Part 36
The following is part of his description of the great hurricane which destroyed Savanna-la-Mar in 1780:
At Savanna-la-Mar, there was not even a vestige of a town (the parts only of two or three houses having in partial ruin remained, as if to indicate the situation and extent of the calamity); the very materials of which it had been composed had been carried away by the resistless fury of the waves, which finally completed what the wind began. A very great proportion of the poor inhabitants were crushed to death or drowned; and in one house alone, it was computed that forty, out of one and forty souls, unhappily and prematurely perished. The sea drove with progressive violence for more than a mile into the country; and carried terror, as it left destruction, wherever it passed. Two large ships and a schooner were at anchor in the bay, but were driven a considerable distance from the shore, and totally wrecked among the mango-trees upon land.
He concludes his description thus:
“Having resided for some time in that delightful country, from which the most celebrated painters of landscape have made their principal studies; and having always travelled with those who loved, or were professors of the Art; and having accompanied the latter in all their walks, and followed their imitations upon the easel, it is not unnatural to suppose that I should catch, as it were by reflection, a small portion of their curiosity, and endeavour to follow, at a distance, those rays which have warmed, although they have not been able to illuminate. As one, therefore, who has observed Nature with more enthusiasm than taste, I must decide in favour of the rich and magnificent scenery of the West Indies, in preference to any rural appearances I have observed in other countries; and I should dwell with more pertinacity upon this opinion, were they, by contrast, more observed and better known.”
William Beckford was born in Jamaica in 1744.
In 1767 or 1768 he went abroad with “two others” (William Fullerton and Glover) under the travelling preceptorship of Patrick Brydone, traveller and author, and made a somewhat extensive tour. Fullerton, after a most successful career in India, became known, from his conduct of the first commissionership of the government of Trinidad, as “the persecutor of Picton.” Beckford spent nearly thirteen years (between 1773 and 1788) in Jamaica, on his estates, Fort William and Roaring River, near Savanna-la-Mar, now the property of Miss G. C. Hay. Of the works at Roaring River almost all that remain are two stones, one of which bears the date 1737 and the other the Beckford crest, a heron’s head with a fish in its beak, with the date 1778. On page 392 of his work he says, “When I left Jamaica in the year 1777.” This is an evident misprint for 1788 or 1789. He also owned Williamsfield, and is said to have owned the following properties, also in Westmoreland: The Crawl, Hertford Pen, Hatfield Pen and Smithfield Wharf. During all these years he apparently never visited the north side of the island. He is mentioned in the Jamaica Almanacs from 1782 to 1788 (after which date his name disappears) as a magistrate for Westmoreland. Much as he admired its scenery, the island of Jamaica evidently had for him unpleasant memories. He alludes to it as “that spot upon which it was my unhappy fortune for so many years of my life to reside.” The only records of his sojourn in Jamaica are Beckford street at Savanna-la-Mar, and Beckford Lodge, a small holding near that town, and the mark R/WB which is still used for the rum exported from Roaring River. On his return voyage to England he passed the Cayman Islands, landing at Grand Cayman. In 1788 he published his “Remarks on the Situation of Negroes in Jamaica.” He retired to his estate at Somerly in Suffolk, which he had evidently owned as early as 1773. He then spent, as we have seen, some time, about 1790–91, in the Fleet prison.
[Illustration:
SAVANNA-LA-MAR IN 1840 ]
He died on February 4, 1799, of an apoplectic fit at the Earl of Effingham’s in Wimpole street, London. His pecuniary losses had probably led him to sell his property in Suffolk, for he is described as “late of Somerly Hall.” The Earl of Effingham mentioned is Richard the fourth earl, nephew to Thomas second earl, who had married a sister of Lord Mayor Beckford in 1744, and brother to the third earl, who died while Governor of Jamaica. Beckford evidently selected his friends from those accomplished in literature and the arts. In his writings he refers to Sir William Hamilton, who was a friend of the author of “Vathek,” to Brydone, to “my friend Parsons,” the musician, to Charles Burney, nephew of Dr. Burney and Robertson and Wickstead the artists; and Dr. Burney has told us that he was the friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Joseph Banks.
