Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  PART THREE

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘A Delightful Residence’

  Patronage still played a major part in colonial appointments in the first half of the nineteenth century, but such appointments were regarded by the political and civil service establishment as of lesser standing and less desirable than, for example, those made by the Foreign Office to diplomatic posts. Colonial governorships were often difficult to fill and the arrangements for selection haphazard. Sir William Molesworth, briefly Secretary of State for the Colonies before his death in October 1855, was of the view that ‘Men of superior ability will not go there.’1 Sir James Stephen was later to write that ‘Not to be a Governor of a Colony is one of those blessings, the diffusion and general enjoyment of which renders us insensible to their value.’2 Nevertheless, postings to the colonies offered independence and adventure for younger men and opportunities for more experienced individuals, often ex-soldiers, to exercise real responsibility in unfamiliar environments.

  In the 1840s there was no recognised career pattern for colonial government officers, including the Governors themselves. The first official reference to a Colonial Service had been as recent as 1837, when the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, had issued a set of Colonial Rules and Regulations. The intention was to consolidate the various regulatory requirements to make them better understood and observed. Glenelg acknowledged that this would to start with be an imperfect exercise, but he was confident that the collected standing regulations would ‘at least, form a basis for future improvements; and will, probably, tend to the immediate introduction of a better method, and of greater certainty in the despatch of the duties of the Governors, and other Public Officers in the Colonial possessions of the Crown’.3

  Elliot was now 45. If the Governorship of Bermuda was seen by some as a sideways or even a downward career move, to him it was a welcome relief from the trials of being based in Texas. Aberdeen, who had resigned as Foreign Secretary two months earlier, was in no doubt that the appointment would be welcomed by Elliot and took the trouble to write to him shortly after it was announced:

  After your exertions and long sufferings in unhealthy climates, you must look with satisfaction to the prospect of passing some years in a delightful residence … I really feel obliged to Lord Grey for having made this appointment, as your services had given you strong claims upon me to which I was no longer able to attend.4

  Some four months after returning from Texas, during which their preparations were punctuated by the inevitable social engagements including a banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London, Charles and Clara Elliot sailed for Bermuda. According to the Bermuda press, they were due to leave England on 20 October in an Indiaman, the Mariner.5

  Bermuda is the longest established of the United Kingdom’s remaining overseas territories. Named after Juan de Bermudez, the Spanish sea captain who discovered them in 1505, the islands which comprise the Bermuda archipelago did not receive their first settlers until 1609. They came from the ship Sea Venture, one of a fleet chartered by the Virginia Company to replenish the struggling colony of Virginia with people and supplies. The Sea Venture was blown off course during its voyage to America by a severe storm and was wrecked off Bermuda. Though most of the shipwrecked passengers did eventually make their way to Jamestown, Virginia, those who remained in Bermuda formed the core of a permanent settlement from 1612, when Richard Moore assumed office as its first Governor, appointed by the Virginia Company in whose control the islands then lay. For a time the territory was known as the Somers Isles after Admiral Sir George Somers, a key figure in the foundation of the colony. From the Somers Isles Company, the Virginia Company’s successor, responsibility for gubernatorial appointments passed to the Crown in 1684. It was subject to the ultimate authority of the British monarch as head of state, but Bermuda had been, from 1620, a self-governing colony with its own parliament. After an initial and unsuccessful concentration on agriculture, the colony turned to the sea for its main sources of income. Shipbuilding, whaling and especially privateering became established enterprises, but by the nineteenth century the islands were not remotely self-sufficient. When Elliot assumed the Governorship imports for the previous year (1845) at £140,015, almost entirely from the United States, had been nearly seven times the value of exports, £20,884, which went to Britain and the West Indies.6,7

  For Britain, Bermuda’s value was primarily strategic. Work on developing the dockyard into a major facility for the Royal Navy had been started in 1813 during the American War of 1812–15. In 1818 the main base for the North American and West Indies squadron was transferred to Bermuda from Halifax, Nova Scotia, giving British warships better access to the coast of the United States, should hostilities break out again, and to the Caribbean to counter piracy and slave trading.

  During the middle years of the nineteenth century Bermuda had another, more controversial, role. From 1823 it was used for penal purposes, with most of the convicts accommodated in prison hulks off Ireland Island near the dockyard. They typically numbered between 1,300 and 1,700, distributed between up to five hulks and prison on land, under the authority of a Superintendent of Convicts supported by (among others) Surgeon and Chaplain Superintendents.8 Shortly before Elliot was appointed it had been decided that the Superintendent of Convicts should be discontinued as a separate post and the duties subsumed within the responsibilities of the Governor. Sensing that here was a significant addition to his role, and conscious as ever of his own shortage of money, Elliot raised the matter with Grey before his departure. Elliot said he fully recognised the importance of this work, and would give it as much attention as he could,

  But looking to the probability of an increase in the number of convicts at Bermuda, to the actual conditions of the Establishment there … and to the growing solicitude of Her Majesty’s Government and Parliament upon the whole subject of Convict management, I certainly do feel that the regulation and adequate supervision of this branch of my duty will form an anxious and large claim upon my thoughts, time, and personal attention.9

  He thought that the use of convict labour for naval works, on which he considered he had some expertise of his own to offer, would make it appropriate for him to receive an extra allowance. The main thrust of his request, though, was for funds to cover his expected extra workload: ‘I trust Your Lordship will see reason to recommend to the Treasury that I should receive an allowance for the maintenance of a Private Secretary, in consideration of the increased duties cast upon me by the direct Superintendence of the Convict Establishment at Bermuda.’10 Grey gave instructions that Elliot should be told his application was premature, and that he should wait until he was in Bermuda and had been able to assess at first hand what would be needed before considering re-submission.

