Slavery in the British Virgin Islands
In common with most Caribbean countries, slavery in the British Virgin Islands forms a major part of the history of the Territory.
In 1665 the Dutch settlers on Tortola were attacked by a British privateer, John Wentworth, who is recorded as capturing 67 slaves which were removed to Bermuda.
In 1690 the Brandenburgers built slave pens on Peter Island, however, they later abandoned them in favour of an agreement with the Danes to set up a trading outpost on St. Thomas.
Speaking before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1790, Thomas Woolrich, who had lived in Tortola, testified that the treatment of slaves was much worse in 1773 than it had been when he arrived, in 1753.
The Select Committee also heard that some slaves' backs appeared as "an undistinguishable mass of lumps, holes and furrows by frequent whippings."
In the field, privileged slaves would be appointed as drivers, but they would protect their position jealously by relentlessly whipping those that they supervised.
Throughout the middle part of the 18th century, the Territory had been inhabited by a number of distinguished Quakers, who were fundamentally opposed to slavery.
Although there is evidence that Tortolian planters evaded the law by illegally trading with privateers from St. Thomas, slaves clearly became exponentially more valuable, and were treated accordingly.
In the 1820s Trelawney Wentworth and Fortunatus Dwarris, a colonial agent, also visited the Territory, and both are reported to have commented on the better treatment meted out to slaves in a letter of 1828.
The first notable uprising occurred in 1790, and centred on the estates of Isaac Pickering; it was quickly put down, and the ring leaders were executed.
The revolt was sparked by the rumour that freedom had been granted to slaves by the British Parliament, but that the planters were withholding knowledge of it.
[10] Starting in 1808 hundreds of freed Africans were deposited on Tortola by the Navy,[11] who after serving a 14-year "apprenticeship", were then absolutely free.
Naturally seeing free Africans living and working in the Territory caused enormous resentment and jealousy amongst the existing slave population.
Shortly after the free Africans completed their 14-year apprenticeships, the slaves in the Territory were all emancipated by legislation in the United Kingdom, although as outlined below, this did not of itself entirely curtail the insurrections.
Further, subsequent to the abolition of the slave trade, the Royal Navy deposited a number of freed Africans in the Territory who settled in the Kingston area on Tortola.
In January 1808, HMS Cerberus seized the American schooner, the Nancy with a cargo of enslaved Senegalese Africans in the Territory's waters; between August 1814 and February 1815 a further four ships' slave cargoes were seized from the Venus, the Manuella, the Atrevido and the Candelaria and a further 1,318 liberated slaves were deposited on Tortola's shores (of whom just over 1,000 survived).
Further Spanish ships, en route to Puerto Rico were reported wrecked on the reef at Anegada in 1817 and 1824, and their cargos settled on Tortola.
A particularly devastating hurricane struck in 1837, which was reported to have completely destroyed 17 of the Territory's sugar works, the most lucrative export in the islands.
The newly freed black population of the British Virgin Islands became increasingly disenchanted that freedom had not brought the prosperity that they had hoped for.
Economic decline had led to increased tax burdens, which became a source of general discontent for former slaves and other residents of the Territory alike.
It has been suggested that rioting could have been avoided if the legislature had been more circumspect in enforcing the legislation by Isaac Dookham in his History of the British Virgin Islands, page 156.
The riots were eventually suppressed with military assistance from St. Thomas, and reinforcements of British troops dispatched by the Governor of the Leeward Islands from Antigua.
