4. ‘Wanted, to serve in the West Indies’1

On the morning of 11 January 1833, John Kennedy departed from the port of Greenock aboard the ship Glasgow destined for Jamaica.2 Born in Glasgow, he was the son of Gaelic poet and accountant Duncan Kennedy who hailed from Argyll in the Scottish Highlands. Aged nineteen, Kennedy engaged for Jamaica with dreams of easing his family’s financial worries. Given his later debts to the Glasgow firm Robert Bogle & Co., Kennedy most likely engaged for Kingston in the firm’s counting house on 49 Queen Street, near Glasgow’s Royal Exchange.3 By this time, the exchange had replaced the Tontine Rooms as the city’s commercial headquarters and was home to the pro-slavery lobbying group, the Glasgow West India Association. Kennedy must have been aware of the West India merchants who sold valuable sugar from the exchange’s sample room. The opulence of the building would have reminded him of the wealth on offer in the West Indies. As the voyage had been advertised in the Glasgow Herald before the New Year, Kennedy was undoubtedly aware Bogle’s ship was preparing to depart from Greenock in early January.4 On the day, he probably travelled in a small barge (a gabbart) to the larger vessel docked further along the Clyde basin in the deep-water port. At 2pm on 11 January, the Glasgow cleared the port of Greenock. With a ‘heavy heart’ and residing in the ‘miserable steerages’ of the ship, John Kennedy set off on the long journey to Jamaica. As the ship cleared the Tail O’ the Bank at Greenock, he wore trousers and a heavy coat – warm clothes for a Scottish winter – which held out the cold as they sailed past the island of Great Cumbrae before crossing the Irish Sea towards Cork and the Atlantic Ocean. As the ship approached the latitude of the Canaries, the air became warmer and Kennedy wished for more appropriate clothing. Crossing the Atlantic in just thirty-one days – ‘as quick a passage as the ship ever made’ – the Glasgow arrived at the Windward Islands on 12 February 1833, eventually reaching Kingston a week later.

Kennedy enjoyed the luxury of a good education and kept a journal on the voyage. To keep the promise made to his father before departure, he immediately wrote a letter home in a fine copperplate script. Without clothing such as pantaloons, tight trousers and jackets required for employment in the tropics, he was woefully underprepared. Even more troubling was his lack of funds. He only possessed £3 sterling and had to draw a bill – repayable from his first salary – to cover the costs of the carriage from Kingston to his destination in St Thomas-in-the-Vale, close to Spanishtown. Since he was drafted at once into the island militia, he was also without the funds required to purchase a red coat and blue feather of the Light Infantry as well as a horse, saddle and bridle. He was, however, thankful for his connections with the influential West India merchants and planters of Glasgow. His father’s acquaintance George William Hamilton, cousin of Archibald Bogle, provided a letter of introduction to Henry Lowndes, temporary attorney of the Bogle plantations while Hamilton was back in Scotland. Lowndes was a nephew of prominent Glasgow planter, John Blackburn, who owned Wallens estate in St Thomas-in-the-Vale. Kennedy was delighted to be quickly appointed as a bookkeeper on the Hyde estate in the same parish on 1 March 1833. The position meant Kennedy could repay debts. Although not under the impression ‘a fortune can be made easier in Jamaica than at home’, he understood a reputable person of good conduct could make rapid progress on the island. Kennedy had already promised to send home half his salary of £42 per annum, which, they all hoped, would end his and the family’s hardships.

The typicality of John Kennedy’s narrative will be analysed in this and further chapters. As an educated young man of Highland stock, he went to Jamaica in the hope of easing his family’s penury. A beneficiary of patronage from Glasgow merchants, a letter of introduction to a Scottish planter secured his first start on the island. Nevertheless, he took on debts which afterwards vexed him and would have taken him months to repay. Exactly how Kennedy fared is unknown. It is probable he died in Jamaica – he left no will or inventoried wealth in Scotland – perhaps after supporting his family for some years but having failed to realize a large fortune. This chapter takes a broad approach, first by tracing flows of Clyde-Caribbean labour, recruitment and migration and illustrating the processes that facilitated Kennedy’s journey – and that of many others like him – to the West Indies during Glasgow’s sugar era, 1775–1838.

