Churruca

 Longitude, those fine lines that run from the top of a map to the bottom, is described as the distance east or west of a standard meridian and is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds. This knowledge was 500 years ago and until the 1790s as esoteric as time travel is today. The sea farers of long ago risked falling off the edge of the world.

They were driven by avarice, possessed by courage and a knowledge of the sea, and they depended on ‘dead reckoning’ to understand the distance east or west of their home port. This was done by the heaving of a log of wood overboard. The captain would observe how quickly his ship sailed away from this bobbing, swirling marker and keep a record of this time in his ‘log book’, checking the direction of his course by a compass or by looking at the stars at night if he could find them. Bearing in mind fickle winds and sea currants, he would work out where in the world he was. A very dangerous business! He could miss his mark, and crash into reefs. He could run out of water and food. Long ocean voyages deprived men of vitamin C, which caused scurvy and terrible death. Lack of knowledge of longitude also caused serious economic problems, especially in times of war, when all shipping was using the known, safe passages or lanes. The quest for longitude was an urgent and desperate issue.

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep." (Psalm 109)

He snapped the battered Bible shut. The salty wind, more than his eyes could bear, and looked astern towards the Madre de Jesus trailing in his wake. She was a tiny thing on the very edge of the horizon. Above, the sky, a faultless bowl of the purest blue, formed a perfect circle. Around and about, the endless rolling of the waves and a steady south-easterly wind carried him with every ticking minute away. Proof, they say, is an idol before which every mathematician tortures himself. He was a mathematician, and he was in search of truth. He was also an astronomer, and as such felt convinced of the certainty of the stars.

Born in Spain in 1759, he had been described as a handsome, melancholy, learned man, and was by his nature a problem solver. He was endowed with two incompatible qualities - restless imagination and a patient tenacity. He was well known as a scientific navigator and a model Spanish officer, with the rank of vice-admiral. He had been seconded for duty with the expedition formed to fix the longitude of various important points in the Americas in relation to Cadiz. He had been further honoured by being put in charge of that section dealing with the Antilles and Mexico. On the 17th June, 1792, he had sailed from Cadiz with two brigantines. He was 33.

Trinidad de Barlovento, to the windward, appeared to starboard as a low blue smudge of mountains, then a shattered gap of tiny islets, marked 'Boca del Drago', then, from the mainland, a rugged peninsular like a finger, pointing at the island which had the appearance on the chart of a cowhide laid flat. It was square to the points of the compass, having four coastal regions or 'bandes'. Rolling with the pitch of the Atlantic breakers, the brigantines sailed the length of the island's 'bande de l'est', its eastern coast. Seeking the comparatively safe passage of the Columbus Channel, marked Boca de Sierpe, the Serpent's Mouth, and entered the vast and placid Gulfo de Baline, the Gulf of Whales, on the 21st of July. To stand down gently before a refreshing breath to the hamlet marked ‘Porto de los Hispanioles’, named by his parents with some imagination and perhaps an apprehension of his future profession.

He was called Cosmo Damien Churruca. The little habitation on the verge of a vast tropical wilderness contained some warehouses, mud and thatch dwellings, a wooden church, a landing attended by a small redoubt of five guns that was connected to the mainland by a mole or land bridge. It was peopled by a lunatic assortment of foreigners of every possible sort, condition and combination of skin colour, and overflown by huge griffin vultures that had been imported from Spain for the purpose of sanitation.

Riding in the company of the governor to his ‘palace’ along the Plaza del Marina, Churruca noticed a busy commerce and saw many French who appeared to be gentlemen. Don José was also a naval officer of the same rank and age, and within days and in his company he commenced a survey to ascertain the best spot to establish an observatory.

To the east of the town was a low ridge, thickly wooded and known as Laventilla or the Lavant, named for the east winds. This was chosen as the site, and a winding road cut along the rocky ridges led to it. George B. Airy, Great Britain’s sixth astronomer royal, penned these lines in praise of his fellow travelers “who with vigour unequaled, unyielding devotion, surveyed every coast and explained every ocean, in frigid and torrid and temperate zones.

