The Island that Disappeared

by Tom Feiling

  16. A. P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans: The Last Phase of the Elizabethan Struggle with Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1914), p. 323.

  17. William Sorsby, Old Providence Island: Puritans, Pirates and Spaniards 1630–1670, ch. 6, p. 3.

  18. Ibid., ch. 6, p. 19.

  19. Blair Worden, God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 56.

  20. Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 165, 274.

  21. Hill, God’s Englishman, p. 175.

  22. Ibid., p. 171.

  23. Hunt, The English Civil War at First Hand, p. 274.

  24. The quote is from the Scottish Presbyterian theologian Samuel Rutherford. See Hill, God’s Englishman, p. 217.

  25. Henry Parker, a nephew and close associate of Lord Saye, in his Discourse on Puritans, cited in Kupperman, Providence Island 1630–1641, p. 248.

  26. Hill, God’s Englishman, p. 256.

  CHAPTER 13—THE RISE OF PORT ROYAL AND THE RECAPTURE OF PROVIDENCE

  1. Cyril Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 63.

  2. William Sorsby, Old Providence Island: Puritans, Pirates and Spaniards 1630–1670, ch. 6, p. 18.

  3. ‘America and West Indies: April 1662,’ Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 5, 1661–68, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London, 1880): pp. 84–9.

  4. Instruction to Thomas, Lord Windsor, cited in David Marley, Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the Western Hemisphere, 1492 to the Present, vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008), p. 239.

  5. In the words of a contemporary observer cited in Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean, p. 74.

  6. Instructions to Thomas, Lord Windsor, cited in Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 6, p. 16.

  7. Citations from correspondence between Modyford and Charles II taken from Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 7, p. 7.

  8. A. P. Thornton, West India Policy Under the Restoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 37.

  9. E. A. Cruickshank, The Life of Sir Henry Morgan (Toronto: Macmillan, 1935), p. 136.

  10. Dudley Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way: The Biography of Sir Henry Morgan, 1635–84 (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1977), p. 252.

  11. Ibid., p. 65.

  12. Gabriel Kuhn, Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010), p. 43.

  13. James Burney, History of the Buccaneers of America, Payne and Foss (1816); reissued online as Project Gutenberg’s History of the Buccaneers of America, by James Burney (2011), p. 45.

  14. Ibid., p. 55.

  15. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 125.

  16. Cruickshank, The Life of Sir Henry Morgan, p. 20.

  17. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 7, p. 13.

  18. Ibid., ch. 8, p. 3.

  19. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 130.

  20. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 8, p. 6.

  21. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 131.

  22. Diana Souhami, Selkirk’s Island (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), p. 101.

  23. John Esquemeling and Henry Powell, The Buccaneers of America: A True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years Upon the Coasts of the West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 191.

  24. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 9, p. 3.

  CHAPTER 14—HENRY MORGAN, ADMIRAL OF THE BRETHREN

  1. Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Traveller’s Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands (London: Penguin Travel Library, 1950), pp. 310–11.

  2. Robert Guttman, ‘Henry Morgan: The Pirate Who Invaded Panama in 1671,’ Military History Magazine (1991).

  3. Dudley Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way: The Biography of Sir Henry Morgan, 1635–84 (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1977), p. 153.

  4. Cyril Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 84.

  5. Cited in William Sorsby, Old Providence Island: Puritans, Pirates and Spaniards 1630–1670, ch. 9, p. 11.

  6. A. O. Esquemelin, The Buccaneers of America, trans. Alexis Brown (London: 1972), p. 145, cited in Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 9, p. 14.

  7. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 242.

  8. Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean, p. 85.

  9. Cited in Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 7, p. 17.

  10. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 9, p. 15. The only eyewitness account of how Henry Morgan took Santa Catalina was written by the Dutch pirate-surgeon Alexander Esquemelin. His accuracy has always been suspect, but in recent years two other accounts have come to light that confirm his account. The young Spaniard Fernando Mercado Saavedra and the Indian simply known as Juan de la O were captured by Henry Morgan’s deputy, Edward Collier, and taken to Santa Catalina to serve as guides. Their testimonies are in the Escribania de Camara of the General Archive of the Indies in Seville.

  11. Esquemelin, The Buccaneers of America, p. 145, cited in Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 9, p. 14.

  12. Unless otherwise stated, quotes from those who took Providence with Morgan are taken from Esquemelin, The Buccaneers of America, cited in Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, pp. 216–9.

  13. Guttman, ‘Henry Morgan: The Pirate Who Invaded Panama in 1671.’

  14. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 237.

  15. Peter Earle, The Sack of Panama (New York: Viking Press, 1981), p. 244.

  16. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 10, p. 12.

  17. Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean, p. 87.

  18. £237,000 would be worth £19.6 million in today’s money, while £107,000 is the equivalent of £8.8 million today. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 249.

  19. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 355.

  20. Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 11, p. 4.

  21. Ibid., ch. 11, p. 20.

  22. Dictionary of National Biography entry for Sir Thomas Modyford, cited in Sorsby, Old Providence Island, ch. 11, p. 2.

  23. Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way, p. 264.

