by Ben Hughes
Exactly what triggered Cudjoe’s rebellion is unclear. In a letter written a few weeks after the event, John Helyar, proprietor of the Bybrook plantation in St. Thomas in the Vale, mentioned that the slaves revolted “upon some disgust.”144 This could refer to a particularly harsh punishment meted out by an overseer, the rape of a slave girl, withheld rations, or perhaps the killing of a slave. The fact that the rebellion broke out five years to the day after the Guanaboa rising on Widow Grey’s estate may have been significant: Were the instigators honoring their predecessors?145 The end of July also signaled the end of the sugar cane harvest, an event celebrated throughout the plantations of the English West Indies with the Crop Over festival. According to Frederick Bayley, an Englishman who visited the islands for four years during the 1820s, flags were displayed in the fields “and all is merriment. . . . A quart of sugar and a quart of rum” were given out to “each negro . . . [and] all authority and distinction of color ceases; black and white, overseer and bookkeeper mingle together in dance.” Another eyewitness, Robert Dirks, writing specifically on the Jamaican Crop Over celebration, added that the slaves gathered around the boiling house, dancing and roaring for joy as the overseer distributed saltfish and rum, and the “feast would be followed by a ball.”146 Such gatherings are known to have been exploited by slaves for political purposes. Crop Over would also have afforded the rebels at Sutton’s time to gather their forces and prepare their arms as well as perhaps providing an opportunity for Cudjoe or one of his lieutenants to warn slaves from surrounding plantations to rise up in support once the rebellion broke out.
Some details as to how slaves prepared for rebellions have survived. Oath-taking ceremonies were held at sites of cultural or religious significance such as burial grounds. The principal conspirators drank a glass of rum, grave dirt, and cock’s blood. They pledged their willingness to kill all whites, follow their leaders without question, and stand alongside their fellow slaves. Another means of increasing solidarity among would-be Coromantee rebels was the Ikem, or shield dance. The particulars were recorded in a report compiled following an abortive rebellion in Antigua in 1736.
It is the Custom in Africa, when a Coromantee King has resolved upon a War with a Neighbouring State, to give Publick Notice among his Subjects, That the Ikem-dance will be performed at a Certain Time & Place; and there the Prince appears in Royal habit, under an Umbrella or Canopy of State, preceeded by his Officers, called Braffo & His Marshall, attended by his Asseng (or Chamberlain) & Guards, and the Musick of his Company; with his Generals & Chiefs about him. Then he places himself up an advanced Seat, his Generals setting behind him upon a Bench; His Guards on each Side; His Braffo and Marshall clearing the Circle, and his Asseng with an Elephants Tail keeping the flies from him; The Musick playing; and the People forming a Semicircle about him. After some Respite, the Prince arises, distributes Money to the People; Then the Drums beating to the Ikem-beat, he with an Ikem (i.e.) a Shield composed of wicker, Skins and two or three small pieces of thin board upon his left Arm, and a Lance, and the several gestures by them used in Battle. When the Prince begins to be fatigued, The Guards run in and Support him; he delivers the Ikem and Lance to the Person who next Dances; then is lead Supported to his Chair, and is seated again in State. . . . Then the Same Dance is performed by Several Others. . . . Then the Prince Stepping into the Area of the Semicircle, with his Chief General, and taking a Cutlass in his hand, moves with a Whirling motion of his Body round a Bout, but dancing and leaping up at the same time from one Horn or point of the Semicircle, quite to the other, so as to be distinctly viewed by all.147
PRIOR TO JULY 31, 1690, Thomas Sutton and his family left the plantation to travel to Port Royal or Spanish Town. Following their departure Cudjoe’s plan was put into effect. Adorned with feathers, teeth necklaces, and charms and with their skins painted by the obeah men to ward off the whites’ bullets, the five hundred conspirators rose up, perhaps on a signal given by the blast of an Akan horn and following a prayer to Onyame, the Creator. Having emerged from their quarters, the rebels converged upon the dwelling house. The caretaker was seized and killed and the arsenal broken open. “Fifty fuzees, blunderbusses and other arms, [a] great quantity of powder and ball” and “four small field pieces” were taken. The small arms and ammunition were distributed among the leading rebels while the cannon were loaded with nails. What became of the “six or seven” other whites who lived and worked on the estate is unclear. Although John Helyar’s letter of August 7 reported that “some whites” were killed, it does not specify exactly how many or who they were. Perhaps all seven met the same fate as the caretaker or perhaps some fled before the rebels could seize them.148
