earlier one given by
acting Governor Johnson in 1705, when he complained of having suffered a
violent and malignant fever as a result of his visit to Anguilla.[5] He
reported that in Anguilla there were only 100 men suitable for the local
militia in case of war.
It is noticeable that, as we saw in Chapter
10, after Abraham Howell Sr led some 40 white men and 60 slaves from Anguilla
to Crab Island in 1717, the former island showed no drop in the adult white
population from the figures given for 1716.
The numbers found in Anguilla in 1717 were 97 white men, 154 white
women, 234 white children and 824 black slaves, or a total population of
1,309. Despite the exodus, the population
increased from 1,309 to 1,354. Only the
children show a reduction in number.[6] This is not unusual, as a high rate of infant
mortality was a common feature of life in the Leeward Islands at that
time. It would appear, from the above,
that persons continued to come to settle in Anguilla at a time when conditions
were so difficult.
Two years later, the evidence is that the
population has again increased, despite the long drought and the limited supply
of agricultural land. In 1719, Governor
Hamilton wrote to the Council estimating that there was a maximum of 1,000
people including 100 men suitable for the militia on the island.[7] From what he knew of them he had a high
opinion of their abilities. He described
them as very industrious and careful. He
lamented that they might be of excellent use to his government of the Leeward
Islands if only they were resettled on St Kitts, Antigua or Nevis. He despaired of being able to keep them
together much longer on Anguilla. Some
of them, including deputy governor George Leonard, were already removed to
Antigua. It was more than probable, he
wrote, that others would follow. For all
that, the population continued to grow. One
concludes that there was some other attraction in Anguilla besides scratching for
provisions in the inhospitable soil.
The main pursuit of the small planters on
the island, in this early part of the eighteenth century, was the growing of
food crops for subsistence, and of cotton for export. The principal food crops were pigeon peas, maize,
and sweet potatoes. Fishing was, as
always, a sure source of protein. Goats
and sheep were the main small stock kept, as there was seldom enough rain for
cows. But, the more enterprising
Anguillians found other outlets for their entrepreneurial energies. We will recall Governor Codrington's
description in 1701 of Anguilla being then a hotbed of smuggling. The sloops and schooners of Anguilla, then as
later, provided her people with a lucrative alternative to agriculture: smuggling.
Anguillian seamen did not confine the
trade of their sloops to nearby islands.
Even the Atlantic posed no barrier to their enterprise. There was a well-recognized route, via
Bermuda, across the Atlantic for the sloops of the Leewards. Bermuda did a good business in providing
fresh meat and other provisions for boats setting off eastwards across the
Atlantic. In November 1706, the Governor
of Bermuda wrote to the Committee for Trade and Foreign Plantations that he was
taking the opportunity offered by a sloop that touched there to take on water
on her way from Anguilla to England to send his latest dispatch to the
Committee.[8]
In the Colonial Office records there is
at least one later instance, in 1711, when the same deputy governor of Bermuda
is mentioned as having issued a clearance for a sloop, bound this time in the
other direction, from London to Anguilla.[9] Impressively, Anguillian sloop captains were
at this time regularly embarking on their vessels across the Atlantic Ocean in
pursuit of trade.
Trade with neighbouring islands was much
more common than was trade directly with Britain. It required an exceptionally brave captain
and crew to sail a small inter-island schooner across the Atlantic to a port in
Britain. In May 1726, Governor Hart wrote
from St Kitts to the Committee about an amending Act passed by the St Kitts
Assembly.[10] This episode tells us something of the
Anguillian trade with St Kitts. It
appears that the original Act, passed four years earlier, imposed a 'powder
money' tax on the arrival in Basseterre of ships intending to trade. The tax was known as ‘powder money’ because
it was intended to purchase guns and gunpowder for the defence of the island in
time of war. The 1726 amending Act
provided that the tax no longer applied to vessels belonging to Anguilla and
the other Virgin Islands. Anguillian
vessels were now free to enter port in St Kitts to sell their cargo of corn,
peas, sweet potatoes, and goats. We may
be sure that the St Kitts Assembly was not passing the amending Act as a favour
to the Anguillians. It was solely for
their own relief and benefit. It is
likely that the tax resulted in the reduction or even cessation of trade from
these islands. In islands with rich
agricultural soil such as St Kitts, all cultivable land was under tobacco and
cotton production. Food for both slave
and planter was imported. The livestock
and provisions that the Anguillians and Virgin Islanders previously brought to
St Kitts to sell must have been sorely missed by the planters of St Kitts for
them to repeal this tax on Anguillian trading sloops.