=Negril Harbour= is sometimes called Bloody Bay, said to be due to the killing of whales there in former times. In it is a tomb of George Murray (d. 1804), custos, who laid the foundation-stone of the church in 1797. At =Cross Path= is the tomb of Colonel John Guthrie (d. 1739), custos of the parish and colonel of the militia, who reduced the rebel negroes who had for many years harassed the island; at =Dryworks= there is the tomb of Colonel William Williams (d. 1723), custos of the parish, who had rendered valuable services during the hurricane of 1772, and William Lewis (d. 1774), grandfather of Matthew Gregory Lewis; On the roadside near =Kew Park= is a soldier’s tomb with the following inscription:
In the rear of this stone lie the remains of Obediah Chambers, late a private of the Light Infantry Company W.I.R. which, on the 5th of January 1830 fell into an ambush of rebellious slaves, near this spot, by whom the deceased was cruelly butchered.
A brave man, & valorous in course of life here, who died a Soldier & an honest man.
This stone is erected by the Officers & N.C. Officers of the 6th Battn. Coy.
At =Harmony Hall= is the tomb of John Lewis (d. 1820), chief justice and custos of the parish, and also of Mary Lewis (d. 1813). At =Three-Mile River= Estate is a mausoleum with a large marble slab “to the memory of James Graham, late of this island” (d. 1795), erected by his friend John Wedderburn. =Drummond= and =Indian Head= both have caves with Arawâk remains.
XIII ST. ELIZABETH
The parish of St. Elizabeth was probably named in honour of Elizabeth, Lady Modyford, the daughter of William Palmer, whose tombstone is in the cathedral. It is one of the largest parishes and one of the most important. In the parish church at =Black River= are memorial tablets recalling to the memory of the living the many good qualities of the departed St. Elizabeth gentry. The handsomest are those on either side of the chancel to the memory of Caleb Dickenson and Robert Hugh Munro, founders of the Munro and Dickenson’s trust, which to-day maintains two of the principal schools in the island. The Maroon township called Accompong on the northern boundary of the parish has been referred to in the account of the neighbouring parish of St. James.
Robert Hugh Munro, of the parish of St. Elizabeth, by his will dated January 21, 1797, and a codicil of May 23, 1797, bequeathed the residue of his real and personal estate in certain contingencies in trust to his nephew, Caleb Dickenson, and the churchwardens of the parish of St. Elizabeth, and their successors, to lay out the same in the endowment of a school to be erected and maintained in the said parish, for the education of as many poor children of the parish as the funds might be sufficient to provide for and maintain, and, if necessary, to apply to the Legislature for an act for the regulation of the charity and to carry out his intentions. For years after the death of Dickenson, who had bequeathed them fully to carry out his uncle’s intentions, the funds of the Charity were applied to anything but their proper purpose, and at length in 1825 an Act of the Legislature was passed for regulating the charity, which recited the history of the trust up to that date, and propounded a scheme which had been agreed upon for the management of the trust; but this commendable scheme appears never to have been carried out, and it was not until 1855 that the Act 18 Victoria, chap. 53, was passed with the object of rescuing the remains of the charity.
In 1856 a Free School for boys was opened near Black River, and early in 1857 the premises at Potsdam, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, were purchased and the school was removed thither. The Trust maintains two schools situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains—that for boys still at =Potsdam=; that for girls formerly at Mount Zion, now at =Hampton=.
At Lacovia, on the main road from Santa Cruz to Black River, precisely at its junction with the road from Lacovia to Balaclava, there are two tombs, side by side; the space between being only six feet. One, built of large squares of stones or rock commonly used for building purposes, is in the last stages of decay and ruin, and without any slab or inscription. The other is a high brick tomb, with a massive white marble slab on which is the following inscription:
Here lyes interr’d the body of Thomas Jordan Spencer. Born Octbr. the 14^{th}, 1723, who departed this life Sunday morning, September the 17th, 1738.