Having secured Sutton’s, Cudjoe led his men onto a neighboring estate. Exactly which is unclear, but judging by contemporary maps, it could well have been the plantation of Henry Rimes or either one of the two in the area belonging to Francis Watson, Inchiquin’s self-appointed predecessor. Regardless of which it was, the neighboring plantation fell as swiftly as Sutton’s had and the rebels set fire to the great house and killed the overseer. It was at this stage that Cudjoe’s plan began to go awry. Rather than joining the rebels, the newly liberated slaves of the neighboring estate fled into some nearby woods and hid from their would-be liberators despite Cudjoe’s pleas that they join him. Realizing that his hopes of an island-wide rebellion were rapidly slipping from his grasp, Cudjoe decided to return to Sutton’s and prepare to receive the forces that he knew would soon be sent against him. A body of the rebels took up defensive positions inside the fortified great house, while another loaded the captured cannon with nails. The field pieces were hidden in “a skirt of wood” overlooking the track leading to the Great House, and the slaves took up positions to ambush the forces soon to be sent against them.149
“The alarm being given through the Quarters,” the Clarendon Parish militia, based in nearby Old Harbour, were beginning to mobilize. The first to react were a squad of fifty cavalry and infantry led by a lieutenant of horse. Although outnumbered, the militia were heavily armed. “Each horseman [was] . . . well mounted with good furniture, . . . [had] a good sword and good case of pistols, and . . . a carbine well fixed.” The infantry carried “a musket or fuse with high bore with a cartouch box . . . four pounds of good gunn powder & bullets proportionable.” Advancing toward the great house, the red-coated troopers sprung Cudjoe’s ambush. It seems the rebels may well have opened fire prematurely, and in their haste, the cannon shot were wasted. After “a small skirmish,” the militia were forced to withdraw having suffered two wounded, including the lieutenant who had led them into action.150
By the morning of August 1, while the rebels marshaled their forces at Sutton’s, the militia had regrouped. Headed by several parties of foot, they advanced once more and a firefight broke out around the great house. On the verge of being overrun, the rebels ransacked the building then retreated toward the mill house, dragging their four small field pieces behind them. They kept up a steady fire as they went and set fire to the canes, prompting the militia officers to order a company to outflank them. Guided by a compass, the company set out through the canes on a circuitous route, managing to elude discovery, before attacking the rebels’ rear. Several rebels were killed in the rout that followed and others were wounded. The field pieces were recaptured along with some provisions and arms, while the survivors fled northward through the woods hoping to reach the safety of the mountains. Once the militia had regrouped, “thirty choice men fit for the woods” were sent off in pursuit. They caught up with their quarry after “several miles.” Another skirmish followed in which twelve more rebels were killed. The rest fled into the mountains, leaving behind yet more looted provisions and “160 wt” of gunpowder.151
The hunt for the fugitives continued throughout August. Several companies of militia and bands of bounty hunters scoured the woods led by baying bloodhounds. By the end of the first week, the rebels were in dire straits. At least fo
rty had been killed, and the survivors lacked provisions and medical supplies and were hampered in their flight by the women, children, and wounded. Faced with the imminent collapse of his command, Cudjoe allowed sixty women and children and ten men to surrender. “[They] related [that those remaining at large] had not above ten good arms,” Inchiquin wrote to the Lords of Trade, “and that many [had] dyed of their wounds in the woods. Fresh parties are in pursuit of [the remainder] . . . who I doubt not will disperse them, but I am afraid that so many of them may remain that they will be very dangerous to the mountain plantations.” In the next three weeks several bands of exhausted and dejected survivors handed themselves in, and by the end of the month two hundred of the five hundred who had rebelled had been taken prisoner. “[With] so many others killd and the rest so dispersed,” Inchiquin reported on August 31, “we look upon this rebellion . . . which was the most dangerous one that ever was in this island . . . to be over.” Although the governor’s assessment would prove somewhat premature, the immediate danger had ceased.152
Edward Long, an eighteenth-century planter and Jamaica’s first resident historian, provides the only information on the fate of the two hundred captured rebels from Sutton’s: “[They] begged for mercy” and “the ringleaders . . . [were] hanged.”153 More details survive on the aftermath of a failed revolt in Barbados in 1692. There the ringleaders were tortured for several days until they gave up their fellow conspirators. “Many were [then] hang’d, and a great many burn’d. And (for a terror to others) . . . seven were hanging in chains alive, and so starving to death.” In addition, a local resident by the name of Alice Mills was paid ten guineas “for castrating forty-two Negroes.”154 The authorities’ reactions in the aftermath of other rebellions were equally brutal. Following the failed revolt in Antigua of 1736, forty-seven male slaves were banished, mostly to the Spanish colonies in America. Eighty-eight others were put to death. Of those executed, five were broken on the wheel, six were hung in gibbets and starved to death, some taking a week to expire, while the remaining seventy-seven were burned alive.155 Public immolation, it seems, was a favorite with colonial courts in such cases. The spectacle served as a warning and perhaps also satisfied the whites’ yearnings for revenge.
