Alfred Constantine Goffe

Alfred Constantine Goffe (30 December 1863 – 27 October 1951) was a Jamaican businessman noted for his role in the banana trade.

[2] A niece, Eileen Clemetson-Goffe joined the British Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and in 1936 became a spy for the allies in WWII and later a diplomat.

Alfred, Earnest and Cecil all married white women, in a time of Jim Crow and the Edwardian era.

The Goffe brothers, John Jr., Cecil, Robert, Alfred, Alec, Ernest, Clarence and Rowland took over proprietorship along with their mother of their late fathers businesses in Port Maria after he died of Malaria on 17 October 1882.

They inaugurated the company when two days later the partners boarded ship bound for Kingston harbor on the S.S.Targus, captained by Capt.

Goffe thought the mass of reporters and wellwishers were there for his venture, but discovered that the speed of the crossing, five days, was the cause of the hubbub.

At the time, A.C.GOFFE had inherited his father's businesses in Port Maria, one of which was the Lee Wharf,[6] a pier 100 ft long with a sordid past.

For a year he courted a former employee of the large exporter, Antonio Lanasa, an Italian who had an import company at the port of Baltimore and a distribution network already in place.

While paying less for produce, they appealed to planters and many supported the firm over higher prices paid by the larger outfits.

Heartbroken over the loss of his bananas and coconut trees leveled by the storm he lay in bed like a baby at Rivers Dene, his St. Mary estate, until the stroke killed him.