Tobago from English to French

Tobago was once a part of the first, original British Empire, like Jamaica, Barbados and the American colonies, but distinct from India, South Africa or Trinidad.

Tobago has several layers of history, which is why you can stand with your face to the wind, overlooking a truly lovely sweep of the blue seas and lush landscape, with the ruins of an early 17th century Dutch windmill just behind you and a great old rusting cannon, marked for a Georgian king who died in the 1820s, at your feet.

You get a feeling for the past and of ancient things, of the creek and "whoosh" of the mill's four wings, its huge 40 ft sails turning in the very same air in which you now stand. The lines of ox carts bringing the cut cane to be ground, the work songs of slaves going to the fields, living, dying, unmarked and unrecorded lives and deaths by the tens of thousands who toiled the Tobagonian soil.

The great estate houses have all but vanished. In the 19th and 20th century, buildings were put upon their old ballast block foundations, and if you have the time and look very carefully, you may find an old piece of iron, maybe some links of chain, a huge hook, a broken hinge, a great copper caldron in which sugar may have been boiled.

Tobago possesses a profound sense of times already past.  In 1769, Port of Spain was a mud and thatch assemblage of huts built in a swamp, just as the Caroni swamp is today, with a handful of Spanish people, forty or fifty of them, a few slaves, all so poor that their living conditions were hardly different from each other.

Tobago, on the other hand, was well into its third, possibly fourth establishment. Its population was arranged with 10,800 slaves, 1,050 free blacks and 2,300 Europeans. Already the upper regions of its central main ridge were designated as "woods for the protection of rains". The treaty of Paris of 1763, which marked the end of the Seven Year War, now made Tobago British. By Royal Proclamation in 1764 the island was divided into parishes. In April 1768, a Legislative Council was convened. Trinidad would not see anything like that for almost 100 years. 54,000 acres of land were sold. This produced £154,000, at a period when the entire establishment in Trinidad, the European men could just arrange one suit of proper clothes between them all (just in the event of visitors from abroad)! This shows how poor Trinidad was in the pre-Cedula days.

Plantation development in Tobago commenced in earnest with the sale of 500 acres at Courland Bay. The first export of sugar came from Bushy Park in St. Mary's Parish. The drive for development was on. The 10,800 slaves bore the brunt of the actual labour of clearing the forest for the planting of a variety of crops, while enduring the appalling conditions of slavery. They cultivated sugar cane on a large scale.

It is hardly surprising that there were several slave revolts during the late 18th century in Tobago. These were more often than not started by the newly arrived slaves. The first slave revolt in 1770 spread from Courland Estate to Mt. Irvine and Riseland; in 1771, two insurrections were put down by the militia. In 1774, the slave revolt on Queen's Bay Estate was also suppressed. The plantation economy, centered as it was on the system of slavery, perceived the slaves as merely a factor in the production of crops, a commodity like axles for carts or grinding wheels for windmills, expensive to buy, requiring upkeep and maintenance, not to be unnecessarily misused or destroyed, but basically - albeit expensively - replaceable.

There was very little money on the plantations. Food, shelter and clothing were provided by the estate. It was self-sufficient in the crafts and skills necessary to maintain its work, stock and tools. Transactions between the estates and London were handled by bills of exchange and a system of credit.

The services necessary to provide for the shipping  and sale of goods and for the management of income were provided by the merchant banker, who operated out of London. He provided the ships that would transport the products of the estates to England and made arrangements for a constant supply of slaves from the west coast of Africa. These were procured by African merchants, mostly Muslims.

The proceeds of the goods sold in England were used to settle the planters' financial commitments and arrange for supplies and stock. Any residuals were credited to the accounts of the planters with the merchant houses. Produce served as the unit of account and medium of exchange and thus was regarded as a form of money.

In 1776, Tobago's economy suffered a serious setback, as hordes of leaf-eating ants destroyed thousands of acres of sugar cane, ravaging plantations in the windward parishes. This forced a change to the cultivation of cotton, which proved to be an early and timely attempt at diversification and, during the next 15 years or so, up to 15,000 acres were changed to cotton cultivation.

In 1778, with the American colonies in rebellion, an American squadron attempted a raid on Tobago. Their squadron comprised two ships of the line, three brigs and a schooner. They were engaged by the British battleship H.M.S. Yarmouth. During the encounter, the American ship Randolph was blown up with her crew of 315 men. The remainder of the squadron withdrew.

Tobago produced in 1780 35,122 cwt. of sugar, 1,868 puncheons of rum and 1,518,000 lb. of cotton, 20,600 lb. of indigo and 1,600 lb. of ginger. There were 1,637 working cattle and 946 horses. Almost 24,000 acres of land had been cleared. Notwithstanding, Tobago with its length of just 26 miles and width of seven, was not an important possession from an agricultural point of view. However, its value to the British crown lay in its strategic military and naval position. It lay well to windward, which was important in the age of sailing ships. Any force collected there could easily be launched against any of the islands, including even Barbados. A battle fleet coming from Tobago would have a speedy opportunity to fall upon an enemy beating against the prevailing wind.

Tobago was basically out of the hurricane area and had excellent harbour for the ships of those days. It has been felt by historians that the defense of the island was neglected in this period, and that the fortifications such as Fort George in 1777 and the small redoubts listed below came a bit late.

The island could boast of a militia of some 350 men. There were two companies of the 62nd regiment and later two companies of the 48th regiment. The French involvement with the rebellious American colonists eventually led to open war between France and England in 1778.  In that year, the French Admiral Comte d'Estaing was in the West Indies with a squadron having 9,000 soldiers on board. He was unable to save St. Lucia from capture by the British, but was able to take St. Vincent and Grenada from the English. The English planters in Tobago saw this as a catastrophe in the making.

