Day 14. Captain Benjamin

I imagine that the two brothers tavelled to Barbados on their uncle’s ship. The  notice in the newspaper, which I found, only states that the boys were to leave the colony, not where they were going. In those days people had to have permission to travel- today we call this a passport. It is quite possible that they went to Connecticut where their cousin Henry Park Benjamin had been sent because of his ill-health (he was to survive to become a well known American poet). But the boys are not mentioned in the Benjamin family history. So before I tell you about their voyage you might like to know a little about their uncle into whose care they had been entrusted by their mother.

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The boys, William and Henry,  did not know what their future might hold as they were bundled down to the harbour that mid June day. News  of the slave riots in April was patchy and they were mightily apprehensive of what lay ahead of them when they arrived in Barbados despite the reassurances of their uncle Captain Benjamin, their Aunt Mary Judith’s husband and the ship’s owner. Park Benjamin was a well known merchant seaman who plied his trade from Norwich and Preston in Connecticut and was used to the voyage between Demerara and America. He often called in at Barbados, even during the revolutionary war, and it was on one such stop that he had married “Polly” - Mary Judith Gall.

Captain Benjamin had led a colourful life. Orphaned at sixteen years old with six younger siblings he had followed the trade of his family as a shoe maker and set up a shoemaking shop with his brother in 1790 in Norwich, Connecticut. But he soon tired of this life and he entered the West Indian trade with his uncle Moses. The Revolutionary War had led to a stifling of maritime pursuits of the people of Norwich. After the war commerce was revived in all spheres. The Benjamin family business traded in horses, cattle, grain, lumber (as hoops and staves), beef, cheese, flaxseed and potash and these were exchanged for hides, salt, rum, molasses, tea, coffee, sugar and slaves in the West Indies and Demerara.

The West Indies trade offered great opportunities for profit and Park took responsibility for the West Indian end of the family's business. But the trade was fraught with dangers- the   memorial stones in Norwich graveyard bore testament to those who had died in Demerara, Cuba and losses at sea.

By 1795 Park was captain of the sloop "Prosperity" which limped into New London with the ship Polly in tow, it having lost its rudder and most of its sails. In the next year Park had lost 45 mules in a heavy gale aboard the brig "Nancy" whilst in the same storm his uncle Moses had lost 19 horses and two men from the schooner "Beaver". On the return voyage with a cargo valued at 50,000 dollars Park had been carried into Grenada where he had to pay heavily for the ships release. Before the ships release from detention he had lost his mate and all his crew to putrid fever. Park had only avoided this fate due his languishing in the local jail.

Merchantmen were harassed by British and French privateers alike. Park was taken twice in one voyage aboard the brig "Hannah" in 1797. In addition the war with Britain exacerbated the situation. Park felt that the profits were too great to be put off by a little danger. And he was happy to relate these stories to the family and especially his sons and nephews who listened to his stories with wide eyes and mouths agape until remonstrated by their mothers on their manners and the likelihood of flies entering their mouths.

The colonists in Demerara did not care where the goods and food stuffs came from. They needed for their survival, it did not matter that they had arrived in a loyalist or American rebel ship. The continued quarrels between the new American nation and the warring European nations seemed irrelevant – apart from the stifling effect on the sugar trade which affected the level of commerce in Demerara which was fuelled by sugar. The war had concluded after the Treaty of Ghent had been ratified by the US senate in February 1815 but Captain Benjamin was still wary of Royal Navy ships and kept his brigantine “Falcon” away from their interest as much as possible. The short trip to Barbados was just the first stage on the return journey to his homeland, though he was now settled with his family in Demerara. He would take his ship sailing in a North Easterly direction until they had reached the latitude of Barbados and then sail with the wind into Carlisle Bay the anchorage for Bridgetown.

Park was taking his own eldest son William Christian Park on this voyage as he had not deemed it safe to do so during the war to meet his American family for the first time and to see his younger brother, Henry Park, who had been living in his uncle’s house since 1813. Henry Park, had had a childhood troubled by a series of illnesses that ultimately left one leg atrophied. He was to become a poet, critic, editor, literary agent, and lecturer best remembered for his contributions to the New York literary scene in the 1840s. Although William Christian was but ten years old, he was mature for his age and unlike his brother of a very practical disposition. It was clear that he would follow his father’s footsteps and become a sea captain. Mary Judith was convalescing after the still birth of her fourth child which had almost killed her and so did not travel with her husband on this occasion. In any case she had to care for her two daughters.

William and Henry Beckles junior were pleased to have the company of their cousin on the short voyage that they anticipated to Barbados. Their uncle, Park Benjamin, reassured them that the late slave rebellion had been quelled and the ring leaders soundly punished as an example to others who might think of rebelling. Although Park had been agreeable to the cessation of the slave trade which had seen the transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic in shocking conditions, he was not against the ownership of slaves. He knew of the poor state in which the Irish peasantry lived under English rule and something of the conditions of the poorest portions of the factory workers in England. To his mind the slaves in Demerara and Barbados were treated no more harshly than the contemporary Irish peasantry or the free workers in Britain. 

Although he realised that the enslaved population had become increasingly anxious and restless as their freedom was promised from London he was still shocked by the rebellion of “General Bussa”. When talking to Barbadian planters during his visits he had been told that the slaves had not attempted an insurrection since 1701 and that the main problem was their habit of running away, protesting by withholding their labour or by petitioning the estate owners to improve their conditions and increase their leisure time. Many of the Barbadian slave owners allowed their “workers” to travel across the island and trade their food crops or anything they had made in their own time. John Beckles, Speaker of the Barbadian Assembly at the time of the insurrection professed that the slave laws were rarely applied and that the white population had nothing to fear.


A voyage to Barbados