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 Distant Freedom

Liverpool Studies in International Slavery, 10

 Distant Freedom
St Helena and the Abolition of the Slave Trade,
1840–1872

Andrew Pearson

Distant Freedom

Liverpool University Press

 First published 2016 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU

Copyright © 2016 Andrew Pearson

The right of Andrew Pearson to be identified as the author of this book

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

A British Library CIP record is available

print ISBN 978-1-78138-283-7 cased

epdf ISBN 978-1-78138-385-8

Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster

Printed and bound in Poland by BooksFactory.co.uk
For Katherine Ruth Pearson
 Contents
Contents

List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction 1
1. A Place of Immense Advantage 13
2. London and Jamestown 39
3. Sailortown 75
4. Life and Death in the Depots 106
5. ‘All, all, without avail’: Medicine and the Liberated Africans 154
6. After ‘Liberation’ 201
7. Island Lives 242
Conclusion 271

Appendix 1: Liberated Africans Captured aboard Slave Ships: Cases

Tried at Freetown, Luanda, Cape Town and St Helena, 1836–68 278
Appendix 2: Prizes Adjudicated by the Vice-Admiralty Court of
St Helena 282
Appendix 3: Liberated African Emigration from St Helena 284
Appendix 4: Emigrant Voyages from St Helena 288

Bibliography 291
Index 308

• vii •
 Figures
Figures

Figure 1: Map of St Helena 12

Figure 2: St Helena: view from the Peaks 15

Figure 3: Jamestown, c.1862 15

Figure 4: Lemon Bay 23

Figure 5: Rupert’s Valley 26

Figure 6: Recaptives at St Helena, 1840–72 31

Figure 7: Atlantic shipping routes, ocean currents and trade winds 74

Figure 8: Box plot of voyage durations of prize vessels sent to

St Helena 80

Figure 9: Prizes adjudicated by St Helena’s Vice-Admiralty court,

1840–67 87

Figure 10: Recaptives sent to British anti-slavery courts, 1836–67 88

Figure 11: Auction notice in the St Helena Gazette 91

Figure 12: The Waterwitch Monument 103

Figure 13: Lemon Valley 109

Figure 14: Sketch of Rupert’s Bay, St Helena, 1850 112

Figure 15: Sketched plan of the tents in Rupert’s Bay, 1851 114

• ix •
 Distant Freedom

Figure 16: Photograph of the Rupert’s Valley depot, 1861 123

Figure 17: Liberated Africans in the Rupert’s Valley depot, 1848 125

Figure 18: Age profile of recaptives in St Helena’s Liberated African

Establishment, 1841–48 135

Figure 19: Copper alloy bracelet, in situ on the wrist of a child 140

Figure 20: Objects of personal adornment from the liberated African

graveyards in Rupert’s Valley 140

Figure 21: Dental modifications 141

Figure 22: Preaching in Rupert’s Valley 145

Figure 23: Burials in the liberated African graveyards in

Rupert’s Valley 149

Figure 24: Coffin belonging to a neonate 151

Figure 25: Evidence for pathology 159

Figure 26: Evidence of post-mortem interventions 194

Figure 27: St Paul’s church 204

Figure 28: Destinations of emigrants from St Helena 220

Figure 29: The Hussey Charity School, Jamestown 253

Figure 30: Liberated Africans on St Helena, c.1900 270

• x •
 Tables
Tables

Table 1: Diseases in the Rupert’s Valley hospital, 2 June 1849 161

Table 2: Mortality aboard prizes sent to St Helena,

6 April 1847–4 June 1848 162

Table 3: Diet scales 180

• xi •
 Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements

This book has, quite literally, had a long journey to reach publication. It is
one that would never have been possible without the generous support of a
Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust.
The fellowship was hosted by the Department of Archaeology and
Anthropology at the University of Bristol, whose staff and students provided
a rich and enjoyable environment in which to work. I would particularly
like to thank Alex Bentley and Mark Horton for their lively interest in
the project, and Kate Robson-Brown for her academic rigour, encour-
agement and friendship, going back to the 2008 excavations. PhD fellows
Erna Johannesdottir and Judy Watson made my visit to St Helena in 2012
particularly enjoyable.
Beyond Bristol, I have benefitted from the support and advice of numerous
people. Comments on working drafts were provided by Seymour Drescher,
Sharla Fett, Jerry Handler, Richard Huzzey and Jason Williams. I must also
acknowledge Manuel Barcia Paz’s generous refereeing of the manuscript at
the time of its proposal to Liverpool University Press. Many other people
have helped to broaden my understanding of the slave trade and its contexts,
sharing their expertise and saving me from many errors of fact and interpre-
tation: Rosanne Adderley, Richard Benjamin, Heidi Bauer-Clapp, Paul
Benyon, Stephen Constantine, Chris Duvall, David Eltis, Mark Hunter,
Helen MacQuarrie, Ken Morgan, David Richardson, Ed Simons, Annsofie
Witkin, Adam Woolf and Jenny Wraight. Many of these dialogues were
only made possible by grants for travel and conference attendance, from the
University of California, Huntington Library, Pittsburgh World History
Center, Tulane University and UMass Amhurst, all of which offered opportu-
nities to present this research during its development. The annual meetings
of the Friends of St Helena provided an expert forum for knowledge sharing
and discussion, as did the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool.

• xiii •
 Distant Freedom

Several archives and libraries provided essential assistance, above all in the
St Helena archives, where Karen Henry and Tracy Buckley were extremely
helpful. I must also acknowledge the British Library’s Endangered Archives
Programme, since its funding enabled a return trip to St Helena in 2012,
during which I was able to complete my final lines of enquiry. Other archival
support was received from the staff at the UK National Archives, the British
Library, the National Maritime Museum and the Bodleian Library.
St Helena is a place about which much is known, but very little written
down. I am therefore extremely grateful to all of those who have shared their
knowledge with me, among them Colin Fox, Barbara and Basil George,
Lucy Caesar, Nick, Henry and Ed Thorpe, Ian Mathieson, John Pinfold and
Alexander Schulenburg. Special thanks are owed to Ben Jeffs, with whom I
have shared several trips to the island, and whose knowledge of, and passion
for, its heritage is unparalleled.
My family are owed a particular debt. Kate Pearson spent many hours
calendaring and transcribing the primary historical documents, and without
her efforts this study would still be far from completion. My wife Iona
has cheerfully combined practical support, particularly in respect of GIS,
with a tolerance for my long absences abroad and a periodic obsession
with ‘the book’. Since 2013 our son Tom has provided joy and distraction
in equal measure, while Nick and Carol King deserve much gratitude for
their childminding. And, through their love, support and sponsorship of
my education over many years, my parents Hugh and Sue Pearson laid the
foundation for this work.
Lastly, I must turn to the St Helenians, whose warm welcome and
friendship has made working on the island a true pleasure. I hope that they
will see value in this study: it is, after all, their story.

• xiv •
 Introduction
Introduction

In October 1840, few people on the remote Atlantic island of St Helena were
giving any thought to the abolition of slavery. True, a Vice-Admiralty court
had recently been established in the capital, Jamestown, and this had already
pronounced judgement on a small number of slave ships, condemning them
to be broken up and sold. Sailors of the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron
roamed the streets of the capital and spent money in its taverns, rubbing
shoulders with the crews of slaving vessels who also loitered in the town,
immune from prosecution but too poor to buy their passage home. To the
south, out of sight and mind, the human traffic of the slave trade was also
present: a few tens of Africans sequestered in the isolated beauty of Lemon
Valley.
Instead, all attention was focused on Napoleon, whose exile on the
island from 1815 until his death in 1821 was – and still remains – St Helena’s
enduring claim to fame. The former emperor’s remains had been buried in
a plain tomb in the secluded Sane Valley, far removed from Europe and the
scene of his military triumphs. Previous plans to retrieve his body had come
to nothing, but in May 1840 they were revived by Adolphe Thiers, the new
Président du Conseil under King Louis Philippe, seeking their return as a
grand political coup de théâtre.1
Accordingly, on 8 October, the frigate la Belle Poule and its escort la
Favorite arrived at Jamestown harbour following a stately cruise of some three
months from Toulon, via Spain, Madeira, Tenerife and Brazil. Commanded
by the Prince de Joinville, Louis Philippe’s third son, the mission was
accompanied by a host of minor aristocracy and other dignitaries, including
several of those who had been companion to Napoleon during his years of
exile.

1 Gilbert Martineau, Le Retour de cendres (Paris: Tallandier, 1990).

• 1 •
 Distant Freedom

The St Helenians had been given several months’ forewarning of this

event, which was anticipated with much excitement. Over the next week,
Jamestown’s society – so often starved of novelty and for whom calls by
royalty were extremely rare – was mesmerised by these prestigious guests.
They watched as the visitors made a pilgrimage to Napoleon’s tomb, and
then to his former house at Longwood (by then used as a barn), standing
aside while the French sailors carried off the billiard table, a tapestry and a
variety of other relics of exile that had survived the resident sheep and goats.
Finally, at midnight of 14 October, the torch-lit operation to recover
the emperor’s remains began.2 Over the following hours, Napoleon’s coffin
was disinterred with great ceremony and his body, which was found to
be remarkably well preserved, was transferred to a new casket. On the
afternoon of the 15th, the cortege began its stately journey back to Jamestown
in driving rain, the dignitaries and military escort followed by a crowd of
ordinary St Helenians. The procession reached the steps of the wharf some
two and a half hours later and here the emperor’s remains were formally
handed to France, carefully loaded onto a launch and taken aboard la Belle
Poule. Three days later, the French ships weighed anchor, and with their
departure St Helena’s unlikely connection with Napoleon came to an end.
Despite the brief interlude of excitement, most residents of the island
would not have welcomed this turn of events. After all, it was the one thing
for which their home was notable, and a few people had even made a modest
profit from tourists making the pilgrimage to Longwood and Napoleon’s
tomb. Many watching the ships’ departure must have viewed this episode as
a further sign of St Helena’s decline. Only four years earlier, the governance
of the island had passed from the East India Company to the British Crown,
breaking a long-established order and removing many certainties of life.
Travellers from India and the East – so long the mainstay of St Helena’s
wealth – were beginning to bypass the island, preferring instead the overland
route via Aden and Egypt. The garrison had been halved and in the past year
hundreds of St Helenians had emigrated to Cape Colony and elsewhere in
search of a better life. The economy appeared to be in decline and poverty
was on the increase. The island was slipping into obscurity, with a future
that seemed bleak and with little hope of reversal.
How quickly this was to change, and in such an improbable manner. Few
could have predicted that, within less than two months, St Helena would
once again play a formative role in world affairs – one that, from an historical
perspective, far outweighs its use as the prison for a deposed emperor. Nor
could anyone have anticipated that slavery – which for centuries had been

2 The Exhumation of the Remains of Napoleon Bonaparte. Manuscript notes by Joseph

Lockwood. British Library General Reference Collection 10095.dd.25(2).

