Soldiers’ broad descriptions of the black population rarely extend beyond these myopic sketches, but there was one element of black existence which attracted more attention and even attempts at analysis. Many officers described the infrastructure of slavery – particularly the slave ships and the sales – and expressed their opinions, a complex mixture of distaste and justification. The eyewitness accounts are often contradictory, perhaps reflecting the reality that the lot of slaves was not entirely consistent. Several soldiers visited slave ships. Surprisingly, William Dyott thought the Liverpool vessel he inspected at Carlisle Bay in 1796 to be clean and well kept. ‘The females were all in the after part of the ship and the males forward. They all appeared very happy…’ George Pinckard was equally approving of an American slaver, making comments very similar to Dyott regarding the ‘cheerfulness and contentment’ of the captives. ‘I am most happy to conclude my report of this visit by informing you that we discovered no marks of those horrors and cruelties said to be practised on board the ships occupied in this sad trade of human flesh’. He saw no restraining chains and believed the slaves’ comfort and health to be have been fully addressed.
Conversely, Harry Ross-Lewin was shocked by the sight of a slave vessel which came close to his own ship near Puerto Rico. The occupants had only enough room to stand and were all naked. The two ships were at times so close ‘that we could fling to the poor wretches on board a quantity of biscuit for which they scrambled with great avidity’. Thomas St Clair was also horror-struck by the American slaver he saw at Berbice. ‘The whole party of blacks were such a set of scarcely animated automata, such a resurrection of skin and bone, as forcibly to remind me of the last trumpet, they all looked like corpses just arisen from the grave.’
The slave sales ashore also attracted much comment. Dyott may have approved of the slave ship, but he was taken aback to later see the human cargo ‘sold just as a flock are sold in a fair in England’. St Clair made a similar comparison, watching the white planters examining their captives just as dealers in the horse fairs of home. The able-bodied men sold for £100−150 and boys from £40−50. He appears uneasy at the ‘traffic in human flesh’, but one of his fellow officers actually purchased two boys of 11 or 12 years of age. Pinckard attended a sale where the slaves were sold naked in a large barn-like building. He admits that he was curious to witness the event but he obtained from it only ‘painful gratification’. It was something he would never forget. At the sale attended by vicar Cooper Willyams, 149 slaves had died on the passage. The survivors accompanied their new owners to the plantations where they were clothed, provided with some simple tools, and attached to an older slave.
There are eyewitness accounts of slaves receiving both sympathetic and cruel treatment. Pinckard describes both extremes on the South American mainland. Female slaves were whipped mercilessly and, in one particularly gruesome episode, a male slave was tied face down to the ground and brutally flogged. It was unclear whether he had deserved any punishment, but a European woman, probably the wife of a plantation owner, asked the army doctor if he wanted to watch, ‘…as if it was a pleasant sight for strangers, or something that might divert us’. On a later occasion, he came across a plantation owner whose kindness to his charges was so well known that when there was a threat of French attack the local slaves offered to risk their lives to protect him and his home. Others confirm that although the practice of slavery was universally abhorrent, the experience of the individuals held in bondage was inconsistent. James Aytoun believed that many slave owners were wrongly accused of cruelty, indeed he tells us that they had little incentive to behave in such a way; ‘If you look at a set of black slaves, they appear contented and healthy’. This was not an opinion consistent with Ross-Lewin’s graphic account of a French slave owner in Saint Domingue punishing a slave boy by burning and laceration with hot irons. The child cried for three days and died on the fourth.
Such dramatically differing experiences fuelled a range of attitudes to slavery. Many soldiers were themselves inconsistent. When he is theorising on the subject, St Clair condones it; ‘…it will appear that the injustice of the slave-trade exists more in name than in reality; that in fact when Europeans take inhabitants of Africa from their native soil, they do not add to the number of slaves already in the world, but merely transplant them from a land of ignorance and superstition to one of civilisation and improvement’. However, shortly after witnessing a slave ship and a subsequent sale, he felt ‘all the disgust and horror of slavery’.