Scottish imperial adventurers

There was a long tradition of mobile Scots emigrating in search for advancement. Indeed, the extent of seventeenth-century outward migration to Ireland, Poland and Scandinavia from Scotland could have been the highest per-capita rate in Europe.5 After the Union of 1707 opened up the British empire, migrants from the Scottish Lowlands and Highlands departed in high numbers. It is estimated that around 90,000 Scots migrated to North America between 1700 and 1815.6 Levels of outward migration were influenced by both ‘push’ factors in Scotland and ‘pull’ factors from the colonies.7 Indeed, adverse economic conditions led many to leave the country, although numbers remained paradoxically high even after the increase of employment opportunities due to the growth of domestic industry.8 Scottish emigration to settler colonies – especially North America – was thus large-scale and has been the subject of a well-developed historiography. Migration to the West Indies, however, particularly after 1800, has received less scholarly attention, mainly due to the paucity of official sources.9

Scots were pervasive across the British West Indies, despite not possessing formal colonies. Even before the Incorporating Union of 1707, imperial commentators envisioned Scots as ideal emigrants to bolster military presence and labour power in the colonies, and the Union’s passage enabled what has been described as the ‘harnessing of Scotland’ to enhance the English empire.10 Although a relative latecomer to the Americas, England established control over a range of colonies – in an era of expansionist conflict between the dominant European powers – which became known as the British empire by 1708.11 What became the Thirteen Colonies of North America began with the establishment of Virginia in 1607. Further south, the tropic of Cancer defined the edge of the European peace treaties, which allowed open conflict in the frontier ‘beyond the line’.12 In turn, the Caribbean became a crucible of European maritime wars as the English took advantage of the declining strength of the Dutch, French and Spanish empires.

For B. W. Higman, the British West Indies were created in three phases of colonial expansion and shaped by voyages of settlement, emigration and trade in conjunction with colonial spoils of war.13 In the first phase of the English colonization, the islands of Barbados (1625) and Jamaica (1655) were settled mainly by English colonists, although bolstered with Scots adventurers and indentures who also swept into the Leeward Islands of St Kitts (1623), Nevis (1620), Antigua (1632) and Montserrat (1632). For Scots on the make after the Union of 1707, second-phase colonies were unrestricted and opportunities increased after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and especially after the Seven Years War (1756–63). Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Great Britain acquired Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Tobago (the ‘ceded islands’). Third-phase colonies – added after victories in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815) – included Trinidad (1797) and St Lucia (1803). Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo were taken from the Dutch and merged to become British Guiana in 1831. These colonies attracted significant British investment capital at the beginning of the nineteenth century as new fortunes were made.14

Scots took full advantage of rampant imperial expansion in what became the British West Indies. The motives of transient migrants to the West Indies were, of course, rooted in economics. In November 1837, the advocate Lord Corehouse passed judgment in a case regarding inheritance, domicile and jurisdiction at the Court of Session in Edinburgh:

Persons going to the East or West Indies from this country, with the view of making a fortune, have for the most part a fixed intention of returning home when their fortune is made. I know but of one instance of a gentleman who realised a large fortune, and who had retired from public service, but who resolved to end his days [in the Indies].15

The Corehouse observation reveals the mentalité of Scots in the West Indies – major wealth accumulation and rapid return – a learned opinion that is, of course, consistent with modern historiography. The role of Scots across the West Indies was first noted by Richard Sheridan and their motives explored in Alan Karras’ classic study of the temporary economic migrants he described as sojourners.16 Jamaica was an obvious destination for wealth accumulation, according to one contemporary Scot who viewed the island as a ‘constant mine, whence Britain draws prodigious riches’.17 The prospect of wealth attracted Scottish and English adventurers to the West Indies who sought to acquire wealth before returning home.18 This goal was shared with counterparts who travelled to the East Indies, although, ironically, West India fortunes – even though derived from enslaved labour – were deemed the more acceptable in nineteenth-century Britain. The latter were perceived to be based upon landownership and natural produce, while the former were seemingly accumulated from ‘murky sources’ such as usurious speculation in shares, contracts or luxury items.19