• 2 •
 Introduction

the colony’s backbone – would once again preserve it from financial ruin.
Yet this is exactly what transpired. Only a few weeks after the removal of
Napoleon’s body, the influx of freed slaves began in earnest; for the next 30
years, St Helena’s ‘Liberated African Establishment’ assumed a key place in
the island’s affairs, at times dominating them completely.3 The start of this
process was not auspicious: by Christmas 1840 its limited resources were
overwhelmed, corpses were being buried at sea and the newly appointed
surgeon was threatening to resign. The Governor wrote to his political
masters in London for advice, in the full knowledge that he could not
expect a reply in anything less than six months. First Lemon Valley, and
later Rupert’s Valley, would be entirely given over to the task of reception,
treatment and quarantine of a multitude of freed slaves, while also becoming
charnel houses for the thousands more who did not survive their transpor-
tation. The archaeological remains relating to this episode continue to offer
a stark reminder of the atrocities of the slave trade, and also of the human
cost of slave trade suppression policies.
As this book seeks to demonstrate, from 1840, St Helena took a central
place in Britain’s attempts to extinguish the transatlantic slave trade by
military means. When its Lemon Valley depot opened, the Brazilian slave
trade was in full flow; 27 years later, when its counterpart in Rupert’s Valley
was finally broken up, the human traffic to the New World had entirely
ceased. During this period the island’s Vice-Admiralty court condemned
more slave ships and liberated more Africans than any other British
possession, which in absolute terms amounts to 450 vessels and over 25,000
people. As a consequence, St Helena’s affairs would, once again, occupy the
great British politicians of the day, while the events that took place there
were reported from Europe to North America. Their outcomes, particularly
in relation to the African Diaspora, continue to resonate across the Atlantic
world. But, in October 1840, as la Belle Poule and la Favourite slipped over
the horizon, all of this was yet to come.

***
The origins of the present book do not lie in historic archives but in the
discovery of the physical remains of the slave trade. St Helena is only
accessible by sea, but long-held ambitions for an airport led to pre-emptive
archaeological studies being undertaken across the northern part of the
island between 2006 and 2008. Much of this work addressed a landscape

3 This is the term most commonly applied to St Helena’s depots and their supporting
administration in the primary documents. In this book it is either used in full, or
abbreviated to ‘African Establishment’ or simply ‘Establishment’.

• 3 •
 Distant Freedom

whose rich cultural heritage was manifestly obvious, from its plantations and
monumental East India Company defences to the Georgian architecture
of Jamestown. In Rupert’s Valley, however, there was little above ground
to indicate the presence of anything remarkable. It is an unattractive
proposition, the ruined defences and modern industrial sheds at the bay
giving way to an arid landscape of scrub and fallen rock. Yet here, between
the narrow floodplain and towering cliffs, trial trenches revealed the
tangled remains of corpses buried in shallow graves. Documentary research
confirmed the existence of two large graveyards dating from 1840 to the early
1860s, and indicated that the burials belonged to some of the last victims
of the transatlantic slave trade. That discovery gave rise to major archae-
ological, historical and scientific investigations that are still continuing
– of which this book forms a part. Open-area excavation within the upper
graveyard took place in 2008, revealing the bodies of 325 individuals in a
combination of single, multiple and mass graves. These investigations have
now been published as the monograph Infernal Traffic, which presents the
archaeological, osteological and artefactual studies of this unique site. The
monograph sets these findings within the historical context of St Helena’s
African Establishment, but its primary focus is on the graveyards – and upon
those freed slaves who did not survive their transportation.4
While the physical remains unearthed in Rupert’s Valley are of huge
importance, an equally significant outcome of the project has been the
re-emergence of the historical narrative pertaining to St Helena’s role in
abolition. This is a more complete story. It encompasses the living as well
as the dead, and the European as well as the African; it also stretches
beyond the narrow confines of the island to embrace the African continent
and the New World. And, while there are parallels to be drawn with other
places around the Atlantic rim where anti-slavery courts sat and slaves were
liberated, St Helena’s remote location, combined with its epidemiological,
social and economic circumstances, made it unique in many respects. It is,
moreover, a story that deserves telling in its own right, providing an insight
into the practical outcomes of British suppression policies, long after 1807
and far from London’s political ideals.
St Helena’s isolation is coupled with historical obscurity, except for its
moment in the sun between 1815 and 1821. Various accounts of the island were
published during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but the last
detailed overview of its history is that by Philip Gosse, published in 1938.5

4 Andrew Pearson, Ben Jeffs, Annsofie Witkin and Helen MacQuarrie, Infernal
traffic: The excavation of a Liberated African Graveyard in Rupert’s Valley, St. Helena (York:
Council for British Archaeology, 2011).
5 Philip Gosse, St Helena 1502–1938 (Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 1938). Other more

• 4 •
 Introduction

Despite St Helena’s substantial contribution to British empire-building,

the island rarely features in any history of the East India Company. Its
acquisition is discussed in a 1919 article, but the nearly two centuries of
Company ownership do not find a place in general studies of the East India
Company. The exception is Stephen Royle’s The Company’s Island, which
examines the formative years of the colony (up to the early eighteenth
century).6 Instead, the island’s historiography is strongly biased towards
Napoleon, a situation that prevails both in terms of specific studies, and
in the disproportionate attention devoted to this period within general
historical accounts.7 The same myopia is manifested in physical form on the
island itself: the public library contains a substantial section on Napoleon –
equal to the rest of its history section – while the lobby of the only hotel, the
Consulate, is festooned with portraits of the emperor and nothing else. The
Museum of St Helena, fortunately, offers a far more balanced set of exhibits.
St Helena is a place that was built on the backs of the enslaved, but
Royle’s book is the only major published work which addresses this subject,
and only within an early time frame. The island is ignored by all general
narratives about slavery, though this is not unreasonable given the small
numbers of enslaved, as compared to the unfree populations of the West
Indies and elsewhere. On the other hand, given the importance of its role
in the nineteenth-century suppression of the slave trade and the wealth of
accessible primary sources, historians’ long-standing neglect of St Helena’s is
less justified and harder to understand. One looks for it in vain in formative
narratives such as Du Bois’s Suppression of the Slave-Trade to the United States
of America and Mathieson’s Great Britain and the Slave Trade. More recent
overviews of suppression, such as Temperley’s British Anti-Slavery and the
relevant chapters of Thomas’s History of the Atlantic Slave Trade also fail
to mention St Helena.8 The same is true for studies of the West Africa

superficial studies have been published since, for example Margaret Stewart-Taylor, St
Helena: Ocean Roadhouse (London: Hale, 1969) and David Smallman, Quincentenary: A
Story of St Helena 1502–2002 (Penzance: Patten Press, 2003). A synoptic chronology is
provided by Robin Gill and Percy Teale in St Helena 500: A Chronological History of the
Island (St Helena: St Helena Heritage Society, 1999).
6 Stephen Royle, The Company’s Island: St Helena, Company Colonies and the Colonial
Endeavour (London: I.B. Taurus, 2007).
7 For accounts of Napoleon’s exile see Bernard Chevallier, Michel Dancoisne-
Martineau and Thierry Lentz, Sainte Hélène: île de mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2005); Michel
Dancoisne-Martineau and Thierry Lentz, Chroniques de Sainte-Hélène: Atlantique sud
(Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 2011).
8 William Du Bois, The Suppression of the Slave-Trade to the United States of America,
1638–1870 (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896); William Mathieson, Great
Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839–65 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929); Howard

• 5 •
 Distant Freedom

Squadron, the classic accounts being those of Lloyd and Ward.9 This is
in marked contrast to their recognition of the role of Sierra Leone during
this period, and of the activities of Vice-Admiralty courts in places such as
Cuba.10 Even the abortive attempt to use the island of Fernando Po as a
naval base has received greater attention.11
Of course, nothing in scholarship is completely new. All of the dedicated
histories of St Helena, from John Melliss’s 1875 book onwards, discuss its
role in abolition – though most of these are rather dated and none has
achieved widespread circulation beyond the island. The longest account
is to be found in Emily Jackson’s monograph of 1903, amounting to
some 30 pages.12 In addition, there are various unpublished studies to be
found, including some within the local island journal Wirebird.13 The most
significant piece of research is that of Wilfred Tatham, honorary archivist
at Jamestown during the 1960s, which drew together and summarised
most of the primary material from the Vice-Admiralty court that was
accessible on St Helena at that time. Tatham concluded his synopsis to the
Government Secretary by asking whether his information would be of value
in London. It undoubtedly would have been, but it was never conveyed
there. Belatedly, during the research for the present book, Tatham’s work
was an invaluable guide to the St Helena-based sources. Crucially, too, it
made note of information contained within documents that are now too
fragile to be examined.14

Temperley, British Anti-Slavery 1833–1870 (London: Longman, 1972); Hugh Thomas, The
Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (London: Picador, 1997).
9 Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave
Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, 1949); William Ward, The Royal
Navy and the Slavers: The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1969).
10 The same is true of subsequent studies, most recently Siân Rees, Sweet Water and
Bitter: The Ships that Stopped the Slave Trade (London: Chatto and Windus, 2009). On
Sierra Leone see Tara Helfman, ‘The court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone and the
abolition of the West African slave trade’, Yale Law Journal 115 (2006), pp. 1122–56.
11 Robert Brown, ‘Fernando-Po and the Anti-Sierra-Leonean Campaign 1826–1834’,
International Journal of African Historical Studies 6 (1973), pp. 249–64.
12 John Melliss, St. Helena: A physical, historical, and topographical description of the
island, including its geology, fauna, flora, and meteorology (London: L. Reeve, 1875); Emily
Jackson, St Helena: The Historic Island, from its discovery to the present date (Melbourne:
Ward Lock & Co., 1903).
13 For example Alexander Schulenburg, ‘Aspects of the Lives of the “Liberated
Africans” on St Helena’, Wirebird 26 (2003), pp. 18–27; Stephane Van de Velde, The End
of Slavery and the Liberated Africans’ Depot in Rupert’s Valley (unpublished document, St
Helena Government Archives, c.2010).
14 Wilfred Tatham, Notes on the suppression of the slave trade. Vice-Admiralty Court,