  24. James Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1964), p. 39.

  CHAPTER 15—MARINERS, CASTAWAYS, AND RENEGADES

  1. ‘Henry Halhead and Providence Island,’ Cake and Cockhorse (Banbury Historical Society, 1978).

  2. James Burney, History of the Buccaneers of America (Payne and Foss, 1816); reissued online as Project Gutenberg’s History of the Buccaneers of America, by James Burney (2011), p. 325.

  3. Ibid., p. 326.

  4. Dudley Pope, Harry Morgan’s Way: The Biography of Sir Henry Morgan, 1635–84 (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1977), p. 334.

  5. Reference to Britain’s income from its colonies is an estimate Pitt the Younger made in 1798. Isabel Clemente, San Andrés y Providencia: Tradiciones culturales y coyuntura politica, (Uniandes 1989), p. 32.

  6. Cyril Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 128.

  7. John Style was writing in 1670. See Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p. 46.

  8. The Royal Africa Company surrendered its monopoly over the traffic in slaves when the Stuarts were deposed at the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Ibid., p. 95.

  9. Ibid., p. 43.

  10. Stephen Kemble, the American commander of a British ship, described the stay he made on San Andrés in 1780 in The Kemble Papers. He found about twelve families living there. They had a hundred head of cattle and raised a little cotton. See James Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Bogotá, Banco de la República, 1964): p. 40.

  11. Ibid., p. 35.

  12. According to a report that the government inspector José del Río prepared for his superiors
in Cartagena in 1793.

  13. We also know that Coromantis survived the Middle Passage in greater numbers than did other tribes, which is why the elements of West African culture that survived the voyage to the New World tended to be Coromanti. The Ibo and other Nigerian slaves were considered ‘the lowest and most wretched of all the nations of Africa,’ with a marked tendency to commit suicide once in chains. The culture of the Congolese and Angolan slaves disintegrated under the pressure of enslavement. Bryan Edwards, pp. 88–9, cited in Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 137.

  14. James Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1964), p. 42.

  15. Ibid., p. 44.

  16. This is the explanation favored by J. Cordell Robinson in The Genealogical History of Providencia Island (San Bernandino, CA, Borgo Press, 1996), pp. 8, 101.

  17. Ibid., p. 8

  18. Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p. 49.

  CHAPTER 16—THE LAST ENGLISHMAN

  1. In referring to ‘Curracoa natives,’ Jacob Dunham must have meant visitors from the Dutch colony of Curaçao, although this is the only mention I have seen of their presence on Providence. Quotes from Dunham’s journal are from Project Gutenberg’s e-book of Jacob Dunham, Journal of Voyages, Containing an Account of the Author’s Being Twice Captured by the English and Once by Gibbs the Pirate (New York, 1850): p. 116. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/​files/​33835/​33835-h/​33835-h.htm.

  2. Memorias de Agustín Codazzi, ed. Marisa Vannini Gerulewicz (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1970), p. 334.

  3. James Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1964), p. 50.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Memorias de Agustín Codazzi, p. 465.

  6. The government of colonial America was modeled on that of Spain, which was divided into thirty-two provinces, each headed by a treasury official known as an intendente, and fourteen military regions, each headed by a viceroy, captain general, or commandante general. In 1888, the islands became part of the department of Bolívar. The capital of the island intendencia was only transferred to San Andrés in 1912. Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia, p. 164.

  7. Ibid. C. F. Collett says that ‘criminals are transported here and to St. Andrew’s, for which purpose these islands appear to have been used by the Spaniards previous to their being taken possession of by the buccaneers.’

  8. C. F. Collett, ‘On the Island of Old Providence,’ Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 7 (1837): pp. 203–10.

  9. The Colombian peso was worth 80 U.S. cents in 1830 (see Frank Safford, The Ideal of the Practical: Colombia’s Struggle to Form a Technical Elite (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), p. xi). The dollar was worth £4.76 that year (see Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of the Caribbean Since the Napoleonic Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 496), which means that 113 Colombian pesos would have been worth £433 in 1830, the equivalent of £21,429 today.

  10. According to a Colombian government reporst of 1835, cited in Adolfo Meisel Roca, ‘La estructura económica de San Andrés y Providencia en 1846,’ Cuadernos de Historia Económica y Empresarial, no. 24 (Banco de la República, 2009).

  11. Described in 1912 by John Albert, one of two brothers who came to Providence as Catholic missionaries from Baltimore. See J. Cordell Robinson, The Genealogical History of Providencia Island (San Bernandino, CA: Borgo Press, 1996), p. 16, fn p. 46. A catboat, or a cat-rigged sailboat, is a sailing vessel characterized by a single mast carried well forward, usually near its bow.

  12. Charles Leslie, A New History of Jamaica: From the Earliest Accounts to the Taking of Porto Bello by Vice-Admiral Vernon (London: 1740), p. 36, cited in Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p. 39.

  13. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 40.

  14. Ibid., p. 39.

  15. Charles Corbett, Essay Concerning Slavery (London, 1746), cited in Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 50.

  16. Cyril Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 131.

  17. Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia, p. 45.