Officers made justificatory judgements of slavery based on a comparison of the lives of slaves and the oppressed impoverished peasantry of Britain. This is the commonest theme relating to the slave trade in contemporary military accounts. Jonathan Leach was a supporter of gradual abolition but he viewed the hardships of slavery with ambivalence.
…an unfortunate negro, writhing under the lash of the merciless slave-driver, for laying aside his spade for a few minutes in the heat of the tropical sun, or for some offence equally trivial, is infinitely better off, decidedly more happy, and in a more enviable situation, than the labouring peasant in the mother country. Facts are stubborn things…
Almost identical views are expressed by Thomas St Clair, George Pinckard, Cooper Willyams, William Dyott and Marcus Rainsford. St Clair also compares the lot of the West Indian slaves with the peasants he later saw toiling in the Iberian Peninsula and Aytoun even draws a comparison with the army’s rank and file; ‘The negros have a great deal more liberty than soldiers’.
Although frequently obscured by an archaic terminology which is an anathema to modern readers, some soldiers and officers did have more than a one-dimensional view of the slaves. Aytoun informs us that many of his comrades thought them to be ignorant. He disagreed; ‘They may be so in respect of religion but they are shrewd and acute and are capable of conducting themselves as well if not better than a great many of the white slaves in the British Isles’. John Moore was a free-thinker on military and social matters. In his St Lucia journal, he notes that he did not discriminate on the basis of skin colour or political persuasion. ‘All men were entitled to justice, and they should meet with it from me without distinction or partiality, whether white or black, republican or royalist.’ He admits that these sentiments were not universally popular.15
Chapter 9
Nancy Clarke and Susy Austin: Life in the Garrison
The anonymous author of Sketches and Recollections of the West Indies has left a brief description of a typical day in the Tropics for the resident European planters and officials.
The hour of rising in the West Indies is generally five. When the glorious luminary of day ushers in the morn, a gun is fired from the respective forts and garrisons; and this is the general signal for starting. In warm climates, if the cool of the morning is lost in bed, the time for exercise is gone. The custom, therefore, is for those who have horses, to mount them as soon as dressed and to ride several miles before the breakfast hour, which is from seven to eight. Breakfast despatched, business commences. At two P.M. the shops, stores, and offices are shut; and it is then customary for the inhabitants to seek repose, stretched on their beds or couches, in their robes de chambre, until it is time to dress for dinner, which is served at four or later. This important meal seldom occupies more than an hour, except when parties are assembled to be convivial. The business over, the day ceases entirely at six, except on packet-days when the night, as well as day, is often devoted to letter-writing, accounts, & c. After five, the ladies and gentlemen enjoy their ride, or walk in the cool of the evening until sunset…
Only a very small fraction of soldiers’ time in the colonies was spent on active campaign. The daily routine of the British garrisons scattered through the West Indian islands was, as for the locals, shaped by the unforgiving climate. Soldiers were woken in the dark and the first parade of the day commenced before sunrise. After an hour or two of drilling, as the first rays of the burning sun filtered through t
he damp air, bugle calls and drum beats signalled the first meal of the day, morning mess. Following this the men were confined to barracks, hidden from the direct glare of the sun but oppressed by the heat. The midday hours were only interrupted by the main feed of the day, the dinner meal at half past noon. Back in their barracks by two o’clock, the next bugle call announced evening parade at 5pm; there was more drilling, kits were inspected and any general orders read out. At sundown, the soldiers were again in their barracks, the officers having returned to their more salubrious quarters. Last call was at 10.30pm and an eerie silence marked the end of another day. This routine was often inexorable although there might be some variation in the duties of the rank and file. James Aytoun notes that the standing orders in Dominica were for three field days a week and six drill days. In reality, the field days were limited by the unpredictable rainstorms. Officers were also forced into an unfamiliar routine, albeit less rigid than that of the men and more akin to the European locals. William Dyott, on Grenada in 1796, rose half an hour before sunrise and rode on the beach until 7am before breakfasting. He sat in his tent until one and then rode to headquarters where he dined at three. In the evening he took another ride.1
The most vital, and most demanding, parts of the soldier’s day were the morning and evening drills. At the end of the eighteenth century, he was expected to be proficient in the five fundamental skills; the manual exercise, the platoon exercise, the evolutions, the firings, and the manoeuvres. These terms are partly self-explanatory. Essentially, he had to be able to perform basic tasks such as loading his musket and using the bayonet, and also to be able to move and fire in concert with his comrades. This could only be achieved by robotic repetition, as was experienced by James Aytoun on Dominica.