• 6 •
 Introduction

Modern scholarship also touches upon the subject. Leslie Bethell’s studies
of the Brazilian slave trade certainly recognise the use, and usefulness, of
St Helena’s Vice-Admiralty court,15 while the recently published Atlas of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade and its supporting database include statistics about
freed slaves sent to St Helena.16 In general terms, it would be fair to say that
the majority of authors currently studying nineteenth-century suppression
of the slave trade, slave ethnicity and the African Diaspora show awareness
of the island’s involvement. Most, however, only offer a passing reference
or brief commentary amidst text that pursues other avenues of study.17 St
Helena is most frequently mentioned in works whose primary focus is Sierra
Leone – a place that has received a good deal of attention in both historic
and modern scholarship. There is certainly nothing written about St Helena’s
Liberated African Establishment that even remotely equates in length or
detail to Peterson’s Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone.18 The same
applies to most other bases used for the liberation of slaves, for example Cape
Colony, Mauritius and Bombay: only the United States depot at Key West
has received a modicum of attention, in large part because of its place in
American politics immediately prior to the Civil War.19

St Helena, 1840–1872. St Helena Government Archives, File 14; Letter to Government

Secretary, 22 September 1967.
15 Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970).
16 David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2010); see also Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database,
http://www.slavevoyages.org. The related African Origins database incorporates the
limited number of names of liberated Africans recorded on St Helena: http://african-
origins.org.
17 A succinct discussion is given by David Eltis, ‘Free and Coerced Transatlantic
Migrations: Some Comparisons’, American Historical Review 88.2 (1983), p. 275. More
recent examples include Sharla Fett, ‘Middle Passages and Forced Migrations: Liberated
Africans in Nineteenth-Century US Camps and Ships’, Slavery and Abolition 31.1 (2010),
pp. 75–98; Richard Anderson, Alex Borucki, Daniel Domingues da Silva, David Eltis,
Paul Lachance, Philip Misevich and Olatunji Ojo, ‘Using African Names to Identify
the Origins of Captives in the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Crowd-Sourcing and the
Registers of Liberated Africans, 1808–1862’, History in Africa 40.1 (2013), 165–91. Two
recent doctoral studies also fit into this mould: Mary Wills, Royal Navy sailors and
the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade, 1807–1865: Anti-slavery, empire and identity
(PhD thesis, University of Hull, 2012); Maeve Ryan, The human consequences of slave
trade abolition: Examining post-intervention policy and practice through the case study of the
Liberated African Department and the administration of liberated Africans at Sierra Leone,
1808–1863 (PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2013).
18 John Peterson, Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone 1787–1870 (London:
Faber and Faber, 1969).
19 Fett, ‘Middle Passages and Forced Migrations’. A more detailed study by Professor

• 7 •
 Distant Freedom

It is within three books, each pertaining to indentured African emigration,

that the broadest discussion of St Helena is to be found: Johnson Asiegbu’s
Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, Monica Schuler’s Alas, Alas, Kongo and
Rosanne Adderley’s New Negroes from Africa.20 All three authors recognised
that large numbers of liberated Africans were present on St Helena and,
in discussing their transit, subsequent lives and the surrounding politics,
touched to a degree on the situation on the island and the operation of
its depots.21 These books – particularly that of Schuler – provide the basis
upon which most subsequent scholars have drawn their information about
St Helena’s Liberated African Establishment.
The fact that each of these three book deals with Africa and the Caribbean
first, and St Helena a distant second, results in an obvious limitation on their
usefulness in respect of the latter. The source material upon which these
studies are based also leads to problems of interpretation. Asiegbu drew
heavily on the records of the Land and Emigration Commission, and those
relating to Sierra Leone and the West Indies. Schuler, similarly, focused
on Sierra Leonean and Jamaican sources. In other words, both sketched
out events on St Helena with little or no reference to the principal sources
that are held in the CO 247 series of the National Archives and in the St
Helena Government Archives. Adderley is the exception, having accessed
the London-based material, to an extent at least, though the island-based
material was not used.
Each of these studies criticises British policy in respect of St Helena.
Schuler does so directly, presenting a picture of a place that was isolated,
desolate and lethal, and which never should have been sanctioned for the
reception of liberated Africans. Given her near-complete reliance on a single

Fett, focused on recaptive Africans from the slave ships Echo, Wildfire, William
and Bogota, received at Charlestown and Key West between 1858 and 1860, is in
preparation.
20 Johnson Asiegbu, Slavery and the politics of liberation 1787–1861: A study of liberated
African emigration and British anti-slavery policy (London: Longmans, 1969); Monica
Schuler, “Alas, Alas, Kongo”: A social history of indentured African immigration into Jamaica,
1841–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Rosanne Adderley, “New
Negroes from Africa”: Slave trade abolition and free African settlement in the nineteenth-
century Caribbean (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
21 Under the terms of the 1807 abolition act, Africans found aboard illegally operating
slave ships were ‘forfeited to His Majesty … in such Manner and Form, as any Goods
or Merchandize unlawfully imported’. The act stipulated that these persons were to
be immediately emancipated, their liberation following as a matter of course via a
two-stage process: the Vice-Admiralty court condemned the slaves to the Crown,
which in turn granted them their liberty. Various descriptors have been used for these
people: within this book the terms ‘liberated Africans’ and African ‘recaptives’ are used
interchangeably.

• 8 •
 Introduction

source – an 1850 parliamentary report about Rupert’s Valley at the height

of its humanitarian crisis – that conclusion is entirely unsurprising. Asiegbu
and Adderley do not address the question head-on, but their narratives lead
the reader towards a similar conclusion.
With scenes that resembled the worst famine or refugee camps of the
modern era, and with an average mortality rate of 30%, no book can or
should be an apologist for the circumstances that often prevailed within St
Helena’s depots. As this study will show, however, the causes were different
and more complex than have previously been assumed. Much of the
misunderstanding – Schuler’s in particular – stems from false conceptions
about the island itself. St Helena is undeniably remote, but it has a
clement, productive natural environment which, by the mid-nineteenth
century, was home to a mature colonial outpost. However, because it was
Napoleon’s prison and place of death (the emperor himself called it an ‘isola
maladetta’ or accursed island), it has commonly been misrepresented (either
accidentally or wilfully) in both academic works and popular culture.22
These negative portrayals are often taken at face value, and appear to
have permeated the little scholarship that deals with St Helena’s role in
suppression. William Green variously described it as ‘a remote rocky colony’
and ‘a barren and resourceless isle’, while Monica Schuler characterised the
whole island as ‘barren, rocky, windy and unsuitable for the permanent
settlement of large numbers of Africans’. Adderley thought it an ‘almost-
desolate Atlantic island’.23 Such mistaken perceptions have the potential
to mislead, because while St Helena was no paradise and certainly failed a

22 See Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Cases, Mémorial de St Hélène (London: Henry

Colburn, 1823); Barry O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile or, A voice from St. Helena. The opinions
and reflections of Napoleon on the most important events of his life and government in his own
words (Philadelphia: J. Crissy, 1822), p. 21. For examples of negative portrayals in modern
popular culture, see Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Dumas Club (London: Vintage Books,
2003) and the motion picture The Emperor’s New Clothes (2001), adapted from Simon
Leys’s novel The Death of Napoleon (London: Picador, 1993).
23 William Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great
Experiment, 1830–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 273 note 47; William
Green, ‘Plantation Society and Indentured Labour: The Jamaican Case, 1834–65’, in
Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour before and after Slavery, ed. Piet Emmer
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), p. 184 note 49; Monica Schuler, ‘Liberated
Central Africans in Nineteenth Century Guyana’, in Central Africans and Cultural
Transformations in the American Diaspora, ed. Linda Heywood (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), pp. 319–52. See also Monica Schuler, ‘The Recruitment of
African Indentured Labourers for European Colonies in the Nineteenth Century’, in
Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour before and after Slavery, ed. Piet Emmer
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), p. 128; Adderley, New Negroes from
Africa, p. 74.

• 9 •
 Distant Freedom

great many liberated Africans, it was not an intrinsically deadly place. As

this study will show, the disastrous mortality rates within its depots had a
different set of explanations.

***
St Helena was a microcosm of Britain’s anti-slavery campaign, of its
successes, failures and practicalities. By studying this episode, this book
aims to shed new light on British suppression policies in action, and on the
African Diaspora. Chapter 1 presents a chronological account of this little-
known story, while Chapter 2 analyses the public, political and colonial
contexts that defined St Helena’s role in anti-slavery. Chapter 3 considers the
Royal Navy’s relationship with St Helena, both in terms of its tactical use
of the island and also the social and economic outcomes of this connection.
Subsequent chapters deal in turn with the operation of the depots (Chapter
4), disease, mortality and medical treatment (Chapter 5), and the immediate
and long-term fortunes of those Africans who survived to be liberated
(Chapters 6 and 7).24
Within these later chapters, the narrative and analysis have a strongly
St Helena-centric focus. To some extent, this stems from the nature of the
island-written sources, which reflect the isolated situation in which they
were composed. The modern historian, of course, can set such material
within broader contexts, but in this case I have only done so to an extent.
Instead, I have attempted to retain the sense of an insular place, whose
inhabitants’ experience of anti-slavery was bounded by the island’s horizons.
I nevertheless hope that subsequent studies will weave this information
into broader narratives. In similar vein, I have chosen to stay close to the
primary sources, emphasising life histories and, where possible, bringing the
black experience to the foreground. This emphasis on the human element

24 In choosing the subject matter for this book, there are inevitably elements that have
had to be set aside. The most obvious omission is any discussion of the Vice-Admiralty
court, which was, of course, the reason why liberated Africans were brought to the island
in the first place. The establishment of the court and details of its operation hold intrinsic
interest, while certain cases adjudicated there had significant legal ramifications. The
need to discuss the court is obviated, however, by the fact that it has already been
examined in two lengthy articles by the legal historian J.P. van Niekerk. This is, to
date, the one aspect of St Helena’s connection with abolition that has received detailed
attention. The inclusion of the court in the present book would have involved consid-
erable repetition of van Niekerk’s work while adding little that was new. See J.P. van
Niekerk, ‘The Role of the Vice Admiralty Court at St Helena in the Abolition of the
Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Preliminary Investigation’, Fundamina. A Journal of Legal
History 15.1 (2009), pp. 69–111 and 15.2 (2009), pp. 1–56.

