Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and ... and the University of by Richard S. Dunn

Author:Richard S. Dunn [Dunn, Richard S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2012-12-01T07:00:00+00:00

Port Royal Bridgetown

White population 2,086 1,488

Slave population 845 1,439

Total population 2,931 2,927

Households 507 405

Single householders 58 94

Mean number of whites per family 4.11 3.68

Mean number of slaves per family 1.67 3.55

Mean number of persons per family 5.78 7.23

NOTE: Inhabitants both Masters and Servants of Port Royal Parish, May 12, 1680, C.O. 1/45/97-109. The Bridgetown census, discussed above on pp. 106-109, dated “Anno 1680,” is filed in C.O. 1/44/142-146 and printed in Hotten, ed., Original Lists, 438-450.

sailed out of the port but were not counted among the householders,42 it had a decidedly larger white population than Bridgetown. On the other hand, the Jamaicans owned fewer slaves. The Port Royal sailors and fishermen were generally not slaveholders, and only 52 percent of the Port Royal householders held slaves, as against 91 percent in Bridgetown. Yet plenty of householders in Port Royal employed extraordinarily large staffs of servants and slaves. Sir Henry Morgan had ten whites and fourteen blacks living with him at the Governor's House. A sailmaker named Robert Phillips kept fourteen slaves in and around his nine-room house. John Gale, a carpenter who installed a pair of racks in the courthouse in 1676 for the interrogation of prisoners (billing the authorities £14 for his work), employed a dozen servants and slaves. One John Starr had the most intriguing domestic establishment: twenty-one white women and two black girls. Starr appears to have operated the largest whorehouse in town.

Port Royal was a healthier community than Bridgetown in 1680, probably because it was free from mosquitoes and hence malaria. The census reports that 130 whites had been born the past two years, and only 90 died—quite a contrast to the Bridgetown ratio of four burials for every baptism. Even the Port Royal slaves registered a natural increase: seventy-two births and forty-eight deaths. The sexes were surprisingly equally balanced, with males accounting for 53 percent of the white population and 49 percent of the black. Unhappily, the Port Royal census taker did not identify wives, children, and servants, so we cannot compare family structure in the two towns. Port Royal had fewer listed single householders than Bridgetown, but when we take into account the rootless sailor element, it is doubtful that family life was any stronger here than in the Barbadian capital.

Port Royal must have been the most heavily fortified place in English America. Four forts, armed with ninety-four guns, protected it from sea attack, and a breastwork mounted with sixteen guns guarded the land approach. Two companies of regular soldiers manned these fortifications, and in addition Sir Henry Morgan commanded a militia regiment, which according to the muster rolls of May 1680 consisted of 1,181 officers and men. This is an inflated figure, however, for the mariners who constituted one third of the regiment were generally off fishing or turtle hunting in the Cayman Islands or buccaneering. Night and day one of the Port Royal companies was always on duty, working a twelve-hour shift. On exercise days the regiment drilled on the brick-paved Parade, just inside the town gate, resplendent in their scarlet coats lined with blue.

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