Caribbee

Author’s Note

In the Georgian age the Caribbean was one of the most truly beautiful – and deadly – places on earth where, as if counterbalancing Nature’s gifts, fever claimed countless lives.

Even now, the majority of the thousands of far-scattered islands are much as they were in Kydd’s day, hardly touched by the centuries, albeit with the more accessible destinations well visited by tourists. For me, there can be little to beat the view from high in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica (where Kathy and I stayed on location research) down to the sinuous length of the Palisades to the legendary Port Royal and the fleet anchorage within. The town itself is in a sad state of decay but I spent many happy hours in the small archives and even unearthed some brown and curling correspondence from a certain Captain Nelson written while on station, complete with a flourishing pre-amputation signature.

The most atmospheric of all Caribbean sites was Antigua – not the cruise-ship St John’s in the north, but English Harbour in the south, where a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century naval dockyard could at a pinch even now set about a storm-racked frigate there under the guns of Shirley Heights. In Spanish Town there are parts still existing that Kydd would recognise, such as the memorial to Rodney’s great action at the Saintes, with its robust portrayal of ships-of-the-line and the stricken French fleet, ironically refurbished with the aid of an EU grant sponsored by the French. Guadeloupe is as Gallic as the Riviera and as pretty still as Renzi found it. Grand-Bourg on Marie-Galante is somewhat spoiled by development, but the rest of the island has enchanting parts and enjoys a reputation for its peach-fed iguana.

The Caymans are doing well, due in no small part to the generosity of King George III who, in response to the islanders’ bravery in coming to the aid of ten ships wrecked one night in a tempest, bestowed a tax-free status that is in force to this day. Cayman Brac is a wonderful spot for scuba and, apart from scattered settlement, presents the same seaward aspect as Kydd encountered. Curacao is still appealingly Dutch; her multicoloured houses in neat rows much as they were then. The interior waters of the Schottegat, however, are now home to oil-tankers rather than privateers, and pretty little marinas nestle under the once formidable forts.

Looked at through modern eyes it’s hard to conceive of the colossal importance of the West Indies to Britain during Kydd’s time. At the start of the Napoleonic wars, four-fifths of all overseas Exchequer receipts came from these parts, mainly sugar and sugar products. More than two million gallons of rum a year made its way over the Atlantic, and Renzi’s brother was not exaggerating in the slightest the voracious appetite of sweet-toothed Britain for his crop. Consequently the islands were fought over bitterly, the record held by St Lucia, which changed hands no fewer than fourteen times in the period of the wars.

Without an effective naval strategy France found it impossible to defend her own islands and secure her own imports and consequently suffered. Napoleon’s decree, the Continental System, was a clever move, for it closed off Europe not only to Britain’s sugar but also to its increasingly important manufactured goods, threatening bankruptcy and revolution. It also contained the seed of his own destruction. The continent, with a well-developed sugar habit and unwilling to forgo the baubles and ironmongery produced so cheaply by the industrial revolution, fell victim to widespread smuggling and it failed in its object, again for want of an effective military sea arm to compel it. When Napoleon turned on his ally Russia in 1812, for not enforcing it vigorously enough, the end was in sight for him and his system. At the peace of 1815 most of the islands were returned to their previous owners, Danish, Dutch and even Swedish; each still retains its distinctiveness, but all were involved in the ever-vital sugar trade.

America, however, did handsomely out of the war as neutral, freighting for both sides, but when months later the British responded with their own decree Cousin Jonathan found his business opportunities sharply declining, his fast-growing merchant fleet now idle. This, no doubt, contributed to the frustration that boiled over into the war of 1812, the first conducted with an economic objective openly at its heart.

And in another important historical development less than one year following the end of this book, Kydd’s valet Tysoe would see the slave trade not only stopped by Britain but actively opposed by this nation, which nobly employed its naval supremacy in the cause of its suppression. Acting under a legal framework that regarded slave-trading in the same light as piracy, the Royal Navy chased and seized ships under any flag that carried on the odious trade, but it was not until 1834 that slavery itself was abolished. The irony is that by this time industrial methods of extraction from sugar-beet in Europe had been found and the Caribbean had lost its importance.

Readers who have followed the series will note that this is the second book set in the Caribbean. I am not sure yet when the two friends will return to this sultry clime but I can promise an important personal milestone for Renzi in the near future.

It is the writer’s name that is on the cover but many people contribute directly and indirectly to any literary endeavour. To everyone who assisted in some way in the research for this book, I am deeply grateful. I am also appreciative of the electronic charts produced by the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty at Taunton, which have replaced the paper ones I used when I first began writing the series, and which have made navigational computations just a matter of a few clicks of the mouse. And I would like to pay special tribute to my publisher Hodder amp; Stoughton – editors Oliver Johnson and Anne Perry, publicist Poppy North, copy editor Hazel Orme, and all the other consummate professionals at 338 Euston Road, London.

As ever, my heartfelt appreciation goes to my wife and literary partner, Kathy, and my agent Carole Blake, who this year celebrates a luminous career in the book trade spanning fifty years. As the Georgians would say, I drink her health in a bumper!