• 10 •
 Introduction

stems, at least in part, from the archaeology of Rupert’s Valley, where we as

excavators came – quite literally – face to face with the individual victims
of the slave trade. As a whole, therefore, this book presents the experiences
of those – both white and black – who fell within the compass of abolition.
And, in telling the story of the latter, it attempts to give a voice to a forgotten
people, many of whom died in limbo in a place that was, both physically and
conceptually, between freedom and slavery.

• 11 •
Figure 1: St Helena.
 chapter one
A Place of Immense Advantage
A Place of Immense Advantage

Prelude: 1807–39
St Helena lies in the tropical South Atlantic at latitude 15°58ʹ south and
longitude 5°43ʹ west. The seventeenth-century explorer Peter Mundy described
its location as ‘the Farthest Distantt From any other Iland or Mayne than
any other Iland elce yet Discovered’, and while a few more remote places
have since been found, St Helena continues to exist in splendid isolation.
It is closest to Ascension Island, 1,300 km to the north-west, while the
island group of Tristan da Cunha lies 2,400 km to the south. The nearest
continental landfall is southern Angola, just over 1,800 km to the east, with
the Brazilian coast 3,260 km distant to the west.
St Helena is not only remote but also extremely small. At 17 km long and
10 km wide, it occupies an area of only 122 km2, though the topographically
complex landscape gives the impression that the island is rather larger. There
is little flat ground, and the deeply incised valleys compel the traveller to
take convoluted routes from one place to another.1
The island was discovered in 1502 by a Portuguese fleet returning from
India, under the command of João da Nova Castella. Da Nova took the
opportunity to refit his battered ships, rest his crew and replenish his stocks
of food and water, before heading back into European waters. Thus, within
only 15 years of the first European navigators reaching the Indian Ocean,
St Helena had begun its function as a maritime staging post. This would
provide the island’s raison d’être for centuries to come, as Western seafarers
ventured into the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean in ever greater numbers.
In 1659 the English staked their claim to the island, under the auspices of

1 On St Helena’s climate and natural environment see Philip and Myrtle Ashmole,
St Helena and Ascension Island: A natural history (Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 2000).

• 13 •
 Distant Freedom

the East India Company and, with the exception of a brief occupation by
the Dutch in 1673, it has remained in British possession ever since. From
precarious beginnings, when starvation and mutiny by both the garrison and
the slave population were a constant danger, the colony gradually established
itself as the eighteenth century progressed, centred on its modest but elegant
port at Jamestown.
Throughout this period the East India Company’s influence pervaded
all aspects of life, but by the early decades of the nineteenth century the
Company’s time was passing. By a clause of the India Act, St Helena was
transferred to the Crown, with effect from 2 April 1834 – an event which
represented a monumental shift for the island’s 4,000 inhabitants.2 Crown
rule brought radical change and no little economic hardship to a place
which (Napoleon’s exile aside) had existed in stasis for many decades, and
it is against this backdrop that the island’s involvement with slave trade
suppression would begin.
During the initial decades after the passing of Britain’s 1807 Abolition
Act, St Helena played only an indirect role in the suppression of the slave
trade. Up to 1840, Sierra Leone was by far the most significant naval outpost
for the British anti-slavery campaign on the African coast and in the
Atlantic. Despite its thoroughly unpleasant reputation, Sierra Leone’s dismal
capital at Freetown was usually best placed in geographical terms to receive
prizes taken by the Navy, the majority of which were captured close to land
in the traditional slaving grounds around the Gold and Slave Coasts, and
the Bights of Bonny and Benin.3 From 1807 to 1819, a large number of cases
were heard by Sierra Leone’s pioneering Vice-Admiralty court, by which
process a little over 11,000 slaves were freed. After this date, most prizes
fell under the jurisdiction of the various mixed commission courts (Anglo-
Spanish, -Portuguese, -Brazilian and -Dutch). Between 1819 and 1845, the
commissions in Sierra Leone adjudicated 528 cases, far more than at Havana
(50), Rio (44) and Surinam (1), and no cases at all were heard in New York.4
By the time Sierra Leone’s commissioners reported to the Foreign Secretary
at the end of 1839, Freetown’s mixed commission courts had registered over

2 The actual handover did not take place until February 1836, when the first Crown-
appointed governor arrived on the island to assume control.
3 Lloyd, Navy and the Slave Trade, Chapter 5.
4 Leslie Bethell, ‘The Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Transatlantic
Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of African History 7 (1966), pp. 79–89;
Jenny Martinez, ‘Anti-Slavery Courts and the Dawn of International Human Rights
Law’, Yale Law Journal 117 (2007), pp. 1–98. The statistics for 1829–44 are given by PP 1845
(73) (212) XLIX, Slave trade – Slave vessels. Returns of cases adjudged under slave trade
treaties, and number of slaves emancipated in consequence. These sources demonstrate the
overwhelming importance of the role of Sierra Leone’s anti-slavery courts.

• 14 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

Figure 2: St Helena: view from the Peaks towards Flagstaff and the Barn.
Image courtesy Ed Thorpe

Figure 3: Jamestown, c.1862. Photograph by John Isaac Lilley

• 15 •
 Distant Freedom

51,000 emancipated slaves.5 In that particular year, they had adjudicated 62

cases and freed 3,283 slaves.6
Nevertheless, from an early stage it was recognised that when warships
cruised south of the equator or returned from the Cape, St Helena was
advantageously positioned as a place for resupply. It was also a favoured
location for shore leave, as Sierra Leone’s climate (which rightly had a
reputation for being fatal to European visitors) made it unpopular with
naval commanders, particularly when outbreaks of disease were prevalent on
the African coast. As early as 1815, therefore, the cruisers of the embryonic
anti-slavery squadron began to visit St Helena, although the military base at
Ascension Island was used to a far greater extent during this period.
The situation vis-à-vis St Helena changed fundamentally in 1839, as a
consequence of the Slave Trade (Portugal) Act.7 This legislation stemmed
from the failure of drawn-out negotiations. Diplomatic initiatives had
begun in 1830 but it had been a fruitless business, described by Howard de
Walden, British minister in Lisbon, as ‘a very uphill game’.8 By the winter
of 1837–38, Palmerston, Foreign Secretary under Melbourne, had decided
that if Portugal would not agree to a satisfactory treaty then Britain would
take matters into its own hands. By July 1839 the situation in Parliament,
combined with prevailing public support, gave Palmerston the mandate
to introduce the Slave Trade (Portugal) Bill. It passed briskly through
the Commons and, despite Tory opposition in the Lords, an amended
bill became law on 24 August. At a stroke the act provided authorisation
for British warships to detain Portuguese vessels equipped for the slave
trade, and for Vice-Admiralty courts to condemn them. However, when
the bill was in preparation a potential loophole was pointed out: namely
that slave traders could dispense with flag and papers altogether – an
action which had been fairly rare up to that point. If nationality was
not established, then a vessel could not be brought in front of either a
national court or one of mixed commission. To counter this eventuality,
the act therefore authorised British warships to search and capture all
stateless vessels and to bring them before a British Vice-Admiralty court
for adjudication.

5 PP 1847–48 (116) LXIV, Slave trade. Abstract of return of the number of slaves captured
in each year since January 1810.
6 Macaulay and Doherty to Lord Palmerston, 31 December 1839, cited at http://www.
pdavis.nl/SL1839.htm.
7 2 & 3 Vict c 73.
8 Leslie Bethell, ‘Britain, Portugal and the Suppression of the Brazilian Slave Trade:
The Origins of Lord Palmerston’s Act of 1839’, The English Historical Review 80.317 (1965),
pp. 761–84.

• 16 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

The outcomes of the act were extremely significant, altering both the
places and the types of court where most slavery cases would be adjudicated.
Almost immediately there was a shift towards the Vice-Admiralty courts
and, as will be seen, towards the use of St Helena as a trial venue and
receiving depot.9 As discussed below, the process was completed by the
Aberdeen Act of 1845, which applied similar measures to the Brazilian
slave trade. In September 1839, the Foreign Office issued instructions to the
Lords Commissioners of Admiralty, which signified that its cruisers were
to detain Portuguese slave vessels, ships hoisting no flag and those without
papers proving their nationality. Where necessary, new British courts of
Vice-Admiralty were to be established for the adjudication of such vessels
and any slaves found on board were to be landed at the nearest British
settlement and placed under the care of the governor.10
Well before this date (as early as December 1836), letters patent had
been dispatched to St Helena empowering the Governor to constitute a
Vice-Admiralty court and to appoint its officers. However, nothing was
done, and only when the Foreign Office instructions arrived in late 1839
did the Governor take any action. The process of establishing the court,

9 Throughout the nineteenth century there were two principal means by which slave
ships could be tried: mixed (or joint) commission courts, and courts of Vice-Admiralty.
Mixed commission courts were essentially a product of slave trade abolition, created by a
series of bilateral treaties, signed between Britain and Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands,
Brazil, the United States and several South American republics. These courts sat more or
less continuously between 1819 and 1871 and existed in a number of locations: Freetown,
Luanda (Angola), the Cape of Good Hope, Boa Vista (Cape Verde Islands), Rio de
Janeiro, Surinam, Havana and New York. In total, courts of mixed commission were
responsible for the condemnation of over 600 vessels and the liberation of nearly 80,000
slaves during the nineteenth century (see Bethell, Mixed Commissions). Vice-Admiralty
courts were juryless tribunals that had existed since the seventeenth century and which
were granted jurisdiction over local legal matters relating to maritime activities, also
dealing with piracy and other offences committed on the high seas. Originally present
in the maritime counties of England and Wales, by the nineteenth century they had
come to be solely associated with the overseas dominions of the Crown. Many were of
long standing: those in Jamaica and Barbados had been established in the 1660s and
several others operated in the Caribbean during the eighteenth century. Others were set
up somewhat later, for example those at the Cape of Good Hope (1797), Trinidad (1801),
Demerara (1802) and Berbice (1811). See Michael Craton, ‘The Role of the Caribbean
Vice Admiralty Courts in British Imperialism’, Caribbean Studies 11.2 (1971), pp. 5–20. St
Helena was a particularly late addition, a court only becoming feasible after the island
had passed from the private rule of the East India Company. By 1863, when an act
regulating the Vice-Admiralty courts was passed, there were some 45 in existence, from
Canada to Hong Kong and Australia.
10 Circular letter, Lord John Russell to Middlemore, 23 September 1839, CO 247/51.