…the adjutant commanded and at those times the manual exercise and platoon firings were all done by only one word of command and one motion followed another with such rapidity that the fogleman [in front of the soldiers as an example or model] who stood with his back to us, frequently had three or four motions to do after the regiment was done. On the day I have hinted at, the regiment was repeatedly in the middle or some part of the [drill] manual and the stop was ordered when the adjutant observed any of the men make a wrong motion or miss one which, among three or four hundred men, was almost unavoidable. I have been in the ranks on such occasions and have begun the manual and platoon exercises twenty times and the man who was so unlucky as to cause the exercise to be stopped was sure to receive a severe beating.2
The drill was crucial for the movement of bodies of troops in battle but it was also designed to create an atmosphere of unquestioning obedience. A regimen of harsh discipline was maintained throughout the West Indian garrisons and there is little doubt that it was necessary. Historian Roger Buckley has made a detailed study of the makeup and criminality of the British troops in the region and he reaches some interesting conclusions. For instance, the proportion of prisoners in the army in the Windward and Leeward Islands between 1799 and 1802 was approximately 20%. Secondly, there was always relatively more criminal activity in the West Indian garrison than elsewhere. If we take 1804 as an example, only 6% of the army’s strength was in the Caribbean, but an astonishing 48% of all courts-martial were held in the region.
Breaches of discipline can be broadly divided into a systemic disorder, perhaps affecting a particular regiment or company, and individual misdemeanours. Senior officers strained to prevent both via proclamations in the general orders; Grey at Martinique in 1794 threatened the immediate execution of any soldier guilty of looting. More widespread infractions often reflected poor leadership. Lady Maria Nugent, wife of the governor of Jamaica, George Nugent, complains that the 4th Battalion of the 60th Regiment, stationed on the colony in 1805, were guilty of ‘continual broils, insubordination, and constant cabals…’ The commanding officer had little respect, being determined to return home ‘…leaving the horrible climate’. John Moore and William Dyott make allusions to more general breakdowns in discipline. Levels of misbehaviour were often greater during periods of epidemic disease when men perhaps felt that they had little to lose. All European armies in the region were afflicted. Antoine Métral describes the chaos in Saint Domingue where many French soldiers perished from yellow fever. ‘Lorsque la contagion fut dans toute sa force, le débordement des folles passions humaines vint se mêler à ce torrent destructeur.’
Individual misdemeanours varied from the trivial to the horrific. At the lower end of the spectrum, at least from a modern perspective, were looting and pillaging. Grey’s directive is, however, a reminder that this was not tolerated in a British army on campaign. Cooper Willyams confirms that the general followed through on his threat; William Milton of the 10th Light Dragoons and Samuel Rice of a colonial corps were found guilty of looting a house in Salée on Martinique and were both hanged in front of the whole army. General Thomas Dundas also hanged two soldiers, a drummer and private of the 58th Regiment, for robbing a shop.
Grey’s general orders issued on Guadeloupe in June 1794 warned soldiers and sailors not to straggle from their camps. Rolls were to be called every two hours and any man absent was to be punished ‘in the most severe manner’. Miscreants might be vulnerable to enemy posts and also might be tempted to desert, a crime which greatly exercised the authorities. Buckley is again the best secondary source, showing that levels of desertion were particularly high during periods of military inactivity, presumably motivated by hardships and the boredom of army life in the Tropics. In 1803, desertion accounted for more than 90% of all serious crime in the West India garrison and in several other years during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period it was the cause of more than half of the courts-martial. Prisoner soldiers such as Andrew Bryson were bent on desertion from the moment of their arrival in the Caribbean. Bryson’s journal is dominated by allusions to escape; when admitted to hospital with fever his main regret was that he would now be less likely to ‘get off’ the island. Foreign mercenaries in British service were notorious for their propensity to desert. When Thomas Picton was made governor of Trinidad in 1796, he offered a reward for any German deserter either apprehended or killed. Fourteen of the worst offenders were court-martialled and executed. Few eyewitness accounts of the West Indian campaigns make reference to violations against the local population. Lasalle de Louisenthall’s accusation of attempted rape made against soldiers of the 3rd Regiment on Trinidad is unusual.