  Bermuda’s strategic importance was recognised in a level of salary for the Governor that was slightly more generous than its relatively small size – some twenty-one square miles and a population of 9,930 – would have justified.11 Governor Elliot’s income comprised an annual salary of £2,199 from parliamentary grant throughout his eight-year tenure, plus £500 from the Colonial Treasury, together with small amounts from fees and rents which varied from year to year and an allowance for a housekeeper and boat crew, all amounting to some £300 per annum.12,13

  His predecessor was an army lieutenant colonel on full service pay, but the regular salary of the Governor before that, Sir Stephen Chapman, in 1834 was £2,835, one below the median figure (£3,000) for thirty-one colonial governors, lieutenant governors or equivalent at that time.14 Elliot was not being especially hard done by, but he was always conscious of his lack of significant private means and of the prospect of acquiring any. No opportunity should be lost, as he saw things, to press for additional income.

  The Elliots, Charles, Clara and their children Gibby, Freddy and Emma, disembarked at Bermuda on Christmas Day, 1846. Before long Charles and Clara were into the social round, attending a lavish b
all which had the dual purpose of welcoming them and of honouring the commander-in-chief of the North America and West Indies station, Vice Admiral Sir Francis Austen and his family.15 Two weeks after arriving Elliot wrote to Grey on the question of additional staff. Anxious to get his governorship off to a good start and to redeem himself in the eyes of his friend Grey, he withdrew his request. ‘I am persuaded’, he said, ‘I shall receive from the legal and other Public Officers of the Colony all needful Counsel and assistance in the Superintendence of the Convict Establishment which has devolved upon me by virtue of my Office’.16

  Lieutenant Colonel William (later Major General Sir William) Reid, who was Governor from 1839 to 1846, is much lauded in historical accounts of Bermuda as probably the most successful and well-regarded Governor the colony ever had, making his tenure the hardest of acts for Elliot to follow. Reid was a military engineer who had served in the Peninsular War and in the war with the United States of 1812 to 1815. As it was for Elliot, Bermuda was Reid’s first appointment as a colonial governor. His reputation derived from a wide-ranging, energetic desire to improve the prospects of Bermuda and its people, which he translated into vigorous action. Notwithstanding the introduction of standing regulations by the Colonial Office, colonial governors generally had, and continued to have, considerable latitude to act on their own initiative as individuals.17 In Bermuda’s case this freedom was tempered by the territory’s governance arrangements as a self-governing colony, but Reid’s persuasiveness and popularity were such that his schemes and projects usually attracted wide support. It was in 1844 during his Governorship that the Gibbs Hill lighthouse, the tallest in Bermuda and believed to be the oldest cast-iron lighthouse in the world, was built by the Royal Engineers. As an engineer himself, Reid was well placed to take a close and informed interest. Perhaps his most important contribution, however, was his largely successful effort to revive agricultural activity in the islands, long since virtually abandoned as inefficient and ineffective. He also sought to improve educational opportunity for the populace, a venture that was prompted in part by the need to ensure prospects for newly emancipated slaves.

  Charles Elliot too was keen to make his mark as a pro-active governor. He nevertheless realised that he could do worse than continue to build on the work done by Reid. The Elliot years were for Bermuda largely ones of consolidation, but at the same time eventful. Much of a colonial governor’s time was necessarily taken up with routine, formal and minor matters. He was required for example to report quarterly to the Colonial Office that he had been present and functioning for the preceding three months; to seek permission for certain appointments and promotions; and to sign off the annual statistical and financial report (the Blue Book) of the colony for submission to the Colonial Office.

  On the domestic front, the Elliots settled early in 1847 into the Governor’s residence at Mount Langton on Main Island overlooking the capital, Hamilton, and its harbour. The house – more modest than the present 1892 built Government House – was set in some forty acres of grounds, an extensive area which caused Elliot to worry about its maintenance. It was not long before he again sought extra staff, this time not with funding from the British government but with help from his family. He would provide the money himself. He wrote whimsically to Viscount Melgund:

  I write a few lines to ask a favour of you. We have got a sort of domain round my palace consisting of 40 or 50 acres of sand and marsh and the little improveable soil, but which nevertheless produce, tant bien que mal, wherewithal to furnish our table with vegetables, and some amount of what the imaginative of my Kingdom have the face to call hay to keep out the starvation of the horses. What I want you to do is to ask Selby to induce some painstaking industrious cross between the gardener and the farmer to come out here and be my Bailiff or Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests. I would give him £50 per annum and find him a lodging and he should sell for his own profit whatever there was of surplus from the kitchen garden after supplying our Royal table.18,19,20,21