• 17 •
 Distant Freedom

however, did not prove straightforward. The island’s Chief Justice, William
Wilde, expressed the opinion that the court was illegal and refused to swear
in its judge and other officers. Wilde made his objections on the basis of a
fine point of law, arguing that the jurisdiction of St Helena’s Vice-Admiralty
court only extended to the island’s low-water mark, and therefore did not
encompass matters arising on the sea. The latter, he contended, was the
domain of the High Court of Admiralty – an argument that ignored the
obvious precedent set by Sierra Leone’s Vice-Admiralty court between 1807
and 1819. The reality was that Wilde’s objections stemmed from the fact that
somebody other than himself was to be appointed as Vice-Admiralty court
judge. The matter dragged on for months, not helped by long delays while
legal opinion was sought from England. Finally, advice from other members
of the island’s council and directives from London overrode Wilde’s
objections. The court’s judge, Charles Hodson, and the other officers were
duly sworn in on 8 June 1840.11 The resolution of this issue came not a
moment too soon, as two cases were already waiting to be heard.12

Early years: 1840–44

On 14 March 1840, HMS Waterwitch seized the Portuguese brig Cabacca off
Ambriz. The vessel carried two slaves – a woman and her son. Finding the
slaver to be unseaworthy, the Waterwitch’s crew destroyed it by fire and after
a further period of cruising brought the slaves to St Helena, reaching the

11 Wilde’s objections are presented in his letter to Lord John Russell of 28 December
1840, CO 247/53 No. 79. Alternative opinions by the Queen’s Advocate and other island
council members can be found as enclosures in Middlemore to Lord John Russell, 3
July 1840, CO 247/53 No. 73. The Supreme Court In and Out Letters in the Jamestown
archives also shed light on the minutiae of this episode, including Wilde’s refusal to
allow the use of the Public Courthouse for the early sittings of the Vice-Admiralty
court (7 June 1840). Wilde continued to question the court’s legitimacy into 1841, as
demonstrated by the case of the American vessel Jones, which was sent to Sierra Leone
for trial after Wilde informed the commander of HMS Dolphin that St Helena’s court
was illegally constituted (see Edward Littlehales to Admiralty, 16 August 1842, CO
247/58). It is notable that all of Wilde’s objections to the court ceased when, in late 1841,
he replaced Hodson as its judge.
12 Five more verdicts were passed down in July. Even after this point, the court
proceeded with little confidence. The officers were unprepared for the task: writing in
October 1841, Hodson reported to the Governor that the task was entirely new to all
those appointed to the court and that ‘there was not any competent person of whose
advice in such a proceeding I could avail myself, or any books to which I could refer for
guidance, and in that highly respectable, important and responsible situation, I was left
to my own discretion’ (see Hodson to Seale, 28 October 1841, CO 247/55). Quite clearly,
Hodson had no help from Wilde.

• 18 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

island on 9 June. The newly constituted Vice-Admiralty court condemned

the vessel and its human cargo to the Crown two days later.
Between the months of June and November 1840, the Waterwitch and
another cruiser, Brisk, brought six more prizes to St Helena for adjudication.
Three of these ships had been carrying slaves; the other three were seized
on the basis of the ‘equipment clause’ included within the parliamentary
acts for the extinction of the Spanish and Portuguese trade. All were small
vessels and the largest number of slaves taken was 16. On 30 November
the Collector of Customs John Young reported to the Governor that a
total of 22 recaptives had been received: initially they had been housed in
Lemon Valley, down the coast from Jamestown, but by the time of his
report all were apprenticed or working as labourers or domestic servants.13
Measures were put in place to deal with further prizes, including the
possible use of the Andorinha (a slave ship that had been appropriated for
use by the colonial establishment) as a floating hospital. Despite these
minor preparations, however, there was clearly no expectation that any
great number of recaptives would ever be received.
The first months of St Helena’s anti-slavery role were, therefore, compara-
tively quiet, and the bickering about the legality of its Vice-Admiralty
court must have seemed somewhat pointless. Even so, from the outset
Governor Middlemore expressed concerns to the British government about
St Helena’s ability to cope with any significant influx of recaptives. On
23 March 1840 – even before the arrival of the first two Africans from
the Cabacca – he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the
following terms:

With reference to your Lordship’s dispatch desiring me to make such

arrangements as may be necessary for the care and support of any Africans
who may be landed and set free in this colony, I request permission to
observe to your Lordship, the very great difficulty we should experience
in providing to any considerable number of Africans in St Helena. The
merchants draw all of their supplies, viz, rice paddy, grain etc. from the
port and frequently have not sufficient store for the want of the population
of St Helena. Consequently the prices become very serious and oppressive
to the poor, as they must depend upon supplies which may be spared by
vessels touching at the island.14

London’s view was complacent. On 3 July 1840 the Colonial Office

formulated a reply to Middlemore which stated that:

13 Young to Seale, 30 November 1840, CSL 7 Vol. 1 No. 41.

14 Middlemore to Lord John Russell, 23 March 1840, CO 247/53 735 St Helena.

• 19 •
 Distant Freedom

It is, I trust highly improbable that any Africans who may be captured
by her Majesty’s cruisers will be landed at St Helena: but should any
considerable number of them be brought to the island for that purpose,
the captain should be desired to carry them on to the Cape.15

The letter passed through several hands during July, finally reaching St
Helena in September. Within only a few months, however, the assumptions
conveyed in the letter were proved completely false. By late 1840, the West
Africa Squadron was taking full advantage of the 1839 Act to make captures
at sea, and in addition pursued aggressive tactics on the coast – most notably
those of the Sierra Leone division under the command of Joseph Denman.
On 4 December 1840, the Waterwitch intercepted the brigantine Julia off
the African coast. Like the other prizes already sent to St Helena it was
small: 124 tons, 75 feet long and 21 feet across the beam, with decks only five
feet high. This vessel had nevertheless succeeded in loading a cargo of 245
slaves, well over half of them children. Conditions on board were appalling;
the ratio of tonnage to slaves indicates that the Africans were packed in
so tightly as to be effectively unable to move. Five died on the day of the
Julia’s capture by the Waterwitch, having somehow fallen into the water, too
exhausted to stay afloat until rescue. Twenty-five more died on the 12-day
journey to St Helena.
On its arrival at the Jamestown Roads on 16 December, the Julia was
inspected by a board of the island’s medical officers. Up to this stage,
these men had only encountered small groups of recaptives, all of whom
were in good health. The Julia could not have been more different. The
board reported to the Governor that 77 of the Africans were sick, from
a combination of smallpox and dysentery, and that almost all on board
had coughs and catarrh. Many were also emaciated ‘to a very frightful
degree’. The board reached the obvious conclusion that more deaths were
likely. The St Helenians, given no warning of the Julia’s arrival, had to
decide rapidly what to do with so many people. The medical board initially
recommended that Egg Island be used as a quarantine station for the very
sick, while the Andorinha and the Julia would accommodate the healthy.
Egg Island, however, is nothing more than a barren rock immediately
off the south-west coast of St Helena. Tiny, waterless and shadeless, it
had been briefly garrisoned during Napoleon’s captivity, but after 1821 the
battery (surely one of the bleakest posts in the entire British Empire) was
abandoned to the nesting sea birds. Fortunately, the board changed its
mind, declaring that the heat, lack of water and dangerous surf rendered

15 Lord John Russell to Middlemore, 3 July 1840, CO 247/53 No. 73.

• 20 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

Egg Island unsuitable, instead permitting the Africans to disembark on

St Helena’s mainland.16
The medical board raised the need for overseers to look after and manage
the recaptives, and for food, clothing and medical care. On an island where
manpower was limited, and commodities often scarce and always expensive,
these posed significant difficulties. The board also urged that another doctor
be sought from a passing merchant ship. The Governor first entreated a
certain George McClure, a Royal Navy surgeon travelling home to England
aboard the Canton. McClure, however, clearly had no intention of seques-
tering himself with hundreds of sick recaptives, making ‘so many objections’
that the Governor abandoned his attempts to recruit him.17 Fortunately, the
next day another surgeon was identified, this time on the Indiaman Ellen,
and persuaded to stay. The original terms of his engagement were limited:
he was to care for the Julia recaptives and then resume his journey. Events
proved otherwise. For the next three years, prize after prize would bring
in ever more Africans to the island, and the surgeon would live with his
charges – sometimes in near-total isolation – in the seclusion of Lemon
Valley. That man was George McHenry.
McHenry was 28 at the time of his arrival on St Helena; he was already
well travelled, having been born in Bengal and medically trained in London
or Paris. Widowed around 1835, he had left his young son behind in Europe
and returned to India. In the autumn of 1840 he was once again sailing
to England, from where he intended to emigrate to Australia. McHenry
represents a crucial but slightly problematic source for the early years of St
Helena’s Liberated African Establishment. Part of the difficulty lies simply
in the fact that he was such a prolific writer: his narrative threatens to
dominate all others, but reflects his confinement to Lemon Valley, lacking
awareness of wider events. Bias is another issue. In late 1844 (by which time
he was living in County Antrim), McHenry wrote to the Under Secretary
of the Colonial Office, notifying him that he had written two articles for
publication in the Colonial Gazette. His intention, he said, was ‘simply to
write a short history, and to implicate no individuals in any manner’.18
These two articles are exactly as described, and certainly bland in terms of
any comment about the running of the depot. However, soon afterwards
McHenry’s petition to be re-employed as surgeon on St Helena was rejected
and his tone soon became rather different, with an agenda that was not only

16 Medical Board to Seale, December 16 1840, CSL 7 Vol. 1 No. 62.

17 McClure to Seale, 18 December 1840, CSL 7 Vol. 1 No. 65; Middlemore to Lord
John Russell, 24 December 1840, CO 247/53 No. 78.
18 McHenry to Stephen, 7 November 1844, CO 247/62 1635 St Helena.

