Vladimir Polenov – Jamdown Sundown. My whispered chronicles of the Caribbean (страница 4)

The national motto of Jamaica, inscribed on its coat of arms, is “out of many, one people”, reflecting the diversity of national and racial groups of the island’s population – Africans, Chinese, Indians, people from Syria and Lebanon, and, of course, the British, as well as, for example, Germans.

The latter arrived in Jamaica between 1835 and 1850, at which time they founded Seaford Town, a “German village,” in the central part of the island. The name was given to it by a local planter, Lord Seaford, who found suitable workers in northwestern Germany. This is how 350 Germans unexpectedly ended up in Jamaica, many of whom, however, soon died of malaria or yellow fever. At that time, the Germans, of course, did not have vaccines or pills for these tropical diseases.

For many decades, the surviving Teutons tried to prevent mixed marriages. But time took its toll, customs changed, and the villagers stopped monitoring the “purity of the race.” Since then, one can often meet blue-eyed, blond Jamaicans there, who, with their appearance, understandably, stand out somewhat from the general dark-skinned and dark-haired mass of local residents. However, this does not bother them at all. The “German village,” where none of its inhabitants speak the language of their ancestors from Europe, is is also located far from the sandy beaches of the northern part of the island. Tourists, including those from Germany, practically never show up there, and only once a year the German Embassy organize cultural events there to give the Jamaican elite and diplomatic corps the opportunity to experience the local exotica “with a German accent.”

When we visited Seaford Town one Sunday afternoon out of curiosity, we were unable to get into the local museum, which reflects the village’s Germanic roots. The provost of the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, founded by the first German settlers and very similar in its architecture to the North German “Kirchen” (restored to its original form after it was half destroyed by a hurricane in 1912), a Pole by origin, greeted us warmly at his “object”.

He explained that the museum is located in the school premises, occupying one of the classrooms, and the educational institution is, naturally, closed on Sundays. The museum displays household items of the first settlers, as well as paintings and drawings. In the future, in order to attract tourists, it is planned to expand the exhibition, relying on the help of sponsors – wealthy people from this village, who have lived mainly, in the U.S. and Canada and come to visit here from time to time. The German Embassy in Kingston also contributed to the improvement of Seaford Town, paying, for example, for the construction of public toilets there, intended primarily for use by future crowds of tourists…

Searching for the school directors, organized by the holy father, came to no results, and all that was left for us was to stroll through the sleepy village, surrounded by green hills. Its streets were deserted, from somewhere far away came the dog barking, occasionally replaced by the crowing of a cock. Idyll, in a word…

The role of Jamaica and its place in the big world, which is not limited to the horizons of the island-born literary character in the person of agent 007, can be discussed at length. You already know some of it from previous pages. But it is worth remembering that Jamaica was once the first country to impose economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The “backwater” Kingston became the headquarters of an authoritative specialized organization of the UN system – the International Seabed Authority, in which Russia also actively works (the author of these lines even had the opportunity to be the first Russian representative to serve as the President of the Assembly – the highest body of the ISA. In July 2025, at the kind invitation of the ISA General Secretary, I attended the 30th-anniversary Assembly session in Kingston). Jamaica was also the first country to sign an agreement to create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The island with a population of less than 3 million people can boast the largest number of Olympic medals and top awards at world championships after the United States with a population of more than 300 million people.

As was indicated, for example, in an extensive article in the Canadian Toronto Star in one of the June 2013 issues (in Canada there is a considerable diaspora of people from the island), Jamaican workers helped build the Panama Canal, jobbed on sugar plantations in Cuba, harvested apples in the U.S. and Canada, and even helped speed up the post-war recovery of UK by actively participating in the establishment of public transportation and health care there. Jamaicans have served in cabinets in Canada and the U.S. (four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell comes from the island), and in parliament in UK.

However, the list does not end there. Jamaica ranks third worldwide in the number of major Miss World titles won after Venezuela, India and UK. The golf club in Jamaican (not English!) Manchester, founded in 1865, is the oldest in the entire Western Hemisphere. According to the Guinness Book of Records, Jamaica ranks first in the world (!) in the number of churches per square mile. There is even a suggestion that the island holds the world record for the number of bars. In any case, it was there that the world’s first commercial rum production was established. So, Jamaica is doing just fine with bars.

In fact, the Jamaicans themselves are not too happy with the way the Jamaican “brand” is treated abroad, which, as I think, is clear from the above-mentioned merits of the islanders, has a very significant and unique sound. A classic example, in their understanding, is the drink “Jamaican Energy”, produced and widely sold in Croatia, of course, without any licenses, using the successes of Usain Bolt and his fellow Olympic athletes as marketing, a kind of Jamaican favorite non-alcoholic “hit” – ting (a grapefruit-based lemonade), which goes well with rum. In Kingston, they remember how hard it was for them to get ting into the US market, where it was not allowed for a long time, including the argument that “ting” was too consonant with “tang” – a fruit-flavored drink, often sold in powder form.

I can tell you from personal experience that tang is a far cry from ting! So when you come to the island, buy and drink Jamaican!

Pirates of the Caribbean

In general, Jamaicans do not like to remember the pirate past of their island. Especially since they immediately have unpleasant reminiscences of the earthquake of 1692, which took 5 thousand lives and completely destroyed Port Royal – the main refuge of filibusters on the southern coast of the island and a once flourishing port city nearby Kingston.

Today, Port Royal is a quiet, trash-strewn place, where the main historical attraction is the island’s oldest Fort Charles. (originally Fort Cromwell), built by the English in 1656 in the shape of a ship, at that time almost completely surrounded by water. The fort is the only one of the six such fortifications in Port Royal, which, although damaged during the earthquake, was restored in 1699. There is a small maritime museum on the fort grounds, which includes the office and apartment of Horatio Nelson, the famous British naval commander and vice-admiral, who arrived in Jamaica in 1777 at the age of 19 and was appointed commandant of the fort two years later.

Nowadays (information for gourmets) Port Royal is also famous for its very good (though not fancy) restaurant with fish dishes and seafood “Gloria`s”. In fact, there are two of them under the same name, each located on two floors, open to all winds, with a view of the sea. The only thing you need to remember before going to “Gloria`s” is that you can’t show up hungry, since the wait for a dish after ordering is usually 1—1.5 hours. For me, this was, as far as I remember, the first, by no means pretentious, but well-known to guests, including those from abroad, restaurant whose cuisine I got acquainted with on the island. Despite the long wait, I was not disappointed – the lobster, skillfully grilled with Jamaican spices and skillfully cut, was amazing in taste.

I don’t know whether and how often the Caribbean pirates indulged themselves in lobsters, but they could afford it, since they “earned” quite well by robbing the Spanish both at sea and on land. In fact, the “successes” of the pirates prompted the British to take them into their service as soldiers of fortune to protect their new possessions in the Caribbean that had been recaptured from the Spanish and to strengthen their own military force. Some researchers believe that it was thanks to the pirates who fought for the British crown that Jamaica remained in its possession, and did not suffer the fate of being one of the Spanish-speaking islands in the Caribbean.

The pirates who settled in Port Royal, led by the notorious Henry Morgan, were so successful in robbing heavily laden Spanish galleys sailing between Europe and the colonial possessions of the New World that Port Royal quickly became the most lively and “sinful,” as the Catholic Church rightly believed, port city in the entire American region.