Vladimir Polenov – Jamdown Sundown. My whispered chronicles of the Caribbean (страница 5)

They say, for example, that tipsy young filibusters gave women in the port huge sums of money just wanted them to simply bare themselves before them. The “business acumen” of the pirates and corsairs contributed to the growth of the city’s prosperity. There trade in stolen treasures, sugar, timber and other natural resources flourished, and the portside “tavern” infrastructure developed accordingly. The slave trade and smuggling of goods from Europe began to occupy an increasingly important place in the “economy” of Port Royal.

The image of perhaps the most famous pirate of the Caribbean – Henry Morgan – is inextricably linked with Jamaica (these days, for example, a hotel located near Port Royal bears his name; many are familiar with the rum “Henry Morgan”, which, in my opinion, is significantly inferior in quality to the famous Jamaican “Appleton”).

Morgan, who first appeared in Jamaica in 1662 and by that time had earned the reputation of a desperate cutthroat, quickly stole so much goods that he could afford to buy his own ship, and at the age of 29 he became its captain. Impressed by the fighting qualities of Morgan the Governor-General of Jamaica made him admiral of the Jamaican fleet, giving the “pirate king” 10 ships and 500 crew members under his command. And at 34 years old, he already had 35 ships and 2,000 sailors under him.

Henry Morgan’s most outstanding battle was considered to be his campaign against Panama City in 1671, which, however, cost him his freedom with extradition to London in April 1672, since the pirate commander essentially ignored the peace treaty concluded shortly before between England and Spain. The pirate also had to give up a considerable part of the stolen treasures, which went to the British crown in exchange for his pardon. Ultimately, when the fragile Anglo-Spanish peace was broken two years later, Charles II knighted Henry Morgan and sent him back to Jamaica, this time as lieutenant governor.

There he lived out the rest of his life as a planter in wealth, honor and respect. When Henry Morgan died in 1688 at the age of 52, the guns of the warships in the port fired in his honour, the body of the deceased was laid out for farewell in the residence of the Governor-General, and then placed on a gun carriage and thus, with a large concourse of the population, was delivered to the place of rest. Sir Henry Morgan was buried, of course, in Port Royal, but his grave has not survived, since it was apparently washed out to sea by the tsunami generated by the earthquake, like many other burials in the coastal part of the island.

Jamaican history knows furthermore other “outstanding” pirates: Edward Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard (who is said to have served as the prototype for the pirate Flint in R.L. Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island”), Jack Rackham (better known as Calico Jack, since he preferred to wear clothes made of printed calico), and Charles Vane, who were rampant in the Caribbean Sea in the first third of the 18th century.

All of them came to a bad end in one way or another, being executed by hanging by the British authorities on the island. Calico Jack’s lifeless body, imprisoned in an iron cage, was put on public display on a sandbank near Port Royal (now called Rackham’s Cay) as a deterrent to his fellow pirates.

Calico Jack became famous off the coast of Jamaica for his extreme cruelty, especially his atrocities against merchant ships and fishing schooners and their crews. But he entered the world history of piracy, first of all, as the author and designer of the “Jolly Roger” – a pirate flag with a skull and crossed swords under it on a black background (there were, as is known, other, more frightening modifications, where the swords “in harmony” with the skull were replaced by bones).

Jack’s crew – and this is also a historical fact – included two women – Mary Read and Anne Bonny, who hid their female gender under male pirate attire until the very end of their “career”. Both were, as they say, extremely cruel and ruthless and were ready to fight their enemies to the death. But they, too, were eventually captured by the British law enforcement agencies of that time, and only pregnancy saved them both from the death penalty..

There is much to be said about Jamaica’s pirate past (much has been written on the subject, including by the infamous Daniel Defoe), most closely linked to Port Royal, which is worth visiting, especially since the former filibuster “main base” is just a few minutes’ drive from Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston.

You’ll probably now automatically think of Jamaica when you hear that somewhere someone is celebrating “International Pirate Day” (September 19) – so much for our tolerant world. As they say, a couple of years ago this cheerful holiday reached Moscow, and it is annually paid tribute to in one of the capital’s beer bars.

Today, the Caribbean Sea is free of piracy. But piracy, as we know, has not been eradicated to this day in other parts of the world. Regional conflicts, civil wars and poverty give birth to new generations of buccaneers. So those who enjoy sea voyages far from the big ocean “roads” should really be careful.

Thank God, this warning does not apply to Jamaica. Therefore, we will remember the pirates who ruled here only in a historical context.

The Long Road to Accompong

When we decided to visit the maroons in the village of Accompong, truly lost in the mountains in the southwestern part of Jamaica, where, in order to get there, you need not only patience, stress resistance, but also an SUV instead of a limousine, we consoled ourselves with the illusion that we would be perhaps the first Russians who would literally and figuratively find the way there.

It turned out not to be: back in 1977, when visitors from our country were rare on the island and a visa regime was in effect, a correspondent from the magazine “Around the World,” which is still popular among domestic travel and adventure enthusiasts, visited the island. The journalist’s detailed story about the Jamaican “mountain freemen” introduced then mostly “travel banned” Soviet people to the descendants of runaway slaves (there are currently about 7,000 of them on the island, of whom about 600 live in Accompong, named after the “ruler of heaven”, worshiped by the first Maroons), who retained their administrative autonomy and distinctive culture for centuries.

Their history began in the 16th century, when the Spaniards, who had taken possession of Jamaica (called Santiago for a time, but the name did not stick) in 1509, brought the first African slaves to the island a few years later to work on sugar cane, tobacco and cocoa plantations. In 1655, the black slaves (at that time the number of those who chose freedom was approximately 1,500 people) had to flee to the inaccessible mountains for the first time, but not from their Spanish masters, who themselves were forced to take refuge in Cuba from the English who had landed on the island, near the current capital of Kingston, following the orders of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The first slave rebellion on the Sutton plantation in St. James dates back to 1690. Almost from this time, the Jamaicans began their struggle for independence until 1962, when Jamaica finally gained it.

It is quite interesting that the first slaves brought there by the British were not Africans, but… Irish. Thus, in 1656, Cromwell ordered the “shipment” of 2,000 children from poor Irish families to Jamaica in order to sell them there to the first British settlers. Until the 18th century, Irish slaves coexisted on the island in parallel with their African comrades in misfortune. Moreover, according to researchers of this topic, slave owners treated the European “commodity”, numbering hundreds of thousands of people, was much worse off than the people from Africa, and was valued much less. Thus, an African in the Caribbean slave markets was asked for 50 pounds sterling, and an Irishman – no more than 5.

But let’s return to the Maroons. The British rulers, of course, were not happy with the fact that someone on the island refused to obey them and was hiding in the wild jungle and mountain wilderness. But all attempts by the British expeditionary corps to reach the rebels ended in failure. Not only the military valor of the Maroons, their well-mastered skills in conducting guerrilla warfare, but also the well-organized work of their reconnaissance groups, which promptly recorded the approach of army units to the areas where the “resistance fighters” were located, played a role here.

As a result, the British had to sign peace treaties with two groups of Maroons in 1739—1740 (January 6 became a memorable date for those events). These documents guaranteed their safe residence in five main traditional places of deployment and fairly broad independent administrative rights. In return, however, the Maroons were obliged to no longer accept runaway slaves into their ranks and even had to participate, along with the colonizers, in their capture. For each slave returned to the owner, they were entitled to a “fee”, which, of course, did not contribute to strengthening the relations of the “mountain freemen” with their enslaved fellow tribesmen. Today, the “special” rights of the Maroons are still in effect, with the exception of participation in slave hunting, of course.