• 21 •
 Distant Freedom

anti-slavery but anti-establishment. From the third instalment, his account

is far more vitriolic and politicised.19
Fortunately, it is possible to evaluate McHenry’s published articles against
the primary correspondence of 1840–43 (both by and about him). This shows
his basic account of events to be precise, and that his 1845–46 articles
accurately reflected how he thought and acted at the time. In this there is
much to admire. His letters from Lemon Valley consistently represent the
interests of the Africans under his charge, and to do so this young man had
to face down senior figures within St Helena’s administration – including on
occasion a governor who had commanded a regiment during the Peninsular
War. Even those he clashed with were in no doubt of his competence as a
surgeon. On the negative side, he lacked neither confidence nor ego. The
published account places him as the central, heroic, figure of the story: in part
this follows Victorian literary traditions but his sarcasm, and denigration of
virtually everyone around him, makes for tiresome reading. A certain level
of distrust is also necessary in an author whose hubris, at one point in the
narrative, allows him to equate himself with the rulers of ancient Egypt.
Despite such drawbacks, however, McHenry’s is without doubt a remarkable
story. It is selectively told here, but deserves fuller treatment.

***
On 18 December 1840, two days after the Julia had arrived at Jamestown, the
St Helenian authorities took the first steps to deal with their new African
charges. Some were permitted to disembark at Lemon Valley, while others
remained on the Julia or were transferred to the Andorinha, both vessels
having been towed down to Lemon Bay (Figure 4). The few inhabitants of
Lemon Valley were swiftly evacuated – some against their will – their houses
and the pair of barracks in the bay being commandeered for the ‘depot’ for
the recaptives. McHenry arrived the same day and was dismayed by what
he found:

The wild toppling hills around, the seat of perpetual barrenness; the rocks
and stones which everywhere strewed the ground, and obstructed the
paths; the dirty, mean-looking huts that had been the dwellings of the
fishermen …

The state of the Africans was more shocking: they had an ‘abject, miserable,
emaciated, squalid, and filthy appearance’, and the prevalence of diarrhoea

19 McHenry’s articles were published as a series of eight ‘chapters’ in Simmonds’

Colonial Gazette and Miscellany during 1845 and 1846. The last chapter concludes with
the statement ‘To be continued’, but no further articles have been located.

• 22 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

Figure 4: Lemon Bay.

View of the Lines and the barracks from Half Moon Battery.
The African depot occupied the valley floor between the cliffs.

• 23 •
 Distant Freedom

amongst them had left the ground around their dwellings covered with filth.
They were also largely unclothed, apart from a few pieces of sailcloth and
other material that had been scavenged.20 Over the following days there
were attempts to establish some form of order. The Colonial Surgeon located
a supply of condemned blankets from the civil hospital, while other supplies
were procured from the Ordnance Stores. Food – albeit only cassava-based
flour (farinha) and jerked beef taken from the Julia – started to be provided.
In addition to McHenry, five overseers and three matrons were recruited
from Jamestown. The circumstances nevertheless remained shambolic and
on 24 December McHenry wrote to the Colonial Secretary to inform him
of the situation. Aboard the Andorinha there was a severe shortage of water
and cases of dysentery and smallpox were increasing. Smallpox was also
spreading amongst the previously ‘healthy’ who had been housed on land.
The boat crews were exhausted, attempts to bury the dead at sea were failing
and corpses would soon be washing ashore on the beach at Lemon Bay. On
Christmas Day, McHenry concluded his letter to the Collector of Customs
in the following terms:

I beg permission to resign my office of surgeon to what you are pleased

to designate a Quarantine Establishment, but which though it has all
the disagreements of one, is not entitled to the name from the careless,
indifferent and ineffectual manner in which everything connected with it
is done.21

Intra-island correspondence in late December 1840 and January 1841 charts

the efforts to address this crisis. These letters are mainly authored by
McHenry, Customs Collector Young, Colonial Surgeon Christopher Vowell
and Colonial Secretary William Seale – the latter being the intermediary
with the Governor. Most letters are preoccupied with quarantine, medical
reports and supply, while others were written by officers of the Royal
Engineers who were tasked with improving the state of the accommodation
in Lemon Valley and laying a new deck for the Andorinha. By the start of
February conditions were somewhat improved. Supplies were now reaching
the depot, which was being equipped with clothing, fuel and better food.
The state of the surviving Africans was improved and, crucially, the smallpox
outbreak had run its course, though dysentery remained a great killer.
McHenry nevertheless continued to detail problems at great length (‘I am
sorry to trouble you so much, but …’) and still threatened resignation when
things did not go his way.

20 McHenry, Simmonds’ Colonial Gazette, Chapter 3, p. 155.

21 CSL 7 Vol. 1 Nos 72 and 73.

• 24 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

This comparative calm lasted barely a week into February. On the seventh,
the slave ship Louiza dropped anchor in the St Helena roads. At the time
of its capture it had carried 420 slaves but smallpox and dysentery were rife
on board and 82 had died during the 14-day passage to the island. On 1
March another vessel arrived: the Marcianna, of less than 80 tons burthen
but carrying 256 slaves, once again including smallpox victims. Next came
the Minerva on 16 March, with its contingent of 316 slaves, while the Euro
brought 305 Africans to the island on 3 May.22 On 1 June, there were 939
slaves present in Lemon Valley and numbers continued to rise over the next
two months. By August 1841 the island had taken in a total of 1,824 recaptives
and its Vice-Admiralty court had adjudicated 20 cases.
With no prospect of sending the slaves elsewhere, all the St Helenian
authorities could do was continue their efforts on a larger scale. Even by early
1841, however, the problems of Lemon Valley were becoming evident. Its
isolation made it difficult to supply, requiring everything to be rowed around
the coast from Jamestown: a situation that was compounded by sea conditions
in the bay, which usually had a pronounced swell and could sometimes be
extremely rough. Getting provisions ashore was always awkward and, at
times, impossible; boats were smashed in the surf and personnel injured. On
land, the available area for settlement was restricted and the burial grounds
had to be placed near the buildings. When any significant number of people
was present, the stream quickly became muddied and contaminated, while
rockfall from the steep slopes of the valley – often dislodged by goats – posed
a frequent hazard. These difficulties necessitated the opening of a new depot,
at Rupert’s Valley.
Another of the lee-side valleys offering access to the island’s interior,
Rupert’s Valley had been fortified and garrisoned since the later seventeenth
century, but by 1840 was virtually uninhabited (Figure 5). A survey was
duly undertaken in February 1841 and it was suggested that the existing
military buildings in the bay were fit for 148 Africans and an overseer. These
structures, property of the Ordnance Department, were rapidly brought
back into repair in order to accommodate Africans who had passed their
42-day quarantine period in Lemon Valley – the initial occupants envisaged
to be the survivors from the Louiza.
The first Africans were moved into Rupert’s Valley on 2 March, but in
greater numbers than could be housed in the existing buildings. Eighty-six
women and children were therefore placed in the hulk of the Julia, which
had been towed up from Lemon Bay. On 26 April, Captain Alexander of the
Royal Engineers reported than an extra building was under construction;
he had engaged local workmen to do this, claiming that the recaptives

22 The arrival of these vessels is documented in CO 247/55.

• 25 •
 Distant Freedom

Figure 5: Rupert’s Valley. View of the mid-valley. The lower of the two
African graveyards occupies the ground beyond the industrial unit, while
the upper graveyard is out of shot, above and to the left of the fuel silos.
The houses are those of Hay Town, built in the 1860s.

were variously too ill, inefficient or lazy to undertake the task. Alexander
stated that once the building was complete, Rupert’s Valley (including the
Julia) would be able to accommodate 250 Africans. Saddle Cottage (at the
junction of James Valley and Rupert’s Valley) and High Knoll Fort (the great
defensive redoubt above Jamestown) could house a further 20 and 80 people
respectively.23
The remainder of the recaptives were to stay in Lemon Valley. Here – even
after the removal of several hundred to Rupert’s Valley and elsewhere – the
numbers present had long since exceeded the capacity of the barracks and
the few other buildings behind the Lines, the latter being the great wall built
to defend the mouth of the valley from a seaborne attack. However, little
was done to improve the facilities, except for the refurbishment of a former
planter’s residence in the mid-valley to serve as a hospital. Most Africans
continued to be housed in tents erected at the bay, constructed out of the
timber and sails of captured slave vessels. These tents were stiflingly hot,
the internal temperature often being 20°F higher than that outside, with
the result that many of their occupants chose to abandon them and sleep

23 Alexander to Middlemore, 26 April 1841, CSL 8 No. 36.

• 26 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

in the open air.24 Meanwhile, by the mid-point of 1841, five hulks had also
been pressed into service as makeshift accommodation; the records are not
precise on this point, but all but one (Julia) seem to have stayed moored in
Lemon Bay.25
In the middle of 1841 the authorities attempted a form of segregation
between the two main African depots, sending the adult males to Rupert’s
Valley (in practice, those aged over 14) while the women and children stayed
in Lemon Valley. The rationale behind the segregation – apart from a moral
imperative – was the perception that the ‘weaker’ women and children would
fare better in the more clement environment of Lemon Valley, while the
hardier men would cope with the less hospitable conditions in Rupert’s. This
system unravelled with the next major influx of recaptives, after which there
was a new initiative, assigning the healthy to Rupert’s Valley and the sick
to Lemon Valley. This too was fundamentally flawed, principally because
it demanded the continuous shuffling of people up and down the coast as
their condition improved or worsened. Communication between the two
depots was also poor, with the result that Africans were dispatched from
one depot without the staff at the other being aware that they were coming.
On 8 August this situation descended into tragic farce. A boatload of 61
sick Africans was rowed from Rupert’s to Lemon Valley, to be swapped for
convalescents. One died on the journey, and – after exposure on the rocks
for several hours – all but ten were sent back to Rupert’s, despite many being
‘in a dying state’.26
Throughout 1841 sickness took a heavy toll on the recaptives, 467 (roughly
a quarter of all those landed on the island) having died by August. Outbreaks
of smallpox occurred almost every time there was a new intake of slaves,
though in fact dysentery was the main killer, and one for which there seemed
to be no remedy. The presence of contagious diseases amongst its inmates
required Lemon Valley, and the European staff of the depot, to be kept
isolated from the rest of the island.
Meanwhile, the depots, with their growing number of occupants, became
ever more burdensome. Their operation required large quantities of food,
fuel, clothing, blankets and medicine, as well as myriad sundry items
ranging from tin plates and watering cans to rat traps. St Helena did not
possess sufficient quantities of such goods, and what could be procured
locally was expensive. Letters were urgently dispatched to England and

24 See report by doctors Vowell, Solomon and McHenry, 17 Feb 1842, CO 247/57;
McHenry to Seale, 11 June 1841, CSL 8 No. 126.
25 CO 247/58 No. 52 Enclosure No. 2 (25 August 1841).
26 Reported by McHenry and Mapleton (8 August), Young and Solomon (9 August),
CSL 9 Nos 29–31 and 37.