A French squadron of nine ships of the line were sighted off the island on 23rd May, 1781. The British under Lt. Governor George Ferguson surrendered only after a gallant 10-day struggle against overwhelming odds.

Ferguson had upon sighting the French, immediately mastered all able-bodied men, some 427, comprised of planters, militia, sailors and regular troops. The French first attempted a landing a Minister Bay, named by the Dutch Luggart's Bay, but high seas drove them off. They tried again at Rockly Bay. Once again the weather proved too bad for a landing.

The following day, they succeeded in putting ashore 3,100 men at Great Courland Bay. Major Hamilton of the militia, who had manned a two-gun battery at Black Rock across the bay, was able to bring the French ships under heavy fire, until he was forced to retire.

Lt. Governor Ferguson in the meantime had retreated and regrouped his men at Concordia, on the heights above Scarborough, and not far from Mason Hall, fighting a guerrilla action all the way.

The French general Philbert Blanchelande in hot pursuit demanded their surrender, having set up a battery at French Fort, which was then a cotton plantation overlooking Concordia. A French attack on the English position failed in the night, as the French lost their way.

Ferguson and his small band refused to surrender, requesting the French general "not to trouble me again upon this point". From the heights of Concordia, Ferguson was able to see more French troops landing in Plymouth and was forced to wait until the dead of the night to fall back to the base of the main ridge, Caledonia Estate. He did this so well that when the French stormed his position the next day, they found that he had gone.

Ferguson fell back through the forest and steep mountain sides and fortified a mountain top position so as to make a final stand. By this time, the French landed some 400 men at Man-of-War Bay, intent to take Ferguson from the rear. Still, the British resisted. It was only when the French started to burn the plantations that Ferguson's force, many of them planters in short of ammunition and food, decided that the wisest course of action would be to surrender. the French congratulated the English on their gallant defense. The conditions and the laws laid down by the English were left unchanged, although Scarborough was renamed Port Louis.

Redoubts in Tobago

Great Courland: two 18-pounders and one 6-pounder

Little Courland: one 18-pounder and one 9-pounder

La Guiria Bay: two 6-pounders

Queen's Bay: two 9-pounders

Bloody Bay: one 6-pounder

Englishman's Bay: one 6-pounder

Castara Bay: one 6-pounder

Sandy Point: two 18-pounders, two 9-pounders

Fort Granby: two 18-pounders, one 9-pounder, four 6-pounders with three 5.5"-mortars

The Gaol

They used to say "Jail ain't make to ripen fig", meaning that if you went to jail don't expect to be idle. You had to work. The original cost of the gaol, built in 1812 on what is now Frederick Street, according to the accounts laid before the Council on 16th August 1813, was £29, 853 sterling (one pound sterling was $4.80).

Writing in 1866, Daniel Hart, Commissioner of Prisons, observed that crime in the island was much less than in other countries in proportion to its population, and that the natives of the island formed but a small proportion of the total commitments.

By the profitable employment of the prisoners, the prison department was made self-supporting. The original building was 208 ft in length an 59 ft in width. This prison was capable of containing 98 prisoners in separate cells, and 294 when more than one prisoner sleeps in one cell. There were separate quarters for females and debtors. There was also an infirmary, a store room, work shop and bakery. The baths were separated for different classes of prisoners, it would appear that felons did not bathe with debtors. There were three airing yards.

None of the subordinate officers, except the night watch and matrons, remained in the prison at night, there being no quarters for them. During the administration of Lord Harris (1845 - 1854), some thirty five years after the original construction, the gaol was enlarged to 312 ft in length and 251ft in width, with the height of the walls being 25 ft.

The prisoners earned their keep in those days. The greatest number of prisoners kept in confinement at any one period was 315 males and 22 females.

Besides the principal prison at Port of Spain, there were five liscenced prisons in different parts of the island and one penal settlement at Irois. Prisoners convicted for not more than 35 days were committed to the licensed prisons and were employed by the wardens in the cleaning, making and repairing of roads. Prisoners convicted of serious crimes and those who had to serve long periods of time were taken to Irois. These were employed in the felling, squaring and hauling out of timber. They were also employed in the replanting of the forests.

The timber taken out was cut into boards, planks and beams of various proportions. Prisoners were also employed in the cleaning of the streets in Port of Spain and San Fernando. Education in gaol in 1866 saw 31 prisoners learning writing, 42 reading, 31 arithmatic, 31 scripture reading and 45 spelling. During that  year, 1410 persons were convicted and passed through the gaol. The cosmopolitan nature of the prison population in that year gives an idea to the extent of the people coming to Trinidad from all over the world. The gaol in the "Experimental Colony" reflects this:

America - 9

Antigua - 17

Anguilla - 7

Africa - 117

Barbados - 79

China - 81

Dominica - 10

Demerara - 7

England - 5

France - 6

Guadelupe - 2

India - 688

Jamiaca - 2

Madeira - 6

Martinique - 3

Montserrat - 21

Nevis - 27

Ireland - 7

Saba - 3

Tortola - 2

Tobago - 16

Trinidad - 201

Scotland - 4

St. Vincent - 22

St. Kitts - 19

St. Thomas - 4

St. Lucia - 6

Cape de Verde - 1

Amongst the various charges laid were 23 for selling rum without a license; 5 for setting fire without giving notice; 2 for shooting with intent; 5 for robbery with violence; 1 for riotous behaviour; 10 for resisting police; 2 for riding on the shaft of a cart; 22 for obstructing the street; 69 for obscene language; 6 for murder; 314 for larceny; 12 for furious riding; 27 for exposure of person; 150 for debt; 14 for cutting and wounding; 1 for cruelty to animals; 495 for breach of contract (indentured Indians); 1 for arson; 124 for assault and battery.