The _Arms_ are: Quarterly argent and gules, in the second and third quarters a frette or: over all, on a bend sable, three fleurs-de-lis of the first. The _Crest_ an esquire’s helmet.
This monument is not mentioned in Lawrence-Archer’s “Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies.” The quartering of the shield is very much worn owing to the exposed position of the tomb.
Tradition says that at a tavern which formerly stood hard by, a friendly party was interrupted by angry words which led to a duel, in which both combatants fell, and that they were buried side by side.
At =Lacovia= estate is the tomb of Barnard Andreiss (d. 1710), custos of the parish; =Dickenson’s Run= has Jewish tombs with inscriptions in Hebrew and Portuguese. At =Pedro= is a cave with Arawâk remains, and also at =Hounslow=. =Hampstead= great house is said to have been the summer residence of former Jamaica governors.
Some one with classic taste named =Catadupa=, a word originally applied to the cataracts of the Nile, and once used both in French and English for a waterfall.
Long, after ridiculing the tale copied by many writers that the rain-drops which fall at Magotty turn into maggots, goes on to suggest the derivation of “_maga_ (an enchantress) and _oteo_ (watching on a high place); alluding probably to the pinnacle of _Monte Diablo_, over which the thunder clouds so frequently break, as together with its horrid aspect to make it seem a proper residence for a witch, under patronage of the devil, to whom the mountain was dedicated.”
=Surinam Quarters=, in St. Elizabeth, were settled in 1675 by planters from Surinam, when that colony was exchanged with the Dutch for New York.
=Culloden= and =Auchindown=, in St. Elizabeth, date from the time of the arrival of the ill-fated Darien refugees.
XIV MANCHESTER
Manchester was separated from the adjoining parishes of St. Elizabeth, Clarendon and Vere in 1814, and was named after the Duke of Manchester, who was Governor of the island at the time; while the chief town, Mandeville, was named after his eldest son.
The parish is more noted for its agricultural than historic associations. Mandeville is much frequented by visitors from the United States and Canada and Great Britain. The court-house is said to have cost upwards of £20,000. In the churchyard is the tombstone of Sir William Scarlett, chief justice of the island from 1821 to 1832, who is referred to in the account of St. James.
Bridges, the historian, was the rector from 1817 to 1823. In that period he baptized 9547 slaves, and married 2187. In 1823 he published his “Voice from Jamaica,” written in defence of slave-owners, for which the Assembly two years later voted him £700. He valued his living at £1118 per annum. The Rev. Samuel Stewart, writing in 1840, says: “Four large schoolhouses have been erected, one-half of the expense paid by the Bishop, the other moiety by the Vestry.”
XV CLARENDON
The parish of Clarendon was named in honour of the celebrated Lord Chancellor. The parish of Vere, now merged in it, was named after Vere, daughter of Sir Edward Herbert, Attorney-General to Charles I, and first wife of Sir Thomas Lynch, who, with her two sons, died on her passage from England to this island in 1683.
=Carlisle Bay=, the scene of the principal military engagement with a foreign foe which has taken place in Jamaica during the British occupation, is on the south-west coast of the old parish of Vere.
Much of the following account is taken from “A Narrative of the Descent on Jamaica by the French,” by Sir William Beeston, in the MSS. department of the British Museum. It is printed in “Interesting Tracts relating to the Island of Jamaica,” published at St. Jago de la Vega in 1800. A letter from the Council in England in answer to Beeston’s narrative is also in the British Museum, and a contemporary account of the occurrence sworn to at Bermuda on October 2, 1694, by Benjamin Thornton, master of the sloop _Content_, is in the Record Office at Bermuda. Beeston came to the island in 1660, was employed in various public capacities, and was lieutenant-governor from 1690 to 1700, and thenceforward Governor till 1702; he is chiefly famous for the defence, which he made, together with Colonel Long, against the attempt by Lord Carlisle to assimilate the government of Jamaica to that of Ireland.