• 27 •
 Distant Freedom

Cape Colony requesting their delivery, though the response was inevitably
much-delayed. The demands imposed by the African Establishment also
impacted upon the everyday life of the island. Manpower on St Helena was
hardly abundant, and good manpower was a definite rarity. The diversion of
numerous islanders to the support of the Africans undermined much routine
activity, above all at the port. At one time, nearly all of the island’s rowing
boats, which were crucial to the supply of visiting ships, were being used
to service the two depots. In addition, the Collector of Customs, whose job
it was to oversee the running of the port, was heavily engaged by his new
obligation to manage the African depot. The lascar boatmen, an immigrant
community who were the mainstay of the port’s day-to-day operation, also
complained of the extra work they were now undertaking, rowing supplies
on lengthy round trips from Jamestown to Lemon Valley. Several, it seems,
compensated themselves for their efforts by stealing articles from captured
slave ships.27

***
As described in the following chapter, the unexpectedly high use made of
St Helena by the Navy provoked acrimonious debate within the British
government. The Foreign and Colonial Offices, allied with the Admiralty,
argued for the continued use of the island as a place of reception for slave
ship prizes. Opposed to that view was the Treasury, which objected to
the expense of the depot and sought its closure. During 1842–43 the latter
view temporarily gained the ascendency, and from June 1842 onwards the
number of recaptives arriving at the island fell significantly. St Helena’s
Vice-Admiralty court continued to adjudicate a good number of cases of
empty vessels seized under the equipment clause, but over the next 20
months only four slave-laden prizes were tried.28 And when, in October
1843, HMS Arrow brought a slave-laden prize into Jamestown harbour it
was refused permission to land and was instead directed to the Cape. At
the point of capture, the prize had carried 337 Africans, stowed on top of
water casks because there was no slave deck. Many were in a very sickly
state: 49 died on the three-week voyage to St Helena and 21 more perished
in Jamestown harbour while the Arrow’s commander sought Governor

27 Mapleton to Seale, 8 April 1841, CSL 8 No. 59; Mapleton to Seale, 7 and 15 July,
CSL 8 Nos 152 and 158.
28 The court condemned 63 slaves to the Crown in September 1842, 15 in October and
two separate groups numbering 139 and 349 in April 1843. There is nothing immediately
obvious to suggest why these particular prizes were dispatched to St Helena: all were
taken in southerly latitudes, but not unusually so.

• 28 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

Trelawney’s permission to have them landed. Trelawney was unmoved, later

reporting to the Secretary of State that the vessel was too small to serve for
quarantine, and therefore on grounds of humanity it had been preferable
to send it elsewhere. The Arrow and its prize reached Cape Town on 18
October, when only 209 of its slaves were alive to be liberated.29
Meanwhile, from early 1841, measures for the ‘disposal’ of the survivors
were being pursued. As Chapter Six of this book will describe, these took
two forms: short-term, on-island expedients to utilise the large number
of recaptives being maintained at government expense; and permanent
measures for their settlement on St Helena, coupled with emigration to
Britain’s plantation colonies. These measures, combined with the pressure
applied by the Treasury on the Admiralty to send prizes elsewhere, signifi-
cantly reduced the numbers present in the island’s depots. The complement
of recaptives, which had reached 3,000 in early 1841, had fallen to just a few
hundred by May 1842.30 Two prizes received in April 1843 led to a sharp
increase in the number under government charge, but this was systematically
reduced to 128 by the end of the year.
Thus, after the severe crises of 1841 and early 1842, the situation finally
seemed to have been resolved. On 26 December 1843, the Treasury stated
confidently that ‘very few, if any, captured Negroes will in future be carried
to that colony’, while at the same time the depots in Rupert’s and Lemon
Valley were being wound up and their staff dismissed.31 On 5 February
1844, George McHenry departed the island as a surgeon on the emigrant
ship Margaret, bound for Trinidad with 60 Africans. Although he later
petitioned for reinstatement as surgeon to the liberated Africans, McHenry
never returned to St Helena nor had any further involvement in the medical
treatment of freed slaves. After a short period in Ireland he moved to
Liverpool, living close to – and presumably working at – the Royal Liverpool
Infirmary. He died in obscurity at Clerkenwell in 1872, aged 59.
On 10 February 1844, Governor Trelawney wrote to the Colonial
Secretary Lord Stanley. With evident satisfaction he informed Stanley that
St Helena’s African problem was over: ‘there are now remaining, my Lord,

29 For the Governor’s report on these events see Trelawney to Stanley, 9 October 1843,
1774 St Helena. Stanley’s approval of Trelawney’s action follows in the same folio. The
letters of the Arrow’s commander, which make clear the suffering of the slaves aboard
his prize, were never transmitted to Stanley. See Robinson to Trelawney, 19, 20, 21 and
23 September 1843, CSL 16, pp. 13–19. A note on the arrival of the Arrow’s prize at Cape
Town, including a statement of mortality for the voyage as a whole, is found in George
Frere to Lord Aberdeen, 20 December 1843, CO 247/62.
30 Trelawney to Lord Stanley, 5 December 1845, CO 247/64 Slave Trade Separate
No. 8.
31 Trevelyan to Stephen, 26 December 1843, CO 247/60 1970 St Helena.

• 29 •
 Distant Freedom

forty-five including six in hospital who are not denizened or employed

as servants: rations are not issued to them and I am informed they are
earning their own livelihood’.32 Five days later, however, Trelawney wrote
again, but his tone could hardly have been more different. A little before
the date of his first letter (on 27 January) HMS Thunderbolt had arrived at
Jamestown: accompanying it was the slaver Feliz Amizade which carried 72
Africans, some with smallpox. The commander, Lieutenant Ashton, had
asked permission to land the recaptives but Trelawney refused to accept
them, demanding, as for the Arrow’s prize, that they be taken elsewhere.
Unfortunately for Trelawney, surveys proved that Ashton was correct in his
assertion that the Feliz Amizade was unseaworthy and could not be repaired.
The Vice-Admiralty court accepted the case and allowed the slaves into
Rupert’s Valley, and it was in this context that Trelawney sent his furious
dispatch to London on 15 February. The language with which he addressed
the Secretary of State was barely diplomatic: the depot was in no fit state,
the tents ‘made from old sails being no longer habitable and … worn out and
decayed’; he expressed ‘surprise and regret’ that the Vice-Admiralty court
had accepted the case; and he demanded that his Lordship ‘condemn the
impropriety of Mr Ashton’s conduct’.
A lengthy exchange of correspondence followed in London. The eventual
reply to St Helena attempted to placate Trelawney, but crucially it also
vindicated Ashton. Moreover, while the Admiralty reiterated its instruction
to naval commanders to avoid sending prizes to the island whenever possible,
it reinforced the caveat contained by orders issued in December 1841: under
exceptional circumstances, captains should have the discretion to dispatch
slave-laden ships to the colony. The Thunderbolt incident was, therefore, a
turning point for St Helena’s African Establishment, in that the colony no
longer had the right to turn prizes away when the Navy saw fit to bring
them. However, this was probably not apparent at the time, because for the
rest of 1844 and nearly all of 1845 there were relatively few prizes brought to
the island, and the first to carry slaves did not arrive until December 1845. As
a result, the Governor found it possible to purchase a hulk to accommodate
the recaptives from the Feliz Amizade, rather than refitting the depot at
Rupert’s Valley.33 Meanwhile, emigration was successfully employed as a
means of ridding the island of these unwanted Africans, such that at the
close of 1844 only nine remained under government charge.
Nevertheless, this period of calm disguised a longer-term trend. As the

32 Trelawney to Stanley, 10 February 1844, CO 247/61 503 St Helena.

33 This appears to have been the condemned brig St Lorenzo, of 182 tons burthen,
a prize to HMS Prometheus. See Fraser to Gladstone, 29 May 1846, CO 247/66 1050
St Helena.

• 30 •
 A Place of Immense Advantage

Figure 6: Liberated Africans and slave ship prizes at St Helena, 1840–72.

Note: the upper graph omits the approximately 1,000 slaves liberated
from barracoons in 1842 and brought to St Helena by HMS Waterwitch
and HMS Madagascar.

traditional slave-exporting zones in West Africa came under increasing

military and diplomatic pressure, the balance of the trade shifted ever
more to areas south of the equator, to Congo, Angola and Mozambique. St
Helena became an increasingly practical place to bring prizes, while Sierra
Leone grew less and less accessible. In only a few years the ‘exceptional’
circumstances of 1844 would very quickly become the accepted norm, the
West Africa Squadron making full use of a place which offered it immense
advantages.34

34 Phipps Hornby to Admiralty, 18 July 1866, ADM 123/74 No. 185.

• 31 •
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
It was only the vicar's dog who had accidentally found his way in, but he was dressed in a paper cap,
and though he turned his head from side to side he could not get it off.