CHAPTER 5
No Peace Beyond the Line
PETIT GUAVOS AND THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH
1689–1691
I have by ye advice of ye Councill employed ye Swan Guernsey & Quaker Ketch wth a hired merchant man & 5 privateer sloops of this island (whom I have prevail’d wth to go upon their own accts.) to attempt yt destroying of wt they can find of their shipping upon ye coast of Espanola from ye isle of ash as farr as port de paix as well as their settlements on shour there is 900 good men gone upon this expedition under ye command of my son, from whose prudence & courage I promise myself some good success.
—Inchiquin to William Blathwayt, Port Royal, April 3, 1691
WHILE THE LEEWARD ISLANDS remained the focus of Anglo-French rivalry in the Caribbean during the Nine Years’ War, Jamaica was also subject to occasional French attacks. The principal threat emanated from Petit Guavos, a haven for privateers situated on the west coast of Hispaniola. At any one time during the late seventeenth century, the settlement was home to as many as one thousand English, Scots, Irish, French, Dutch, Spaniards, Portuguese, Native Americans, and escaped African slaves. Willing to work for anyone who would grant them a privateering license, they were heavily armed with cutlasses, pistols, hatchets, knives, and long-barreled muskets and operated out of large, heavily armed vessels and smaller, fast-sailing barcolongos, Spanish fishing vessels equipped with oars and two or three masts whose shallow drafts enabled them to evade pursuit by fleeing into the mangrove swamps which hugged the coastline. When not at sea, the privateers passed their time in drunken revelry, raising indigo and tobacco in nearby plantations or trekking into the interior to hunt the remnants of the once great herds of wild cattle which the Spanish had released whose hides remained valuable in trade.1
Perhaps the most notorious of all the privateers operating out of Petit Guavos at the turn of the seventeenth century was Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn de Graff. A tall, blond, moustachioed Dutchman, born in 1653, as a youth Laurens had gone to sea on merchant vessels, on one of which he had the misfortune to be captured by the Spanish. Enslaved, Laurens was sent to the Canary Islands, but later managed to escape and in 1674 he married his first wife, Petronilla de Guzman, before relocating to the Caribbean, where his career as a pirate in the pay of the French began. The Dutchman, who quickly earned a reputation as a fine “artillerist” and master swordsman as well as gaining notoriety for cruelty and womanizing, had his most notable early success in the autumn of 1679. Attacking the annual Spanish treasure fleet, Laurens captured a 24-gun frigate which he renamed the Tigre. Soon afterward he took the Princesa, a 50-gun vessel which had been ordered to hunt him down. On board was the payroll for the garrisons of Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo: 120,000 pesos in silver coin.