For some time prior to the engagement at Carlisle Bay the owners of the plantations on the sea coast of Jamaica had been much distressed by descents by French privateers (aided in some cases by disaffected persons from the island itself who threw in their lot with them) from San Domingo and the Leeward Islands, who plundered and murdered as occasion offered.
Captain Du Casse—the Governor of San Domingo, perhaps best known in England as the opponent to Benbow in the engagement which ended in the latter’s death—being informed by two renegade Irishmen that the “island was easily taken; the fortifications at Port Royal were out of order and few men there, so that two hundred men would take that place, and two hundred more would march in any part of the country the people were so thin and so little used to arms,” and, being reinforced by three men-of-war from France, decided to make a descent on the island. In the meantime a Captain Elliott, of Jamaica, who had been taken prisoner into Petit Goave, on the west coast of San Domingo, by French privateers, and was probably the Captain Stephen Elliott who brought to England the news of the great earthquake at Port Royal in 1692, managed to escape to Jamaica in a small canoe, and give timely warning on May 31, 1694, that Du Casse himself, with twenty sail and 3000 men, was coming to take the island. For this he was subsequently rewarded by William III with a gold chain and medal of £100 value and £500 in money.
Upon the receipt of Elliott’s news the House of Assembly, which was then sitting, was adjourned for one month, a council of war was called together, martial law proclaimed, and every officer ordered to his post. Colonel Beckford (grandfather of the celebrated Lord Mayor of London), who was in command at Port Royal, got Fort Charles into excellent order and fortified the town. A fort also was built in the Parade at Kingston; the pass by Rock Fort to the east of Kingston was guarded, and breastworks were erected at Old Harbour and Carlisle Bay. Beeston, realising that it was hopeless with the forces at command to try to protect all his coast-line, decided to defend the strongest parts, and drew all the forces from the out ports into St. Dorothy (a parish now merged in St. Catherine), St. Catherine, St. Andrew and Port Royal; and “some few” were left to defend the breastwork at Carlisle Bay. The people from St. Thomas and St. David, the most exposed positions, were called into St. Andrew and Kingston.
At Fort William and Port Morant the guns were spiked, the shot buried, and the powder brought away.
[Illustration:
CARLISLE BAY ]
The French fleet, consisting of three men-of-war and twenty-three transports, appeared in the offing on June 17. Rollon, the admiral, sailed in the _Téméraire_, of fifty-four guns. Eight ships stayed about Port Morant, but the remainder went into Cow Bay, near Yallahs, where they laid waste the country, plundered the houses, murdered what inhabitants they could find, and generally behaved with barbarity.
On July 15 the fleet, having done all the damage it could in the neighbourhood of Port Morant, set sail, and after reconnoitring Port Royal, put into Cow Bay the next day. Fearing an attack on Kingston by land, Beeston sent a hundred men from St. Catherine to reinforce the troops guarding the Windward road; but on the morning of the 18th he saw seventeen ships making, as he rightly judged, for Carlisle Bay, thirty six miles from Spanish Town. He took prompt action. He sent to Carlisle Bay two troops of horse, and parts of the regiments of St. Catherine, Clarendon and St. Elizabeth, the foot to be mounted on what horses they could find. The cavalry and the mounted infantry got there that night, and those on foot “marched so hard” that they arrived by ten the next morning. The enemy had anchored in Carlisle Bay on the afternoon of the 18th. The editor of the earliest edition of the “Laws of Jamaica,” published in 1683, refers to “Carlisle Bay, a safe Road for Shipping, and there is likewise built a pretty Town of that name, of about 100 Houses which has a fine Trade, that also increases, as the Country does in Plantations.”