The powder money was not collected in
Basseterre alone. It was supposed to be
collected in Anguilla as well. We saw
earlier that deputy governor Arthur Hodge of Anguilla collected the powder
money in Anguilla.[11] He kept it for his personal use and never
accounted for it before he left for England with the Anguilla petition for the
retention of the St Martin lands. By
what authority the tax was collected in Anguilla is uncertain as taxes can only
be imposed by a legislature. Anguilla
had no legislature until it joined in the Assembly in St Kitts after 1825. In the absence of an Assembly to pass laws
for Anguilla, there would be no taxing statute empowering Hodge to impose the
tax. The Anguilla tax was an unauthorised
or illegal imposition. It was no more
than a voluntary or extorted payment, extracted by the deputy governor acting
as chief customs officer. He collected
it by the force of his own will and personality. It helped that the tax was being collected in
all the other islands, so the trading ships were familiar with it. Few captains of visiting ships would challenge
its legality. In Anguilla, the tax was
treated as one of the perks of the office of the deputy governor.
We know very little about the size or
cargo of the Anguillian schooners and sloops of the period. One source of information is the series of
customs returns from the various islands.
A few of them are preserved in the Colonial Office records in
London. They recorded the names and other
particulars such as the size of the boat, number of crew, type of cargo, and
destination of all ships leaving port.
When a ship arrived in port, the return indicated where it came from. It showed the goods declared on the ship’s
manifest and other particulars. It is
possible to pick through the Antiguan returns and list each vessel entering
Antigua from Anguilla or departing Antigua for Anguilla.[12] No one seems to have made a similar return
for an Anguillian port until much later in the century. At any rate there is none from Anguilla
included in the shipping returns of our period.
The names of the Anguillian sloops and their captains listed on the
Antigua returns were,[13]
1706 - Merit Charles
Keagan, master;
1707 - Elizabeth and Mary Paul
Ruan, master;
1708 - Content Richard
Richardson, master;
1712 - Sea Flower John
and William Downing, masters;
1714 - Susanna and Mary William
Downing, master;
1715 - Elizabeth and Sarah John
Downing, master;
1715 - Mary Thomas
Hodge, master.
These Anguillian sloops are noticeably
smaller than the sloops of other islands trading with Anguilla. The biggest was 10 tons. The Sea Flower was only 2 tons. Their cargos are revealing about Anguilla’s
produce. Their freight was cotton, yams,
hammocks, livestock, a little tobacco, and turtle. The hammocks were not only for the navy, they
were for domestic use as well. Proper
beds would not become common in the islands for many more years. These were all the goods that were recorded
as exported from Anguilla to Antigua between the years 1704 and 1715.
If there were substantial profits to be
made in trade, whether lawful or unlawful, between the islands, the Anguillian
sloops also put up with hazards that were at least equal to the profit. In one report in 1735, we learn something of
what it was like to be an Anguillian ship’s captain at that time.[14] Captain Adams testified that he was bringing
his sloop laden with timber from St Croix to Anguilla.[15] At about midnight on 27 February, he came
upon a pirate ship. Heavily laden, he
was unable to escape from the pirate who hoisted out its ship's canoe with
thirty men on board, twenty-five of them armed with muskets, and five Indians
with their bows and arrows. The pirate
captain forced Adams to pilot him into Lime Trees Harbour on St Croix. There, he took another sloop captained by
another Anguillian, one McDonnogh.[16] There is no record of what happened to either
of Adams' or McDonnogh’s sloops.
We also saw earlier the unnamed Anguillian
sloop "bound for Rocas turtling"
captured by a Spanish sloop.[17] The catching of turtles and the extracting
and preserving of their meat was a useful side-line for Anguillian sloop owners.
Turtles were a staple meat of the
planters in the West Indies in the eighteenth century. As we have seen, live turtles were also essential
for the long sea voyages back to Europe.
They were kept on deck to be butchered and eaten as needed. The preserved meat was sold for export to
Europe and America. When properly
prepared, it was esteemed by the planters of the islands further south. The turtle capital of the West Indies was the
Cayman Islands. There, towards the end
of the seventeenth century, one hundred and eighty sloops supplied the turtle
market at Port Royal in Jamaica. The
salted turtle of the Leeward Islands was always considered an inferior product,
so crudely prepared that it was often found mixed with sand. Those butchers of the Cayman Islands who
salted the meat commercially took more care than the fishermen of the Leeward
Islands who prepared the meat on the beach and in the open air.