Some of the professions of those convicted: 19 washers; 3 wheelwrights; 18 tailors; 2 tinsmiths; 10 seamstress; 2 schoolmasters; 9 shoemakers; 4 saddlers; 4 sawyers; 1 sailmaker; 2 solicitors; 4 professors of music; 1,118 labourers; 1 auctioneer; 3 boatmen; 3 butchers; 1 coach painter; 9 coopers; 1 coachsmith; 1 cigarmaker; 1 distiller; 3 interpretors.

These selected at random show a range of trades and professions, some no longer in existance. In those days there was one first-class turnkey who received £100 per year (a pound was $4.80). £100 was also given to the inspector of prisons, and the superintendent got £350. There was one clerk who got £150, an assistant clerk who got £75 and one overseer getting £120. The teacher was given £50. There were four second-class turnkeys who recieved £80, seven third-class got £70 and nine fouth-class who recieved £50 a year. The matron got £40 per year.

There were seven executions in 1866. There were 3 convicted for arson; 18 for cutting and wounding; 10 for murder; 7 for killing and slaying; 6 attempts to commit murder; 6 for assault to commit rape; 6 for rape; 11 for robbery with violence; 8 for assault; 6 for assault and battery; 7 for shooting with intent; 1 for malicious injury to person.

The old instruments of torture left over from the Spanish times remained in the gaol on Frederick Street for many years. One wonders whether they're still around.

The Big Drum Dance

Coming from Carriacou, the big drum was adopted by people of West African descent as a cultural expression that just made sense.

It was in the mid-1970s that I last saw André Beddoe. I went along with some friends to a shango for a "lime" (term used in Trinidad for hanging out). We drove to Laventille, the hilly eastern end of the city that had been settled by African peoples since the 1800s. I made sure that I brought a bottle of brandy and a carton of cigarettes as offerings, old habits die hard, I suppose.

We drove up to the top of "the hill" and I realised that we were going to a yard that I knew, next to Rudolph Charles' grandmother's house. Our small crowd of five or six was led by the young man who had been invited. I followed with my packages. The yard was crowded with children, goats, neighbours, well-wishers, practitioners and a dozen or so Guinea fowls woken up by the noise and bright lights.

I found André Beddoe telling "Big Snake" stories to some sisters, and with a nod and a wink the presents disappeared. A little later I sat quietly just inside the main door of the house. There was a candle burning in a corner and the atmosphere was peaceful and quiet. He didn't see me as he was coming in, shuffling his big feet that seldom had shoes. His hair was now completely white and his once muscular frame had become soft and bent with age.

He sighed as he walked and sat in a corner just under two boulas and a gran tambour hanging from the wall. From inside his shirt, he took a small drum and a little bent stick with which he began to beat. Offbeat at first, then quickening into a skipping, tripping, happy-sounding song, the words of which he sang at first in a raspy whisper and, as they came to him better, in a sweet low melodious voice of his early youth. He sang:

"Papa Llegba, ouvri barrier po'moin ago ye Azima Llegba guvri barrier po'moin - ouvri barrier po'moin aogo - ye - e ..."

I sat and watched and listened, and all of a sudden I realised that a strange and wonderful thing was taking place. André grew young before my eyes! He straightened up, became tall and slim. His face, unlined now, was aglow as he smiled and sang and whispered to Atibo Llegba to remove the barrier that he may pass, so that when he would come back he would salute the loas and thank the loa Abobo.

His voice evoked the memory of ancestors long dead on other islands; his quick-stepping drum went round and down to the most ancient ones beyond the gate. I looked on with amazement as André assumed with beauty the form of his beloved ancestor.

The big drum dance of Carriacou contains three main aspects. The first, most important and most sacred, which opens the ritual, is devoted to the ancestors. The second expresses dances and songs that were established before emancipation, and the third innovative and more syncretic stems from the long twilight of the post-emancipation period. In those days, the islands of the Grenadines lay almost unknown to the yachties and the outside world - which included place like Trinidad and Barbados.

The big drum dance contains songs that relate to slavery days and are sung in Patois. It would appear that they were well-evolved by the time emancipation came in 1838. Dance, song and drumming came aboard the swift windjammers built on Carriacou to Trinidad in the 1840s. The importation of the big drum was of great significance to Trinidad's black population.

Slavery had been brought to Trinidad with the French who arrived by virtue of the Cedula of Population of 1780s. Prior to their immigration, there were a few African people in the Spanish island. With the French and their slaves came an active syncretic movement, joining Catholicism to animism and to an ancestral cult, which was expressed as shango.

With the British capture of the island in 1797, there was an overall clamp-down on drumming and public African dancing. By 1799, the French planters had influenced the British authorities to think that a black insurrection of the type experienced in Haiti was imminent. This led to executions, banishment and beatings of the slaves on a large scale.

African culture in terms of religion, dance, song and drumming went  underground to a considerable extent. Stifled by regulations, broken up with police action and socially condemned by the planters, dark days had started for the drum.

With the passing of the period of the military governors from 1797 to 1813, a different and more insidious repression commenced under the first civil British governors. Respectability became the yardstick to acceptance, applied chiefly to free blacks and people of colour. Drumming became even less respectable, as the coloured folks wanted to distinguish themselves  clearly from their African slaves.