  18. Information on the origins of Providence’s black population is taken from A History of Old Providence, an anonymous testimony given to anthropologist Bill Washabaugh in 1980. The most likely source of this information is the island’s late, unofficial historian Oscar Bryan, who is the subject of Peter J. Wilson’s Oscar: An Enquiry into the Nature of Sanity (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1974). Orlando Patterson says that in Jamaica the Mongala were called ‘Mungolas’ or ‘Munguelas.’ See Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 140.

  19. Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 105.

  CHAPTER 17—‘A SORT OF LYING THAT MAKES A GREAT HOLE IN THE HEART’

  1. Cited in Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia’s Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 353.

  2. All quotes are from Lady Jane Porter and William Ogilvie Porter, Sir Edward Seaward’s Narrative, of His Shipwreck and Subsequent Discovery of Certain Islands in the Caribbean Sea (London: Longman Brown Green and Longmans, 1841), 2 vols.

  3. Samuel Carter Hall, Dictionary of National Biography entry for Jane Porter.

  4. At some point between 1634, when the Miskito headman Jeremy allowed his son Oldman to journey to England, and 1823, the tribe’s chief became a king. Whether this was an organic process, mimicry of the English, or foisted upon the Miskitos by the governor of Jamaica is open to conjecture. See Michael Olien, ‘The Miskito Kings and the Line of Succession,’ Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 39, no. 201 (1983).

  5. Robert A. Naylor, Penny Ante Imperialism: The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras 1600–1914 (Plainsboro, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1989), p. 79.

  6. For details of Poyais, see David Sinclair, The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Fraud in History (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), p. 15.

  7. Naylor, Penny Ante Imperialism, p. 79.

  8. George Wilson Bridges, The Annals of Jamaica, 1828 (reprint). London: John Murray, vol. 2, 1968, p. 143. Cited in Karl H. Offen, ‘British Logwood Extraction from the Mosquitia: The Origin of a Myth,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 80, no. 1, 2000.

  9. Sinclair, The Land That Never Was, p. 98.

  10. Lady Nugent’s Journal of Her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, ed. Philip Wright (Institute of Jamaica, 1966), p. 211.

  11. Sinclair, The Land That Never Was, p. 261.

  12. Ibid., p. 294.

  13. Walwin G. Peterson, The Province of Providence (Pueblo Viejo: Christian University of San Andrés, 2001), p. 58.

  CHAPTER 18—HOW THE LIGHT CAME IN

  1. Loren C. Turnage, Island Heritage: A Baptist View of the History of San Andrés and Providencia (CA: Historical Commission of the Colombia Baptist Mission, 1977), p. 19.

  2. Adolfo Meisel Roca, ‘La estructura económica de San Andrés y Providencia en 1846,’ Cuadernos de Historia Económica y Empresarial, no. 24 (Banco de la República, 2009).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Martha Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), p. 89. Cited in Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1967), p. 203.

  5. James Phillippo, Jamaica: Its Past and Present State, ed. J. Snow (1843), cited in Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery, p. 185.

  6. G. W. Bridges, The Annals of Jamaica, vol. I (London, 1827): p. 555.

  7. Cyril Hamshere, The British in the Caribbean (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 157.

  8. Turnage, Island Heritage, p. 25.

  9. James J. Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Oakland, CA: University of California, 1956), p. 70.

  10. A report prepared by Philip Beekman Livingston, SS Commercial Agent, San Andrés, 31
December 1873.

  11. The Cultivation of Coconut on San Andrés Island, a short description written by Philip Beekman Livingston, Jr., in 1873; unpublished.

  12. In 1953, there were twenty-five deaf-mutes on Providence. The rate of deafness was running at 12.5 per thousand people, which was considerably higher than the global average of 1.6 per thousand. J. Cordell Robinson, The Genealogical History of Providencia Island (San Bernandino, CA: Borgo Press, 1996), pp. 65, 70.

  13. Turnage, Island Heritage, p. 26.

  CHAPTER 19—MODERN TIMES

  1. J. Cordell Robinson, The Genealogical History of Providencia Island (San Bernandino, CA: Borgo Press, 1996), pp. 52, 80.

  2. Cited in Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 255.

  3. Robinson, The Genealogical History of Providencia Island, p. 16. There are more details in the footnotes on p. 27.

  4. For more details, see James J. Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia (Oakland, CA: University of California, 1956), p. 69. Not all of the islanders fell back on an angry God to explain the crisis. Worldlier heads knew that the same blight had also wiped out the coconut groves on the mainland. In 1929, the islands had responded to the protectionism in vogue among Central American governments by opening trade with Cartagena and Barranquilla. The mainlanders often wrapped their goods in the fronds of the coconut palm, and the blight had traveled with them.

  5. Jay Edwards, Social Linguistics on San Andrés and Providencia (Tulane University [unpublished Ph.D. dissertation], 1970).

  6. The quotes are from Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia, p. 94. The first statistic is from p. 87. The second is from the Wikipedia entry for San Andrés.

  7. Facts and figures relating to life on Providence in the 1950s and 1960s are taken from Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia, p. 12, pp. 100–3.