This Churruca did, as his charts attest to this day. With perfect elevations, the four coastlines of the island of Trinidad are faithfully depicted. It was, however, on the slopes of Laventille hill that he made geographical and astronomical history. After testing and standardising his instruments, he observed on the 2nd January with great precision the immersion of the third satellite of Jupiter in the disc of the moon, and also that of the first satellite. This most unwieldy lunar method demanded accurate astronomical observations, and could only be achieved by true genius. From his observations he fixed for the first time an accurate meridian in the New World. On the 28h January, 1793, he dismantled his observatory, and sailed for Spain on the 21st October of that same year. At Cadiz, he made an accurate observation of the entrance of the star of Aldebaran into the disc of the moon with its exit. This, with his observations in January in Trinidad, enabled him to link the New World with the Old and to fix the absolute longitude of the observatory at Laventille, the first point ever so fixed in the New World. Observatory Street in Port of Spain still retains a memory, and the observatory at Laventille, now a police communications post, is called Fort Chacon.

The first meridian of the New World

Fort Chacon is the only fort in the country that was never a fort. Its correct name should be ‘Charruca Observatory’.

But Fort Chacon in Laventille got its name because it was originally built by the last Spanish governor of Trinidad, Don José Maria Chacon in 1792. The governor, however, had this sturdy building erected not to house arms and ammunition, but telescopes and polished lenses. It was always intended as an observatory for the use of Spanish astronomer Don Cosmo Damien Charruca.

On a cloudless dry-season night of the 2nd January 1793, Charruca observed ‘the immersion of the third satellite of Jupiter in the disk of the moon, and also that of the first satellite’. From these cryptic-sounding observations, the Spanish astronomer was able to fix for the first time an accurate meridian in the New World.

Upon returning to Spain, Don Cosmo completed his experiment by observing from Cadiz on the 23rd October 1793 the entrance of the star Aldebaran into the disk of the moon, with its exit. This together with his observations in Trinidad in January of that year, enabled him to link up the New World with the old and to fix an absolute longitude, the first one so fixed in the Americas.

Observatory Street in Port-of-Spain commemorates this remarkable global event, which was so beneficial for navigators forever after.

Don Cosmo, who was born in 1759, married Dona María Dolores Ruiz de Apodaca, a niece of Don Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca, the Admiral of the Spanish fleet. In 1805 while in command of the ‘San Juan Nepocumeno’, the astronomer was killed at the battle of Trafalgar at the age of only forty-six.

Jamette Society

La Vida Loca behind the Bridge

We associate barrack yards and the jamette society with the history of East Port-of-Spain. But Carnival aficionados know: there is more, mucho more to historical Laventille!

As night falls in the city of Port-of-Spain, its eastern reaches seem to have flowed down from the hillsides and to have settled into the flat lands that stretch south and west to the sea. The full moon rises over it, making the impression of a ‘liquid Christmas tree’ even more spectacular.

In the hard light of day, however, this illusion vanishes. Laventille, as the eastern hills are known, might have gotten its name from the ‘levanter’, as the Spaniards called the wind that came from the eastern Mediterranean, bringing with it the smell of the deserts in the Levant. Very old houses, shacks, yards, disused quarries, winding lanes, steep steps - all these represent another side of life which was always very different from the lifestyle lived by those who inhabit the hills to the north and the west of the city.

The East Dry River was a creation of the last Spanish Governor Don José Maria Chacon. Before his governance in 1784 - 1797, it was known as the Rio Tragarete or Rio Santa Ana, and it ran its course as far as the hospice on Observatory Street, turned west and ran across Park Street, along Frederick Street, across Woodford Square and along Chacon Street into the sea.

Causing much damage through flooding in the rainy season, the river was deviated in 1787 to its present course. Governor Woodford widened its bed in 1817.

In those days, the hills of Laventille were covered in thick woods. A few freed slaves lived there, hunting and collecting firewood.