In 1683 Laurens joined forces with two fellow privateers, the Dutchman Nicholas van Hoorn and the Frenchman Michel de Gramont. Together they raided the Spanish port of Veracruz in modern-day Mexico. Although the town fell swiftly enough to their combined force of thirteen ships and 1,300 men, the unexpected arrival of a Spanish treasure fleet put the pirates on the defensive, while a disagreement as to the treatment of some prisoners led to Van Hoorn challenging Laurens to a duel. The former emerged worse off. Slashed across the wrist, Van Hoorn was dead within two weeks, his wound having turned gangrenous, while Laurens once again returned to Petit Guavos. Later that year, Laurens attacked Cartagena with a fleet of seven ships. Having defeated a hastily assembled force sent out to face him, he blockaded the town while ransoming off his prisoners before returning to Petit Guavos in early 1684. In June the following year, Laurens attacked the port of Campeche in Mexico. The garrison fought a rear-guard action, while the residents fled with their possessions into the jungle, leaving the pirates devoid of plunder. On his return to Petit Guavos, Laurens barely avoided capture when intercepted by a superior Spanish fleet. Only by tipping his cargo and cannon overboard was he able to escape. A lean few years followed. Although Laurens captured several Spanish vessels in the mid-to late 1680s, the period also saw him having to defend Petit Guavos against retaliatory raids launched from Cuba, and he was no doubt relieved when the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War afforded him a new target: the English colony of Jamaica.2
Jamaica’s northern shore was particularly vulnerable to attack. It lay dangerously close to Petit Guavos and several other French bases, including the island of Tortuga to the northeast of Hispaniola; the plantations which dotted the coastline were isolated, and, prior to the arrival of HMS Swan, their only protection, aside from the occasional private sloop fitted up as a man-of-war by the Council, was the sixteen-gun sixth-rate HMS Drake.3 Having been on station since May 1686, the Drake was badly in need of repair and proved inadequate for the task, despite the energy and expertise of its captain, Thomas Spragge.4 On July 26, 1689, a consortium of Jamaican merchants had expressed their fears in a letter to the Board of Trade: “The French are at present very near and powerful enemies, as they can sail . . . [to the north coast] in twenty-four hours from Petit Guavos or Tortugas, which are but thirty leagues away. The Island itself is long and the plantations being on the sea and far from one another are liable to be spoiled and burned by French pirates.” English merchant vessels were also vulnerable. “All . . . bound [to Jamaica] . . . must pass by French ports,” the merchants’ letter went on, “as also by Point Anthony in Cuba on their return voyage, where French pirates . . . constantly lie in wait for them. We beg therefore for three frigates, good sailers, to ply to windward, one to secure the plantations on the seaboard, one to lie off Capa Altavoca for ships bound to the Island, and one to convoy homeward bound ships to the Gulf of Florida.”5
In 1689, still awaiting reinforcement, the Jamaican Council took several temporary defe
nsive measures. As well as prohibiting outbound ships from sailing unless in convoy, they purchased several old vessels to deploy as fireships in defense of Port Royal and occasionally hired one or more of the island’s private sloops to undertake specific missions alongside the Drake. A new battery was built for Fort Charles at Port Royal under the supervision of the gout-ridden Colonel James Walker of the militia; a new fort of seventeen guns named after King William was erected at Port Morant; while several north coast planters were given permission to mount cannon and build earthworks on their properties to defend themselves against the French.6
Meanwhile, the privateering raids went on. In late October “Laurens with a ship and pirago, and about two hundred men . . . touched at Montego Bay” on the north coast of Jamaica. Although the pirate “did no harm,” according to a letter from the-soon-to-be-disgraced Sir Francis Watson, “[he] gave out that he would sail up to Petit [Guavos] . . . and procure a commission from the governor, wherewith he will return with greater force, and plunder all the north side, killing man, woman, and child.” The inhabitants were so “affrighted,” the letter concluded, “[that] they have sent their wives and children to Port Royal.”7 Laurens proved as good as his word. At the beginning of December 1689, his ships surprised thirteen Jamaican sloops salvaging silver “dough boys . . . some broken plate and golden beads” from a sunken Spanish galleon wrecked several years before on the Serranillas Rocks “about forty leagues to the Southward from the west end of Jamaica.” Laurens captured “eight or ten of them” before sailing on to St. James Parish on the north coast where he plundered a plantation belonging to the widow Mary Gavell, carrying away “several negroe slaves, household goods, plate, [and] ready money to the value of five hundred pounds.”8 Meanwhile, several other enemy privateers had launched a string of raids in St. Elizabeth’s Parish. Anne Vassal, Sarah Flemming, and Richard Amrkes were robbed of slaves and property worth £800 per head, while William Rochester of nearby Alligator Pond had five slaves stolen for which he was compensated £98 by the island council.9 The French returned to Petit Guavos with their prizes and prisoners, three of whom later managed “to make their escape . . . in a small canoe” and return to Jamaica. The Council responded by ordering all the island’s armed sloops to Port Royal in anticipation of a counterstrike led by HMS Drake. The mission suffered interminable delays. As fear of the French grew, rumors of the Council’s alleged collusion with the enemy gained currency, and on December 12, 1689, a certain Daniel Thornton was arrested “for saying that the Government was in correspondence with Laurens.”10