A Family of Islands by Alec Waugh

Author:Alec Waugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

8 The Lull Before the Storm

The war was ended, peace was signed, and ‘the fortunate islands’ could return to their lucrative pursuits. A few minor problems were still unsettled. One of these concerned the resumption of commercial relations between the West Indies and the United States. Wars in those days were not ‘total’, in the sense that they are now, and private citizens and subjects often tended to regard them as a nuisance with which they were only casually concerned. Byron made his grand tour of Europe and the Levant during the Napoleonic era. During the War of American Independence Louis XVI ordered that Cook’s vessel was to be respected. It is not apparent from her novels that Jane Austen was aware that she was living through a momentous period. This was particularly true of men engaged in commerce. For a long while friendly relations had existed between the merchants and brokers of New England and the planters and ship chandlers of the British West Indies. They were men of the same stock, united now and again by ties of blood; they could scarcely think of themselves as enemies; their overlords might have quarrelled, but that did not concern them. They must wait till ‘the silly thing blew over’. When it did, they would pick up the threads and resume their old relations. When peace was signed, the West Indians and the New England merchants very naturally thought, ‘Now we can go back to where we started’.

They were disconcerted to find that there were differences; the first difference being that the New England merchants were no longer British subjects but foreigners, and though they were no longer exposed to stamp and molasses acts, they were exposed to navigation acts, and the harbours of Kingston, Bridgetown and St John’s no longer flew the same flag as they. They were, however, practical persons, and they had acquired from their ancestors a due regard for compromise. It was wiser not to raise certain issues, not to ask certain questions. Their vessels had originally been registered as British; let them therefore continue to fly the Union Jack when they were in British waters. But since their owners were now American subjects, let the ships be also registered in Boston, Baltimore and Maine. Let the ships have dual nationality. That way the thing could be had both ways. It was an arrangement that suited everyone, except the officers of His Majesty’s Customs and Excise. On that score there was a loss of revenue, and Whitehall felt that action should be taken.

With this end partially in view, the Lords of the Admiralty appointed to its Leeward Islands West Indian station, four years after the cessation of hostilities, a twenty-six-year-old naval officer of somewhat unusual character, slightly odd in appearance, with a great power to arouse affection and an inner glow indicative of fire. Prince William, Duke of Clarence, who was later to be King William IV, had met him three years earlier and has left the following description of him.

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