An early West Indian remedy for kidney
stones was the ‘pisle’ of a green turtle.[18] Richard Ligon described how the
planters in Barbados viewed this delicacy.[19] He called it the best ‘fish’ that the sea
produced. The fishermen caught them by
turning them on their backs in great numbers with staves. He was sure that there was no creature on
earth or in the sea that was more delicate in taste or more nourishing than the
turtle. He rhapsodised over the island
cure for kidney stones. The penis of a
green turtle was dried and pounded in a mortar to powder. He took as much of this powder as fit on a
shilling. In a short time, it cured him
of his kidney stone. He described in
detail how the medicine worked. After
fourteen days of being unable to pass water, he tried the island cure. Within ten hours, he wrote, the remedy broke
up and brought away all the stones and gravel that stopped his passage. His water, he wrote, came as freely from him
as ever, and carried before it such quantities of broken stones and gravel as
he never before saw in his life. The treatment was probably less hazardous
to health than the infusion of goose dung prescribed by other doctors at the
time.
Anguilla offered few other avenues for
profit even to the most enterprising of her inhabitants. There was trading with the buccaneers, and
with the French, Dutch and Danes. Such
trade was contrary to law and could result in hanging. We have previously mentioned dye-wood
lumbering, salt reaping, the turtle trade, and the cultivation first of tobacco
and later of cotton.[20] There was some minor Indian trade and Spanish
slave traffic. Profits were never as
significant in these activities as in the two new occupations of the
Anguillians as the century progressed: sugar manufacturing and
privateering. This last activity
flourished during the Rebellion in the Northern Colonies, as the British at the
time styled the event later known as the American Revolution, and in the wars that
followed. Sugar enjoyed a very short
life in Anguilla. It flourished in the
period 1740-1776, when the increased rainfall encouraged some Anguillians to
risk everything on become West Indian sugar planters. The American Revolution, and Admiral Rodney’s
blockade of maritime trade, as well as the resumption of drought in the 1780s,
brought the Anguillian sugar planters to breaking point, and the sugar estates
all failed, but this is outside our period.
Richardson's 1738 will tells us something
about the types of currency in circulation in Anguilla at the time. Of the many bequests of money to his children
and grandchildren, not one is expressed to be either in ‘pounds sterling’ or in
‘local currency’. The gifts of money are
all expressed in ‘pistoles’.
At that time the supply of British coin
was very limited throughout the West Indies.
The copper coins of Britain were huge and cumbersome until they were
replaced by the smaller bronze coinage of 1860.[21] In any case, it was only in 1838 that large
numbers of copper coins were minted for use in the West Indies: the one and a
half pence,[22]
the two pence, and the three pence coins.
Silver and gold coins from the six pence up were smaller but hoarded by
those that were lucky enough to acquire any, and not widely in circulation.
The principal coins current in the Leeward
Islands in the eighteenth century were the Portuguese gold johannes and half-johannes,
Spanish gold doubloons, French pistoles, and Spanish silver dollars. The half-johannes
was valued in England at thirty-six shillings, and in the West Indies at fifty-five
shillings. The doubloon was worth five pounds five shillings. The dollar
was worth six shillings and eight pence.
One hundred pounds sterling was equivalent later in the century to one
hundred and forty pounds local currency.
As one of the most common circulating
coins used in the first half of the eighteenth century, the pistole is frequently mentioned in the
deeds. With French St Martin lying just
ten miles off the coast of Anguilla, and with the family and business
connections and interests that tied the planters of St Martin to those of
Anguilla, when they were not invading each other, one imagines that pistoles were relatively easy to come
by. It is difficult to express
eighteenth century values as twenty-first century equivalents. A pistole
probably amounted to around the purchase price of a cow today. It was thus a not inconsiderable sum. It is worth noting that the pistole was
described as ‘current cash of this island’ in John Richardson’s 1741 deed. This means that it was accepted as legal
tender by the Anguilla Council in determining disputes.
There is a series of court judgments in
the Anguilla Archives which illustrate the shortage of coin in circulation on
the island. Due to a lack of coin, the
local cotton planters of the eighteenth century paid their debts by barter in
cotton. This was the normal and recognised
way to pay one’s debts. From time to
time, some foreign merchant would refuse to accept barter and would demand
cash. The case would go to court. The Council consisted principally of local cotton
and later sugar planters. They would
give the expected judgment. So, in one
case in 1752, two newly established merchants, Nicholas Dunbavin and George
Dunbavin, sued Mary Arrindell for thirty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings, five
and a quarter pence. The Dunbavins would
become important players in Anguilla later in the century, but they were as yet
unaccustomed to local ways. The court
record reads,
Anguilla ]
May the 5th 1752 ] At a meeting of His Majesty's Council, being present
The Honourable Benjamin Gumbs,
Esq
John Hughes ]
Benjamin Roberts ]
Joseph Burnett ] Esqs, and Members of the
Council
Thomas Gumbs ]
Edward Payne ]
Nicholas and George Dunbavin
versus
Mary Arrindell
Action for
£37 15s 5¼d
Judgment with costs of suit that Mary Arrindell be obliged to
pay cash or merchantable cotton wool at cash price for the contents of the
bond, and that Nicholas Dunbavin shall be obliged to take cotton at the price
that cotton pays debts in this island.