With emancipation in 1838 came a collapse of the economy. The former slaves left the estates, never to return. Seeking labour from the other British West Indian possessions, the planters and the administration encouraged a first wave of West Indian immigration on a large scale. Among the thousands who landed at the lighthouse jetty in Port of Spain were the men and women of the Grenadines. They brought with them the big drum dance of Carriacou and the big drum itself.

By its very nature, the big drum dance is accommodating. It celebrates all tribes; Yoruba, Congo, Coromant, Banda, Chamba, Moko Bange, Temné, Ibo are welcome to sing, to dance, to drum, and to express their relationship with a time out of mind. Joy and ecstasy are formed in another world. The dream memory of ancestors evoke powers to transcend this time.

Père Labat wrote in the 1720s:
"They use two drums hollowed to unequal lengths. One of the ends is pen, the other covered with a sheepskin or goatskin without hair, scraped like parchment. The largest of these two drums which they simply call the big drum ('grand tambour') may measure 3 or 4 feet in length with a diameter of about fifteen inches. The smaller one, which is called the baboula, is about the same length with a diameter of 8 or 9 inches.

Those who beat the drums to work the beat of the dance put them between their legs or sit on them and strike them with the flat of the four fingers of each hand. The man who plays the large drum strikes it deliberately and rhytmically, but the baboula player drums as fast as he can, hardly keeping the rhythm, and as the sound of the baboula is much quieter than that of the big drum and is very penetrating, its only use is to make noise without working the beat of the dance or the movements of the dancers."

For more information and pictures of the present-day big drum dance, you can visit http://www.grenadines.net/carriacou/carriacouBIGDRUM.htm

Lorna McDaniel is the founding editor of the journal "New Directions: Readings in African Diaspora Music". You can find McDaniel's articles in the journals "The Black Perspective in Music" and "Black Music Research Journal". She was a lecturer at the University of Michigan, the University of Nigeria, and Cheyney University.

For more information on Lorna McDaniel's book on the big drum dance, visit http://www.upf.com/Fall1998/mcdaniel.html.

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Lopinot and the Haitian Revolution

There are few occasions in a person's lifetime that possess a sense-alteration to the degree of conveying the impression of being outside of the events taking place. The cusp of epochs; a common version may be the death of a parent or the collapse of a career.

To better grasp the scale of the Haitian Revolution, the events can only be perceived via such terms as Holocaust, mass murder, the liberation of a people, the birth of a nation, genocide, and even these, muttered out of context, lose their importance. Seeing is believing.

She was undoubtedly a woman of great strength of character and personal courage, exceptionally brave or perhaps simply possessed by the incipient stupidity that overbreeding sometimes brings to the upper classes.

She was completely aware of the whole scale destruction and mass murders being undertaken by the slaves. On the plantation La Resource she was not alone. The house slaves, still faithful to the memory of her parents, hovered breathlessly on the borders of their serfdom. She herself had but one clear intention, that was, to save the life of Charles Joseph Count Loppinot de la Fresillière, who had come into her pallid life two years before.

She was a Creole of this island and had known only the odour of the negroes, the aroma of burnt cane, the smell of molasses, of sawdust and of perfumes imported from abroad and as such, had lost their delicacy in the furnace holds of ships becalmed in the wide Sargasso Sea.

She knew well the fragrance of exotic tropical blooms carried on a warm wind when one sat dozing in the side gallery, the slave girl in spotless white, fanning her bare feet. She had been unprepared for the fresh crispness of his appearance, the originality of his clothing, and a sense about him that she could only compare to freshly baked bread or if you could imagine the smell of sunshine.

All her life, she had a highly developed olfactory faculty. They were never  lovers. He had arrived on the island aboard a 78 gun ship of the line in the company of the exalted. After having lived in Louisiana as an officer in the militia, he was now at St. Domingue where he was appointed Lieutenant de Roi par interim at Port au Prince. He became Major Commandante pour Roi at Jerome in 1784 and Commandante particulier at Port au Prince in 1787.

He occupied large estates in the colony. He married Catherine Fabre d'Auray by whom he had four sons. He was her neighbour. From the hilltop upon which her mansion had been built, she could see the burning cane fields. Macaque, her father's valet, so named in a moment of levity in what now seemed to be a thousand years ago, approached her with much gentility, smiled through his chattering teeth and told her in courtly French that the wagon was prepared and that the Monsieur had consented to enter the hogshead that had been provided for their escape and that he had requested her to join him. This she declined in as much as she had already decided to die in the house her father had built, overlooking the deep bay at Moucound.

Six of her strongest houseboys rolled the heavy oaken barrel in which the Count, wrapped in blankets against the inevitable collisions lay in hiding. This was heaved onto the waiting oxcart. Later they would roll it on to a careened longboat leaning on the waters edge in the bay. This in turn would be hauled aboard the British frigate "Arethusa" that would eventually take him and his family, also hidden in rum barrels, to Jamaica and safety. He would, however, return with the British expedition.

That evening, with her delicate profile turned slightly windward, she could smell them coming long before she heard them in the bottom of the garden near to the fountain dedicated to the Three Graces, built by her father in the year that she was born.

Five years later, between the execution of Louis XVI on the 21st of January 1793 and that of Marie Antoinette on the 16th October, at the promting of Loppinot himself, the future Louis XVIII - the Dauphin Louis XVII still being alive - then Compte de Provence, conferred on Loppinot the powers of Governor General of St. Domingue and Commissioner of all the Windward and Leeward Islands of America by a commission signed in Hamm in Westphalia on the 24th August 1793. This was to commence when "... His Majesty would only be able to decide further useful directions on the restoration of the monarchy, only then would he send his orders."

In as much as his lands had been lost in St. Domingue and in return for his service with the British expedition, the Secretary of State decided that a suitable grant of land would be made to him in Trinidad.