We can glean more detail of the routine workings of army law from Charles James’s voluminous work, A Collection of the Charges, Opinions, and Sentences of General Courts Martial, published in 1820. This contains records of a number of West Indian trials and gives a very useful insight into procedure and subsequent sentencing. Unsurprisingly, alcohol was at the root of a significant number of cases of insubordination. Ensign John Carnody of the 1st Battalion 63rd Regiment was found to be guilty of ‘infamous and scandalous conduct’, disobeying his orders ‘…and continuing to parade the streets of Fort Royal in a state of intoxication’. Other officers are guilty of financial misappropriations and ‘ungentlemanly conduct’. Two lieutenants are charged in Jamaica in 1813 for throwing bricks and stones at a fellow officer’s quarters. These disagreements could lead to duels. Thomas Phipps Howard relates a duel between two officers of his regiment shortly after their arrival in Saint Domingue. The reason was ‘trifling’ but it culminated in one of the adversaries being shot in the chest. The ball was extracted and, despite losing a large quantity of blood, he made a full recovery in six weeks. Thomas St Clair notes that there was a bad atmosphere in the regimental officers’ mess in Demerara. One dispute had already led to a fatal duel and St Clair resolved to keep his head down.
The mutiny of the 8th West India Regiment on Dominica in 1802 has been described. There was no instance of mutiny in home-based British troops in the West Indian campaigns, but this was a constant anxiety with respect to the less reliable parts of the colonial corps in British service. At Saint Domingue
in July 1798, Colonel William Stewart relates a mutiny breaking out in the Chasseurs de George and Malabre’s following a series of petty disputes. Two chasseurs were shot and one received 500 lashes, the punishment inflicted in front of the hundred men of a garrison picket.
Flogging was the mainstay of corporal punishment for the erring rank and file. Buckley has analysed West Indian courts-martial records and he shows unequivocally that the brutality of this punishment was even greater in the region than in other theatres. Between 1800 and 1807, the average sentence exceeded 1,000 lashes; on occasion, sentences of 2,000 lashes were issued to unfortunates found to be guilty of crimes such as disobedience or desertion. Women were not spared; those found plundering received the same retribution as the men. James Aytoun makes several allusions to the tyrannical military regimen on Dominica. Soldiers were ruthlessly flogged for minor misdemeanours. A good man dropping off to sleep in the middle of the day was likely to be sent to the guard house and prosecuted for being drunk. It was not unusual for 13 men to be punished in a single morning. Once the sentence had been carried out the victims received rudimentary medical care from their comrades; every day a man was sent into the country to gather plantain leaves to soothe the lacerated backs.
Soldiers were appalled by their first view of flogging. Andrew Bryson soon understood that no infractions would be tolerated on Martinique.
The next morning there was to be 4 men punished & I was called on, along with the rest, to See it. The punished [were] in the inside of the room to prevent the Negroes from seeing them. When they began they placed us So near the Triangles [the wooden structures to which the victims were tied] that [with] every lash they Gave, as soon as the skin was cut, the blood flew in my face. Shocked with this, & overcome with the fatigue of Standing So long, I fainted before they had half Done. The Capt. followed me down stairs & ordered me a Glass of Wine and as Soon as I was recovered, ‘You See’, Said he, ‘what the effects of Misconduct in the Army [are] and as the punishment of another has affected you So much, you had need to take care lest you Subject yourself to Suffer.
Death Before Glory Page 24