Into the breastwork, which was commanded by Colonel Sutton of Clarendon, who had constructed it, were packed 250 men, in addition to negroes, being those of the several regiments that had come in during the night. Beeston tells us that the fort was ill-made and worse contrived. “On the south was the sea, on the west a large river [the Rio Minho], and on the east they had left a wood standing,” which formed a natural covert for the enemy. They also failed to lay in provisions for either man or horse.
By daylight on the morning of the 19th the enemy had landed about 1400 or 1500 men about a mile and a half to the east of the breastwork, where the small guard, after firing on them, retreated to the breastwork, which the French attacked so hotly that the defenders had to retreat over the river, not, however, before they had fought bravely and killed many of the enemy. Just as the French forced the breastwork three or four companies of the St. Catherine regiment and one of the St. Elizabeth and some horse came in, weary, footsore and hungry with their march of about thirty-six miles from Spanish Town. Yet they fell on bravely on the right of the enemy and charged them so warmly that they not only prevented them from pursuing the party that had crossed the river, but made them retire.
Nothing but skirmishes took place till Sunday the 22nd, when the French marched upwards till they came to the house of a certain Mr. Hubbard, which was garrisoned with twenty men and well provisioned. Local tradition says that this stood where Gales, a hamlet now occupied by the Coolie barracks on Amity Hall estate, now is. Bridges, in his “Annals,” writing in 1828, said: “The brick house in which so gallant a stand was made, remains with the shot visible in its walls, and a solitary cotton tree in the road from the Abbey [_sic_, Alley] to Carlisle Bay still marks the rallying-point of the English and the grave of many a valiant soldier.” An attack on this house by the French resulted in the loss of several of their best officers, as the besieged were aided by a detachment from the Bay. On hearing that a more determined attack was intended on the morrow, Major Richard Lloyd, who was chosen to command, put fifty men into the house and prepared an ambuscade. But the French, finding that they had lost so many of their officers and men, and that they could not penetrate further into the country, contented themselves with firing the small town of Carlisle, spiking the guns and doing what mischief they could, and then retreated to their ships. On Tuesday, 24th, the whole fleet sailed—Du Casse and two or three ships going straight back to San Domingo, the rest staying only to put into Port Morant to wood and water and land prisoners. And thus ended the most serious attempt at the capture of Jamaica ever made upon its shores during the English occupation.
Beeston estimates that the French lost on the expedition, by their different engagements and sickness, about 700 men; of these about 550 were killed at Carlisle Bay, albeit Père Labat puts it down at 150 only. On the English side 100 were killed or wounded; but 50 sugar-works were destroyed and many plantations burnt, and about 1300 negroes carried off. Du Casse received a pension of 100 pistoles per annum.
A sum of £4000 was received as a royal bounty to the sufferers by the French invasion. When called upon by the House of Assembly to account for it, Beeston declined; and the House, refusing to proceed with business, was dissolved by him. The matter was subsequently allowed to drop.
Colonel Richard Lloyd, alluded to above, who was chief justice of Jamaica in 1696–98, entered, however, a caveat with the Council of Trade and Plantations, received by them on April 26, 1699, against the late act of Assembly for a present of £1500 to Sir William Beeston. He says: “The pretence for giving him this money is to reward his care in the time of the French invasion of that island. I was a principal actor against them at that time, and have a journal of the whole affair. It will be ready for the press by the beginning of next week. I intend to dedicate it to your Lordships, and think it may induce you to think he deserves not to be gratified for his behaviour on that occasion.” If the journal was ever printed, no copy is now known to exist. It is difficult to say where the truth lay in the dispute, at a time when corruption was rife in high places.
In consequence of this descent of the French, the Government set to work to guard the coast as well as it could, and Carlisle Fort was built the following year. When Leslie wrote in 1740 “A New History of Jamaica,” the fort was “now in ruins and little regarded.” There is little left of it now, and that little is in the sea—part being shown in the illustration on page 375.