Col. Thomas Picton was a large, red-faced Welshman who drank more than he should and kept a notoriously common woman of an indeterminable racial background as a mistress. He tended to run the colony in much the same manner as he did his regiment. He was sitting in a warm rummy vapour which emanated from his person, when the Count was announced by the German sentry belonging to the 3rd Hompesch's regiment of German "Jägers" left behind so as to maintain order in the freshly captured island.

Picton could not stand the idea of meeting and dealing with yet another overly brought up, dandified ex-courtier of a now extinct kingdom. Frenchies made him sick. With elaborate resignation he listened as the Count Loppinot went through lengthy formalities, finally arriving at the point: land. Sorry, Picton had not heard a word from the Secretary of State and as such had no authority to make a grant. Undeterred, the Count borrowed money on mortgage. He attempted to utilise his slaves by purchasing a half share in a sugar estate at Tacarigua. But the depressed sugar market at the time, so different from the prosperous revolutionary days in St. Domingue, resulted in heavy losses for him.

In Trinidad, his rank and military experience earned Loppinot the confidence of the military governors of the island who succeeded Col. Picton. Brigadier General Thomas Hislop appointed him a brigadier-general in the militia. It was during the latter's governorship that the Count again applied for a grant of land in a mountain valley above Tacarigua. This time he was successful, and the area of his cocoa plantation is still bearing his name to date.

Under Hislop's successor, Major-General W. Monroe, during a period when the wars for the liberation of South America was being conducted by a young mestizo revolutionary called Simon Bolivar, Loppinot was sent with troops to flush out a revolutionary cell that had been built up under the aegis of one Geraldine Carry on Carry's island in the Dragon's Mouth, Chacachacare.

The insurgents, comprised mainly of members of the local Masonic Lodge, had already left for Guiria on the mainland. Taking the town, they were successful in the recommencing of the revolution, which had petered out. They were later known as the "Immortal 45" and were with Bolivar at the capture of Caracas.

Sir Ralph Woodford, the island's first civil governor who succeeded Munro in 1813, dismissed the old Council of Advice of previous administrators and appointed a new Council of Three, one of whom was the Count.

In 1814, the year after Woodford's arrival, the news of the fall of Napoleon came. The Count lost no time in suggesting means of winning back St. Domingue. In elaborate terms he addressed the Comte d'Artois. He commenced:

"Monsignor, we have heard the most memorable, the most happy and the most cheering event for the spirit of Frenchmen. The monstrous idol, that fantasy of ambition and error raised up is finally cast down to leave only the bitter memory of the most painful screams..."

He was reminding the Comte d'Artois of his position and rank and proposed a commission for himself as Governor General, not in name but in fact. He wrote dozens of letters outlining various schemes and plans to retake St. Domingue, now Haiti. They all came to nothing. The most wealthy, the most splendid, the most fantastic colony France had ever possessed was now on the road to its own destiny. The last of the house of Bourbon to sit upon the throne of France were reactionary relics of the ancient regime, best remembered by the saying that they learned nothing and forgot nothing. In his closing of one of his last letters to the king a disappointed Loppinot writes:

"Since the happy events which restored His Majesty to the throne, I have not received a single instruction..."

Loppinot lived out his last years in his mountain retreat as one of the most respected and prominent inhabitants of the British colony of Trinidad. When he died in 1817, he was buried on his estate, as were his wife and a son. Well beloved by his slaves, there was never a hanging in Loppinot. The family and title exist to this day in France.

A tour of Port of Spain in Mahalle's invisible car

 "Mahalle, you change your car?" asked Spit in the Sea; he was looking for a drop to Cocorite. Mahalle ignored him as he brought his car's invisible windscreen up to an impossible shine, stepped back and attempted to catch a glimpse of himself reflected in the imaginary bonnet.

This was an altogether ludicrous period in Port of Spain's history. Spoiler the calypsonian had just sung a hit about an accident in the colonial hospital, where by a cat's brain had inadvertently been put into his sister's head and vice versa, resulting in:

"And the cat who ha she brain,

he cozy on the bed

bussing kiss on top ah she husband head."

But today Mahalle was not bothering with Spit in the Sea's flattery, he knew that all Spit wanted was to pose off in the back seat and make old style in his car.

"Watch the door!" snapped Mahalle as the coconut man backed his donkey and cart into a spot just outside Vasco de Gamma Bar, on the corner of Piccadilly Street and Old St. Joseph Road, and with the proper hand signals and his car in first gear, off he went, never noticing that Spit had got in behind.

They drew little attention as they made their way traveling west on Marine Square. Passersby saw an elderly Indian man with a lunatic glare in his eye and a red-skinned nut case walking quickly behind him. Spit in the Sea had only one thought in his mind, "Ah wonder if he really going Cocorite."

The city of Port of Spain in the 1940s was getting a face lift along the lines of the Slum Clearance Bill of 1935; many parts of town had been declared unfit. Mahalle had heard only this morning that all the barracks on Francis Street in Corbeaux Town were being replaced by up-to-date bungalows. The Guardian's special correspondent went on to say:

"Other sections of the city, Prince Street, Charlotte Street, Henry Street, upper St. Vincent Street and in the Besson Street area in particular some ugliness still remains, but lines of squalid barracks have slowly given way to beautiful model houses."

As he approached Abercromby Street Mahalle signaled that he was slowing down so as to allow Col. Mavrogordato to cross to the Union Club. Spit, in the back seat, instead of paying attention to the driver, bumped right into Mahalle, almost causing him to collide with the Commissioner of Police. With that Mahalle jumped out of his invisible, opened the back door and threw Spit out.