Signed by command
Edward Payne
|
Table 1:
Nicholas and George Dunbavin v Mary Arrindell. (Anguilla Archives)
The meaning of the court order is
evident. The Council found that Mary
Arrindell did owe the amount but that she had been within her rights to tender
cotton in payment. Cotton was legal
tender in the island’s cash-strapped economy.
The Dunbavins had been wrong to demand payment in cash. They were obliged to accept cotton at the
established price if it was offered. They
ordered payment in the very form the Dunbavins rejected and that caused them to
bring the suit. They lost their case. The island Council reaffirmed the local way
of doing business, tender by barter. In
the absence of coin in Anguilla, tender by barter was the only realistic way to
pay for goods and services.
A later case in the same year illustrates
the same point. Another stranger, George
Warden, sued John Welch for thirty-eight pounds, six shillings and seven
pence. The court record reads:
Anguilla
June the 6th
1752
At a Meeting of His
Majesty's Council, being present
The Honourable Benjamin
Gumbs, Esq
John Hughes ]
Benjamin Roberts ] Esqs, and Members of Council
Joseph Burnett ]
Thomas Gumbs ]
George Warden on behalf of
James Brown
versus
John Welch
Action for
£38 6s 7d
It is the opinion of the
majority of the Council that George Warden shall be obliged to receive cotton
from Mr John Welch at 22d per lb as it was the currency when tendered, and
that George Warden be obliged to pay costs of suit, and, furthermore, we do certify
it was given by the majority of the dealers in that product.
|
Table 2: George Warden v John Welch. (Anguilla
Archives)
The meaning of the order is clear. The plaintiff was obliged to accept cotton
tendered by an Anguillian planter at the rate of twenty-two pence per
pound. This was the price accepted by most
dealers in cotton at the time the payment was tendered. George Warden was penalised in costs as he was
wrong to refuse cotton when it was offered to him in payment.
David Derrick’s 1752 deed sheds light on
the fluctuating value of land in Anguilla at that time. He purchased Richard Richardson Jr’s Little
Dix Plantation for the sum of two hundred pounds ‘current money’. Little Dix was a then substantial
estate. A mere three years later, the
Derrick sold the plantation for the lesser sum of one hundred and fifty pounds
‘current money’ to Isaac Arrindell.
There is no explanation for the 25% fall in its value in such a short
period of time. The 1750’s was the dawn
of Anguilla’s short-lived sugar plantation period. We can only assume that then as now Little
Dix Plantation was not suitable for growing sugarcane and was fit only for
raising small stock and growing the usual subsistence crops of maize, peas and
sweet potato.
And so,
from the documents in the archives, we get glimpses of living conditions in
Anguilla during our period. The
overwhelming impression is that the Anguillians endured lives of relentless
hardship. The will to survive and
prosper against all odds that characterizes the Anguillian of today was forged
at this time. The willingness to travel
far and work in oppressive conditions began then. Anguillians have never until recently enjoyed,
if not an easy life, then at least the opportunity to earn a living in their
own country.
[2] See Chapter 18: Sugar Arrives.
[3] CO.152/11, No 56: Hamilton to the
Committee on 3 October 1716.
[5] CO.152/6, No 39: Johnson to the Committee
on 3 November 1705.
[7] CO.152/12.4, No 155: Hamilton to the Committee
on 20 July 1719 with answers to their queries.
[11] Chapter 12: The French Wars.
[12] CO.157/1: The Antigua lists of Shipping,
1704-1720 previously referred to in Chapter 7: The Leeward Islands.
[13] These vessels are deemed to be Anguillian
if their captain carries an Anguillian name.
There are no vessels in the returns of our period that are declared to
be registered in Anguilla. They are all
registered in Antigua, Bermuda, St Kitts or Nevis. In the absence of a proper system of
government, Anguilla was not entitled to maintain a Registry of Shipping.
[16] Perhaps our George MacDonnah? See Chapter 4: The First Generation.
[17] Chapter 12: Privateers.
[18] According to the Oxford English
Dictionary this word was originally of 16th century Flemish/Dutch origin
and referred to the penis of an animal.
It is now mainly retained in ‘bull pizzle’, a flogging instrument made
from the stuffed penis of a bull or bison, until recently favoured in the West
Indies by wife-beaters.
[19] Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History
of the Island of Barbados (1657).
[20] See Chapter 11: Cotton and Salt.
[21] The new bronze coinage continued out of
habit to be called ‘coppers’ until pounds, shillings and pence were abolished
in 1971 and replaced by decimal currency.
[22] Also called a ‘three half-pence’.