The first major infrastructural change took place in 1783, when Don Cosmo Charruca had an observatory built in the hills. A road needed to be constructed along the ridge leading to it - Observatory Street. It was here where the first meridian of the New World was established by the Spanish astronomer. Charruca’s building is now called Fort Chacon. A few years later, another fort, called St. David’s Tower or Fort Picton, was built a quarter of a mile to the west of it.

In 1795 the Masonic Lodge, ‘Les Frères Unis’ (United Brothers) was established at Mount Moria. It is still located in there.

By the 1820s, Rose Hill Estate was established by Edward Jackson in the area opposite to Park Street. When slavery was abolished in 1834, many of the freed slaves found refuge in Laventille’s forested hillsides. By the 1840s, these were joined by a large number of Africans who had been liberated as a result of action taken by Britain again foreign slave ships to suppress the slave trade north of the equator. Africans from many tribes settled in Laventille, among them were Mandingo, Ibo, Yoruba and Krumen. The entire area was for many years called ‘Free Town’.

For years, the only existing bridge across the Dry River consisted of a few planks at the crossing at Cadiz Road. The boys who had built it would extract a penny from any pedestrian who would use the bridge at his or her own risk. Later, the first real bridge was built at this spot, called ‘McCarthy’s Bridge’.

The inhabitants of Laventille retained West African customs to a considerable degree. Being comprised of several barrack yards along (sometimes secret) religious or tribal lines, there were many gangs or bands. These bands were devoted to singing and dancing, and their rivalries often led to feuds and open fighting. There were wakes, dances and religious ceremonies accompanied by big drums, chac chac and banjoes.

In 1865 it was reported that a serious street battle had taken place between two factions of women - the ‘Mousselins’ and the ‘Don’t Care Damns’. Other bands were called ‘Immaculate Conception’ or the terrible ‘Beka Boys’, who had the awful habit of tossing foul-smelling bits of cloth in the faces of respectable women!

The streets of east Port-of-Spain came to be known as the ‘French Shores’, and those who inhabited them were known as jamettes (from French ‘diamètre’). The term referred to those outside the circle (the ‘diameter’) of polite society. In the eyes of the colonial government, the jamette society was outrageous, vulgar and obscene. There were famous whores, bad johns, panders, touts, chantwells, stickfighters, thieves and murderers. It is from this social matrix that such present-day institutions like the steelband and many aspects of Carnival and calypso sprang.

Jamette Society

Jamettes (female):

Darling Dan, Ling Mama, Mossie Millie, Ocean Lizzie, Piti Belle Lily, Sybil Steele, Alice Sugar, Cariso Jane

Jamettes (male):

Cutaway Rimbeau, Shiffer Brathwaite, Jo-Jo, Thunderstone, Surisima the Carib,

‘Djab se yo neg, me Die se nomla bla’ - song of the stickfighters used to ‘deaden’ the skin

A little more than a century ago, the festival of carnival in Port-of-Spain was firmly in the hands of the jamette society. During the canboulay parades, stickfighters or batonniers came out on Saturday night, and as the people gathered into bands, they fought with ‘bois’, whips and words. Lead by chantwels, the bands carried lighted torches, and drummed away on goatskin drums, as well as produced the eerie sounds of tamboo-bamboo.

The higher classes of Trinidad - white and coloured - were appalled by the ‘disgusting gestures, bad songs, women wearing men’s clothes and vice versa’ of the jamette carnival.

Comment on the Birth of the Steelband by Albert "Bertie" Gomes

“The second World War saw the birth of the ‘steel band’. It was both an innovation in musical expression and a social explosion in Trinidad. It also provided an unparalleled instance of Puritan humbug. It would be impossible to trace the origins of the steel bands. These must always remain shrouded in mystery and a subject of endless speculation - all things considered, a not surprising genesis for this musical aberration and gimcrack orchestration whose romantic odyssey spans an arc of picaresque adventure that began in the slum areas of Port-of-Spain, recently reached Cape Kennedy, and is still orbiting. The actual mechanics of its emergence seem to me unimportant.”