"What the hell you doing in my blankity-blank car?!! Get out you smelly rodent!" (etc. etc.)

All this naturally caught the eye of the commissioner, who stood for a moment to see the two old vagrants fighting on the sidewalk, feeling vaguely reminded of a snake charmer and a carpet vendor he had once observed in Cairo, Egypt. Shaking his head, he turned towards the club's elegant staircase in search of a mid-morning gin and tonic.

Not only was the housing in the city changing in this early wartime period, transportation was also on the move as there were now more than 1,000 cars on the streets of Port of Spain (not counting Mahalle's). Horse-drawn vehicles and donkey carts still outnumbered motor vehicles. Some old-time calypsoes remind us of them:

"Ah went dong donkey city to circumsise meh donkey,

ah bounce up two female donkeys carrying with a mule,

and the mule said to the donkey, 'Sagaboy don't caca behind me, donkey,

whoa don't tear up my junior commando.."

The city council still charged fees for the pasturage of animals at the Mucarapo pasture, the only one left belonging to the government. There had been pastures at Woodbrook, Belmont and St. Clair. The Queen's Park Savannah was also used for pasturing. In fact the government kept a bull tethered there and, for a shilling paid to the city council, you could bring your heifer to the government's bull.

In the meantime, Mahalle had been able to push Spit in the Sea out of his car and had driven off at full speed, swinging north into Abercromby Street and almost 'licking down' Mary Jackass. Mary, an old white woman, always in a big hurry and perpetually tormented by school boys, had one large tooth left and with this she fired a bite at Mahalle causing a scratch on his upholstery. With that, Mahalle tried to bounce her down, but she managed to escape by running into the square, a crowd of school boys chasing behind her.

Mahalle crossed Marine Square north and gingerly brought his car to a stop outside the Hotel de Paris. In those days, Port of Spain boasted several fine hotels. The Ice House Hotel faced the Hotel de Paris on Abercromby Street, the Standard Hotel was at Henry Street, the St. Miranda at the corner of Henry and Queen Street and the Carlisle at the corner of Queen and St. Vincent Street.

"Taxi Sir? Taxi Miss?" called Mahalle with an ingratiating smile, subserviently bowing and scraping to a tall, English-looking gentleman and the pretty lady in a green and white polka dot dress.

"Taxi, take a tour, see the sights!"

Downtown Port of Spain was quite fashionable in those days, kept clean, its sidewalks and canals swept daily, with shiny steel tram lines running down their lengths of the streets. Elaborate wrought-iron balconies overhung large showcase windows, displaying the latest arrivals at Miller's, Glendinning's and the Bonanza. There was Canning's, Salvatori and Tetrami. In those days, the bicycle was a popular means of transport. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, when cars parked on the eastern side of the city's streets, bikes lined the left side, and vice versa on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Fed up with the ungrateful tourists, Mahalle was about to enter his car by himself when he spotted Gombot Lili, a greasy-pole climber who used to bathe the dead, just like his father, Gombot Glise, who had been jailed in the previous century for charging the public four cents to look into a large box. The allegation was that one of the men in the box had displayed an indecent spectacle.

"Eh Gombot, you want a drop? Ah goin by the Circular Road, jus 6 cents."

But Gombot was busy. He had a dead to bathe. Mahalle drove north on Abercromby Street and turned right onto Knox Street, which had been named for a Chief Judge of the colony. On the left was the old Garcia building, now the Town Hall. It boasted a fine row of columns supporting a gallery which shaded the side walk, paved with large red flagstones.

The building had been the home of the famous Garcia family. It was a fine old fashioned Spanish house that had a chapel for the family's use. It was said that Don Raymond Garcia, who had come to Trinidad at the start of the 19th century from Caracas, was the illegitimate son of a Spanish infanta and her confessor. Upon discovering her condition, the confessor was executed, the infanta sent to a nunnery. After she had given birth, her son was  dispatched to Venezuela with a teacher, a fortune and a new name. In those days, there were many such stories of how royalty walked the streets of Port of Spain.

Mahalle turned down Frederick Street, past the Grey Friars' Kirk, where the first Portuguese, who had come to the island from Madeira, said their prayers. These Portuguese, originally Catholic, had been converted to a form of Calvinism and as such had been in mortal danger from their fellow catechists, causing their being rescued by the British and brought from their Atlantic island to Trinidad.

Mahalle spotted the city councillor Albert Gomes walking up Frederick Street. "Good morning, Mista Gomes."

"Morning Mahalle. How is everything today? Haven't had a flat I hope," said Gomes, tipping his hat at the fleet-footed Mahalle, who had already begun signalling his intention to turn onto Prince Street. Albert Gomes was, in those days, an up-and-coming politician. On one occasion, the Port of Spain City Council was debating the use of the city's squares for public meetings. Things had come to a head when an associate of Gomes, one Quintin O'Connor, had been refused permission to use Woodford Square for a public meeting. O'Connor was a trade unionist representing the Shopworkers' and Clerks' Union, which was a rival union to Captain Arthur Cipriani's Trinidad Labour Party. Cipriani, the Mayor of Port of Spain, had ruled that it was against the constitution to hold public meetings in public places such as the squares.

Albert Gomes was furious. He bellowed that the Mayor was attempting to silence the opposition.

"Woodford Square belongs to the people, the man in the street. You are making this council a fascist platform!"

Insulted, the Mayor ordered Gomes to take his seat. Gomes refused and the Captain ordered two policemen to put Gomes out of the Council Chamber. Gomes, on seeing the police, lay down flat on the floor, all 280 pounds of him. The rumor that made the rounds was that it took 16 policemen to move Gomes into the corridor!