  Governor Elliot was later to become much concerned with the convict population of the colony, but in his first year there were other preoccupations. In July 1847 Grey asked him with some urgency for his comments on some earlier correspondence about Bermuda’s defences. The British government was keenly aware of the need properly to maintain Bermuda, ‘the Gibraltar of the Atlantic’ as it was sometimes called, as a strategic base. ‘The subject [the colony’s defences] is one of the very highest importance’, Grey wrote, ‘the possession of these islands in time of War with the greatest value to us as a naval station and the injury to which we might be exposed by their falling into the hands of any other power is equally obvious’.22 By ‘any other power’, Grey meant primarily the United States, with which - as Elliot well knew - a climate of mutual suspicion continued to exist and whose expansionism was perceived to threaten British interests in the Caribbean.

  All requests for major grants to colonies, for defence as for any other purpose, were scrutinised by Parliament, acting as the Committee of Supply. Some such proposals were vigorously contested, colonial expenditure being recognised as potentially a substantial drain on the country’s resources and in need of tight control. Five years earlier the government had nevertheless voted Bermuda a special allocation of £18,126 for the purchase of land on which to build new barracks nearer the shore for more effective defence.23 With his naval service background Elliot took a keen interest in maritime projects, including non-military as well as defensive works (he had, for example, in March taken a hands-on part in an operation to improve harbour access by using explosives to widen the approach channel.)24 He found no difficulty in replying to Grey’s request for comments, which he did at some length on 8 October.25

  It was also in July that Elliot took up the cause espoused by Reid of reinvigorating agriculture. In a bid to encourage each of the nine parishes to take systematic responsibility for developing agriculture in the interests of the whole community, especially the poorer parts of it, he wrote an open letter to parish leaders, which was published in the Bermuda Herald:

  The high price of Provisions in the Markets to which the Inhabitants of these Islands chiefly resort for supplies, must be a subject of anxious reflection to every thoughtful person in the Country.

  Moved by this impression, I recommend the Magistracy and influential Inhabitants of the several Parishes meet together … to consider what means there may be of stimulating the industrious cultivation of Ground Provisions … and particularly of inducing the extensive planting of Irish Potatoes…

  I should also suggest that a Committee of benevolent and experienced Persons should be named in each parish, charged with the task of drawing up and distributing directions concerning the preparation and cultivation of the Soil. And I think it would excite more general attention to this subject if each parish would raise small funds by subscription … for defraying the charge of a monthly examination and published statement of the said soil in cultivation…

  I would also recommend that every effort should be made to encourage the rearing and stalling of cattle…

  There is reason to apprehend that privation and suffering can only be averted from the poorer classes of people in these islands by the rigorous and concerted exertions of the whole Community; and I have confidence that the Magistracy and the leading Inhabitants of the respective Parishes will devote themselves to the objects of this letter with zeal, intelligence and liberality.26

  It is not clear how far this appeal for collective action and money was effective. Though Bermuda was formally a Crown Colony, with overall authority vested in the Governor appointed by the Crown, its self-governing status meant that on internal matters such as education, welfare, and agriculture the Governor could only recommend, rather than determine, policy. The two instruments of government in addition to the Governor were the House of Assembly and the Council, which had been in place for many decades and were overdue for reform, largely on grounds of cost. The ten-man
Council sat both as the Executive Council, chaired by the Governor, and as the Legislative Council, but the main concerns related to the House of Assembly, which comprised thirty-six members, four elected from each of the nine parishes, and whose chairman could change from meeting to meeting. To the problems of expense – members were paid $2 for each day on which they sat, however short the meeting – were added criticism of the unfairness of the wealth qualifications for electing and standing for election; of time wasting with unnecessarily repetitive resolutions; and of persistent slowness of action. Reid had wanted to see reform but had not achieved it. According to a contemporary observer, Governor Elliot was similarly frustrated, being moved to address the Assembly in 1849 in forthright terms: ‘This slow and costly transaction of the simple affairs of a very small community, is no doubt attributable to the cumbrous inaptitude of the legislative machinery’.27

  Elliot’s initiatives in the field of education, however, brought tangible results. William Reid had founded Bermuda’s first library and was himself a meteorologist of some repute, but it fell to Elliot to promote more systematic educational provision for the population as a whole. An Act ‘for aiding in the Establishment of Schools’, passed in August 1847, established a Board of Education for Bermuda. Eleven months later Elliot submitted to the House of Assembly the Board’s First Report. During the year Board members had visited all schools from which requests for aid had been received, noting inadequate provision generally of books and stationery and a high degree of absenteeism. Progress had nevertheless been substantial; between 1846 and 1847–8 the number of ‘free’ schools (those mainly funded by Christian charities and colonial grant) had increased from seventeen to twenty-four, the number of pupils in them from 700 to 1,064, and support expenditure from £595 to £1,153 per annum.28