There was holly on the stair-rail and it pricked Noel; he leant over farther to get away from it, and
then to the horror of Nurse, who had followed him out, she saw him over balance himself, and with a
sudden awful thud, his little figure fell, his head striking the tiled floor of the hall with awful force.

Chris uttered a horrified cry which brought his mother out of her room.

She was the first to reach her darling, and raised him in her arms; but he lay still and unconscious. It
had been so swift, so sudden an accident, that he had not had time to utter a cry.

The little household gathered round him.

"He is killed!" cried Diana and Chris together.

"No—no—stunned!" said Mrs. Inglefield in her agony, still striving to allay the fears of her children.

Then she turned to Chris:

"Fetch the doctor. Go on your bicycle. Nurse, come with me."

Diana watched the limp, unconscious form of her small brother being carried upstairs. Mrs. Tubbs
followed Nurse; Cassy put her apron up to her eyes and began to cry.

"Oh, Miss Diana, 'tis his birthday; what an end to it!"

Diana seemed turned to stone.

How and why did these things happen? They were all so happy a few minutes ago, and now Noel
was perhaps dead and would never speak or laugh again.

She went slowly into the dining-room. The tea was all laid upon the table, the silver kettle boiling over
the methylated lamp. They would have all been sitting round the table now, mother would be pouring
out the tea, Noel's cake would have delighted him. It was a surprise—made by Mrs. Tubbs, who had
put her very best work into it. It was a big iced cake, and had seven candles upon it. In the centre
was a tiny little Christmas tree—a copy of Noel's. Its leaves and branches were frosted with sugar
and a robin perched on the topmost branch. In pink letters on the white surface was written:

"Noel Inglefield. Happy Returns of his Birthday,

and best Christmas Wishes."

As Diana gazed at the cake, tears crowded into her eyes.

Noel's cake! And he might never see it!

There were crackers round the table. What fun they would have had! There were jam sandwiches
and sugarcoated biscuits, and coco-nut cakes and shortbread.

Who would enjoy the tea now, when Noel lay dead or dying upstairs?

"Oh, it's awful! awful!" she cried, "worse than anything I have ever thought of or made up for my
stories! And I've spoken so crossly to him to-day, even though it was his birthday! Oh, what shall we
do! What shall we do!"
When Chris returned he found Diana pacing the hall like a demented person.

The doctor followed on his heels, and with two or three strides had mounted the stairs and gone into
the nursery.

"Oh, Chris," said Diana with tearful eyes, "what shall we do? I believe he is quite dead already."

"He can't be," said Chris. "Wasn't it awful seeing him fall! I've been thinking the whole way along to
the doctor's and back, of my cross words to him about the carol. We haven't been kind to him, Dinah
—over and over again we haven't! And we can't ask him to forgive us. And it's his birthday. Do you
think we could pray to God? Noel gets all his prayers answered, he says."

"He's so fond of God," moaned Diana; "perhaps God is very fond of him and wants him in heaven. I
wish mother would come to us."

But it was a long while before their mother came, and when she did, all the glow and brightness of
her face had vanished. She and the doctor went into her boudoir and talked a little, and then he went
away, saying:

"I'll be up the first thing in the morning, but there's nothing more can be done."

Then Chris and Diana crept up to their mother.

"Is he dead, Mums?" Chris whispered.

Mrs. Inglefield looked at them sorrowfully.

"He is very, very ill, dear. It is bad concussion of the brain, and he may be unconscious for a long
time. We must ask God to spare his precious little life."

A choke came in her voice, then she seemed to pull herself together.

"We must have some tea. Nurse is watching by him, and I will go and relieve her soon. Come along."

That was a most miserable meal for both mother and children.

Noel's chair opposite his cake was empty. His cheerful little voice, which was always making itself
heard, was hushed and silent now. Would they ever hear it again, his mother wondered?

And at last in desperation Chris spoke out his thoughts:

"Why has God let it happen on his birthday and on Christmas night, Mums? Any other time it
wouldn't have been so bad."

"Be quiet," said Diana in a whisper, giving him an angry nudge. "You'll only make Mums more
miserable."

Mrs. Inglefield caught the whisper.

"No, he won't, dear. God loves Noel better than any of us. He has sent this trouble to us for some
good reason. We must never question God's will."

The children were silent. They were glad when tea was over, but when their mother left them to
return to the sickroom, they wandered about the house, not knowing what to do with themselves.
Nurse came down at last, and told them that they must keep out of the nursery, as Noel must be kept
as quiet as possible.
"I should go to bed early if I were you," she told them. "Perhaps your little brother will be better to-
morrow morning."

"I know why God has let this accident happen," said Diana to Chris when Nurse had left them, and
they had gone into their mother's boudoir, and sitting down on two chairs near the fire had faced
each other in despairing silence; "it is to punish us. We haven't been good to him. We haven't loved
him, and now God is going to take him away from us."

"We'll miss him horribly if he dies," said Chris. "I wouldn't let him ride my bicycle the day before
yesterday."

"And I pushed him out of the nursery when I was writing," said Diana; "and told him he was a horrid
little bother."

These torturing memories went with them when they went to bed.

For the first time their mother failed to come and wish them good night. Nurse was having her
supper, and Mrs. Inglefield could not leave Noel.

But she did not forget them; only later on, when she did come, they had both forgotten their regrets,
and remorse, in sleep.

The following days were very sad. Noel lay unconscious for two days and two nights; and then when
he was able to eat, and take notice, his memory seemed to have left him. The house had to be kept
very quiet, and for days his life seemed to hang upon a thread.

It was astonishing how many friends the little fellow had. The back door was besieged by the
villagers during the first few days of his illness. Foster took the Christmas tree out of the drawing-
room and planted it in its old bed, but as he did so he was heard murmuring to himself:

"We'll never see his like again. He were too near heaven for a little chap like him!"

Mr. Wargrave, Miss Constance, Ted and Inez, all tried in turns to comfort and amuse poor Chris and
Diana.

As the days went on they began to hope, and when at last the doctor said that Noel was going to pull
through, they cheered up and began to smile once more.

But they were not allowed to see him. Mrs. Inglefield looked worn to a shadow; it was heart-breaking
to her to see her busy chattering little son lying in listless apathy on his bed, only moving his head to
and fro, and hardly recognizing his own mother.

Chris had to return to school before Noel was convalescent. Just before he went his mother let him
come in and see the little patient. Chris could hardly believe that the tiny pinched face with the big
restless eyes belonged to rosy, sturdy Noel.

He stooped over and kissed him very gently, and called him by name; but Noel took no notice, only
moved his head restlessly from side to side.

And Chris went out of the room fighting with his tears. The very next day Diana said to her mother:

"Will Noel never get better, Mums? God isn't answering our prayers. I pray ever so many times in the
day about him."

"Oh," cried her mother in anguish of tone, "don't pray too hard, darling, that we may keep him here.
God knows best. For his sake I dare not pray too earnestly for his recovery."
Diana could not understand this until she talked to Mrs. Tubbs in the kitchen about it.

"Bless your heart, missy, your poor mother is afraid he'll never get his senses again. Some is left
idiots after such a blow in the head. And Master Noel knows nobody yet, and p'r'aps never will."

This was a fresh horror to Diana. It was a good thing for her when Miss Morgan returned and lessons
began again.

But at last steady improvement set in, and Mrs. Inglefield went about with the light again in her eyes
and a smile upon her lips.

Inez came to wish Diana good-bye upon the day when the doctor was for the first time hopeful. She
was going to school, and had been dreadfully distressed about Noel.

"I liked him the best of you," she said; "he was always so funny and so naughty, and yet so very
good. And he talked like an angel. He's taught me more than anybody else, and I'm going to school
with quite a good character."

"I'll write to you, Inez, and tell you about him," said Diana, "and perhaps you'll like me to send you a
bit of my new story sometimes."

"I should love it."

They parted. Diana felt very lonely; she had never imagined that she would miss Noel so very much.

And then one Saturday when Chris was home, he and she went upstairs together to sit for a short
time with the little invalid.

He was decidedly better, his eyes were dear and bright, and he was able to talk a little, though his
voice was husky and weak. He smiled when he saw them.

"I've been very ill," he announced to them.

"Yes," said Diana, "we've missed you dreadfully, Noel. It will be nice when you're quite well again."

"I b'lieve," said Noel in his old slow way, "that I've been away to heaven, only I can't remember. I
know I haven't been here all the time."

Chris stooped over him:

"We'll never be cross to you again, Noel, never."

Noel looked at him, then asked gravely:

"Do you love me now?"

And Chris and Diana both cried out with all their hearts:

"Indeed we do. We'll always love you."

Noel smiled contentedly. Then after a pause he said: "Then will you be kind to my Chris'mas tree?
Will you give him some water and take care of him?"

"I'll water him every day," Diana rashly promised.

The interview was over; but Noel began to recover rapidly. It was a happy day when he was
downstairs again: and the first thing he did was to totter out into the garden, and make his way to his
beloved fir tree.

It stood there, looking rather bedraggled, and showing a great gap where the branch had been cut
off.

Noel was distressed at first, and then Chris, who was with him, said:

"He is like a soldier who has lost his arm in fighting for his King."

Noel's whole face brightened as he said:

"And he gave his branch to God for Jesus' birfday." He was comforted.

That same day, Bessie Sharpe came up to tell Mrs. Inglefield that her father had quietly passed
away.

"He were always talking of Master Noel. The last thing he said was, 'Tell Master Noel when he's well
enough to hear it, that my time of waiting is over and I'm going like his Christmas tree, to be taken in
for my Master's glory.'"

This message was given to Noel. He quite understood it.

"And Mr. Sharpe will be covered with glory," he said. "Everybody who goes to heaven will be like
Christmas trees lighted up. I almost wish I had wented there."

But Chris and Diana had cried out together:

"We want you here."

And their mother looked at them with a smile upon her face and deep thankfulness in her heart. She
knew now what had been the purpose in Noel's accident and illness. It was to bring the brothers and
sister closer together, and to bind them in a strong chain of love and understanding that would not
break under any provocation.

And Noel cried out:

"And I want to be here, for I love you all, specially—my dear Christmas tree."
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOEL'S
CHRISTMAS TREE ***

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