As Mahalle approached the corner of Prince and Henry Street, he spotted Spit in the Sea waiting for a taxi so he could go to Cocorite to spit in the sea. Fortunately for Mahalle, a little drizzle started and he put on his windshield wipers. As such, he was able to pretend he did not see Spit. Turning left on Park Street, Mahalle could not help but notice a change in the city. There were a lot of sailors and airmen, Red Cross nurses and the Trinidad volunteers about. He was overtaken by a jeep driving at break-neck speed along Park Street: American sailors on a spree. People were glad to see Americans. They brought employment with the camps and bases being opened up. They brought excitement to the girls and spent money on gambling.

"Drinking rum and Coca Cola

go dong Point Cumana,

see mother and daughter

working for the Yankee dollar."

Talk of the devil. "Morning Mr. Boysie!" called Mahalle, slowing down at Pembroke Street corner. He had seen the notorious underworld character Boysie Singh. In those early years of Boysie's career, he controlled gambling in Port of Spain and boy did he have a way with the ladies! Boysie's career, written up years later, would, for a short time, become a bestseller. The gangster waved, "Alright Mahalle." Mahalle smiled. Everybody knew the car. Mahalle couldn't find a park at Green Corner, too many American sailors, so he drove down to Victoria Square, previously Shine's Pasture, which had been made into a public park using the rubble from the burnt out Red House (1903). Parking carefully on Duke Street, Mahalle went into the square to admire the zandolees living there. And you know when he came out he couldn't find the car? You think Spit could drive???

The African Prince

 "Sail off the starboard, bowmaster Jackson," snapped at Captain Peppard. Midshipman Jackson trained his glass along the steadily rising and falling horizon. The Portuguese barcantine appeared to be making directly towards H.M.S. Vigilante.

"Looks like slaver, sir."

"Trifle worse for wear."

"Order number two to fire."

"Fire number two!"

The order shouted from the quarterdeck was immediately carried out by a grinning sailor whiteout a tooth to his name. Boom! an indeterminate period, and a splash, well to the port of the Portuguese.

"Take her about, Mister Jackson, and see to the main gallants. Fasten the mizzen halyard, no luff today, Mr. Jackson!"

"Ay ay, sir!"

Captain Peppard moved to the rail.

"Stand by to board the Portuguese. Look lively at the divots!"

"Ay ay, sir!"

"Helm's alee, Captain, sir!"

"Fire number four."

"Fire number four!"

Several seconds - Boom! - huge splash just off the barcantine's starboard gunnel.

"He's put her into irons, sir. Not a breath to her canvas, she's dead in the water."

"Sergeant, board her."

"Ay ay, sir!"

The Portuguese out of Goa bound for Recife, her bow now in the wind, heaved and wallowed in the startlingly brilliant mid-Atlantic green. The sky above, true blue. From 30 yards, the Royal Marines in the Vigilante's longboat could smell the cargo: human beings, chained together in despair.

Britain's blockade of the Portuguese slave trade in the mid 19th century, the 1850s, created a different class of African people in Trinidad and Tobago. Freed from slave trading ships, they arrived on these islands 20-odd years after the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. They knew nothing of plantation life and its attendant depredations, nor were they caught up in the variegated cross-currents and miasma of coloured creole society that confused the free blacks and people of colour with the slaves, both before and after abolition.

They were distinguished by this lack of experience. All the same, they were thrown into the crucible of colonial prejudice and racial discrimination.

The number of freed Africans was quite substantial in the British West Indies: some eight or ten thousand were dispersed in the Caribbean. Among them, one day, was a prince.

The Royal House of Oyo was descendant of the Gods. At a time now so distant that it could be grasped only in metaphor and expressed purely in ritual, the great old ones had come and had allowed themselves to stay. He had been entrusted to their care of young Olumide so as to benefit from his knowledge of the earth and of what walked upon it. Because he was his father's eldest son, he was a prince, and as such was one of the sons of the Gods.

The tall, ascetic youth and the boy were walking swiftly along the path that made its way through the tall grass. The sun was huge and red and out of shape as a result of the heat of the day. It was close to setting, causing the village huts to stand out sharply in classic silhouette like black, hooded shapes.

This was where tragedy struck. Suddenly, strange men were upon them; hard blows were delivered, a net thrown upon them, and they were hoisted upon long poles and borne away. They had been stolen, and were soon to be sold to the Muslim trader who in turn sold them along with a party of Ibo from the north to the man who owned the wharves where the ships came.

Put aboard the Portuguese barcantine, they were herded below decks. They now possessed nothing, but they had a secret. No one knew who or what the boy was, and for many years after, he kept his secret of being a prince.

Arriving in Trinidad, he took the name Charles Robinson; maybe it was given to him. He and his tutor fell into Trinidad's life of the 1850s, and witnessed many wondrous sights. 1851 was the year of jubilee for the Roman Catholics, and he saw a grand procession make its way from the city's Romanesque cathedral to the hill of Calvary, just off Piccadilly Street in Port of Spain. Twenty days later, the cross was struck by lightning.

The first horse races were held that year at the Queen's Park Savannah. He had never seen a horse or a horse race before he came to Trinidad. His tutor continued his education, worked and looked after the boy. He took the name of Charles Robertson. They both became Catholics. Charles grew into a hard-working, thrifty young man and traveled down the main to Venezuela, where he bought a parcel of land and went into farming.

Five or six years later, gold was found on the land, and his parcel, along with others, became the famous El Callao mine from which Charles made a fortune. Returning to Trinidad, he married a member of the Blandin family and had three sons and a daughter. He did not live to enjoy either his wealth or his family, but passed away early. Today, his dozens of descendants live around us, among them the McShine, the Davis and the Carters. His old tutor became brother Vincent of Mt. St. Benedict.

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The Red House

It was a hot night in the dry season of 1808. Mosquitoes seemed to be attacking the little town of Port of Spain by the millions, swarming out from the nearby swamplands. It was one of those nights when the noise from the streets was especially annoying. Tossing and turning in the bed, sweating; why isn't there the habitual cool breeze?

Suddenly, a piercing scream disrupts the uneasy slumber. Governor Thomas Hislop sits bolt upright in his soldier cot. The blanket slips to the floor. The scream, and the stinging smell that gets the adrenaline pumping instantly: smoke. Now, he hears the crackling. Yes, fire, and a big one at that.

The fire that had Governor Hislop startled from his sleep destroyed a large part of Port of Spain. The small town had grown tremendously in the last twenty years, since thousands of French immigrants and their African slaves flocked to the island to establish plantations and businesses here.

The prevalent building style of the city was wood and shingles, a bad choice of materials as this night of flames and smoke was to prove. Hislop had to deal with hundreds of homeless people from one day to the next. Valuable historical records from Spanish times were destroyed. To deal with the chaos and to prevent such a disaster in the future, Hislop's administration passed legislation with regard to building regulations, stipulating that the re-building of the destroyed parts of town and any other new construction had to be made with brick and stone.

A wise decision, which was put into action by Hislop himself and his successors Munro, Woodford, Grant, Hill, Gregor and McLeod. The latter, Sir Henry McLeod, laid on February 15, 1844 the foundation stone for a new government building on the west side of Brunswick Square (now Woodford Square). This was to be the first building on the site where the Red House now stands - let us call it the "first Red House", even though it was not then known by that name.

The architect of the first Red House was Richard Bridgens, known to us also by his drawing of Trinidadian people, i.e. Amerindians, the "Negro Figuranti" and scenes of Tobago. He was then appointed as the Superintendent of Public Works, a sector of the public administration that had been very busy since the 1810s and 1820s, when Governor Woodford did some major structural changes in the town.

The builders of that first Red House were G. de la Sauvagère and A. A. Pierre. The final building was somewhat smaller than the second (present-day) Red House. Somewhat artless, it was comprised of two blocks, connected by an archway through which coaches could pass from Abercromby Street into Prince Street (now Sackville Street). In those days, it was exclusively pedestrians, people on horseback, and carts and buggies that populated the streets, and a detour around the Red House would have been inconvenient for those muscle-powered means of transport. Also, in case of fire or public turmoil, the part of town behind the Red House had to be easily accessible for fire fighters or for the police.

The first Red House was opened in 1848 by then Governor Lord Harris, an enlightened man who contributed much to the development of the island, in particular to learning and education, founding a library and the first public school system that included Indian and black children in the countryside. The building was then not quite completed, but the inauguration ceremony in the Trinity Cathedral took place anyway.

Fifty years later, it was still not completed, for reasons unbeknownst to the author. Olga Mavrogordato in her book "Voices in the Street" quotes the Port of Spain Gazette of 1892:

"Nothing further had been done to complete the buildings since their erection some fifty years ago. The only attempt to relieve the monotony of the whole is to be seen in the arching of the carriageway through the courtyard which is a perfect skeleton and, like the ruins of Pompeii, is more suggestive of what the buildings must have been than of what they were intended to be."

The Director of Public Works in the 1890s, J.E. Tanner, apparently took those comments to heart, and together with the increasing need for a proper public records office, £15,000 was allotted over the next years to carry out extensions and alterations. The first Red House started to look a little more stately.

In 1897, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated all over the British Empire. Trinidad, too, spruced up, and the first Red House was painted red. This was when it got its name - not officially, but by Trinidadians, who henceforth referred to it by that name. The name stuck, and so did the red colour, at least up to the year 2001 when this article was written.

Five years later, on the 23rd March 1903, the first Red House was destroyed. Its windows were smashed by stones, the plaster of the walls damaged here and there by bullets, and then the whole thing went up in flames: an enraged mob vented its anger on the government's property. This incident is known today as the "Water Riots", since it started with the discussion of the increase of water rates by the Legislative Council, and ended with panic, death and destruction on the side of the protesters outside. The governor then was Sir A.C. Maloney. Again, for us interested in history, valuable records were destroyed, making it at times impossible to retrace the facts of times past.

In 1904, re-building began. It was a time of construction on the whole. Cocoa had brought a lot of cash into the economy, and the administration and some private individuals invested in beautiful buildings that are today Trinidad's heritage treasure: the Magnificent Seven were also erected in 1904.

The second Red House is the one we know today. Designed and built by German architect D.M. Hahn, who was Chief Draughtsman of Public Works, it cost an estimated sum of £47,485. It was much more splendid and elaborate than the first Red House, with beautiful gesso work in the Legislative Council Chamber (now the Parliament Chamber) and in the Justice Hall, which is depicted in its old, undecorated form in the first house on the cover of the Digest. The gessowork and the panels were in fact made in England, shipped to Trinidad in parts, and installed by Italian craftsmen who also worked in the halls of for example Whitehall.

The carriageway between the two wings of the Red House was closed by Hahn for vehicular traffic, but remained open to pedestrians, and had a beautiful fountain in the centre under the rotunda. The square opposite to it was renamed Woodford Square during World War I, when Germany and its city of Braunschweig (Brunswick) had become enemies of the British Empire and no major landmark was to be named for them. Similarly, Hanover Street (named for the German House of Hanover, whence Queen Victoria's husband hailed) became the extension of Abercromby Street.

Inspite of all these name changes, the Red House remained the Red House and is now officially referred to under this name.