The impact of both imperial streams look to have been profound, and Andrew Mackillop claimed Scots in the West Indies secured one of the greatest per capita returns.20 T. M. Devine argues that returned West India capital was a prime source for Scotland’s eighteenth-century agricultural improvement.21 While the supporting evidence is not comprehensive, there is growing consensus that an in-flow of capital from West India sojourners was invested in land and built heritage across Scotland. Thus, instead of the loss of labour and enterprise that departed permanently for white settler communities in North America, presumably taking capital with them, Caribbean sojourning provided an acceptable means – by contemporary standards – to accumulate wealth which subsequently enriched Scotland, at least in theory.22

The sojourning mentality therefore poses several questions for historians of Scotland and the Caribbean. How many of these persons travelled? How were they educated or trained in Scotland prior to departure? How much private wealth did they accumulate while there? How many returned and what was the impact at home? The subsequent chapters of this monograph answer these questions by examining Scots in the plantation economies of the British Caribbean. First, this chapter identifies Glasgow as the premier Scottish-Atlantic commercial hub. The perception and attraction of West India fortunes are traced, as well as the business of emigration, and estimates of shipping and emigration. This chapter offers the first estimates of migration for the pivotal years between the abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the abolition of plantation slavery (1834). This framework lays the foundations for chapters focused on Scots in Jamaica, Grenada and Carriacou, and Trinidad: colonies acquired in the first, second and third phases of British imperialism in the West Indies.23 The reality is that very few sojourners to the British West Indies accumulated great wealth, with most dying in situ, and even those that were successful were only able to repatriate, in general, low-to-medium returns if they managed to get home at all, which was unlikely.

West India fortunes in the Scottish imagination

At the opening of what might be considered Glasgow’s sugar era, Sir John Sinclair published The Statistical Account of Scotland (‘the Old Statistical Account’). Sinclair wrote to over 880 Church of Scotland ministers to survey parishes across Scotland, collating information from 1790 onwards. Responsible for various civic and ecclesiastical duties in communities, ministers were best placed to answer questions in local parishes, including population and prominent citizens, agriculture, education, work and wages.24 A subsequent volume, The New Statistical Account, was published in 1845. The statistical accounts are unique sources for illustrating life in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland. The compilers noted the ‘West Indies’ in over half of all thirty-four Scottish counties, suggesting that the region was a regular feature of everyday life.

The statistical accounts reveal, first, that the effects of West India fortunes were well-known across Scotland, and, second, that many young men regularly migrated to acquire more. Successful returnees and their fortunes became famous in local communities. In 1793, the Revd Thomas Henderson noted: ‘this parish [Dryfesdale in Dumfries] has produced several eminent, learned men who have travelled to the East and West Indies, and successfully obtained fortunes’.25 These men often became prominent notables. In 1794, the Revd John Hutcheon noted two major success stories in the parish of Fetteresso in Kincardine. First, ‘Mr. Silver, a native of this district, made a purchase of the estate of Netherby, on his return from the West Indies, where he built a genteel modern dwelling-house.’ Second, ‘Mr Mackie, lately from the West Indies, made a purchase of the lands of Sketraw, in 1788, where he has built a very good dwelling house and made very great improvements.’26

In addition to private wealth acquisition, returned West India fortunes often improved the local environment as well as the standard of living of the local population. In the united parishes of Logie and Pert in the county of Forfar in 1793, the Revd Alexander Peter was dazzled by the ‘increase both of splendour and luxury in many places of the neighbourhood occasioned chiefly by the influx of wealth from the East and West Indies’.27 That same year, three ministers in Inverness noted the increasing prosperity of the burgh was due to ‘great influx of money from the East and West Indies’.28 Ministers noted almost twenty examples of philanthropy from West India adventurers to provide alms for the poor and bequests for schools, or to universities. Often these were large-scale and lived long in the public memory. In 1732, Dr Gilbert Ramsay, late rector of Christ Church in Barbados, bequeathed around £5,000 to fund students of divinity and a professor of Oriental Languages at Marischal College. This bequest remained well-known enough to be commented upon a half-century later.29 In 1786, John Erskine Esq. of the parish of St James, Jamaica, left £5,000 ‘for the benefit of ten poor families…[and] to be divided among eight poor boys…which has proven highly advantageous to the charity’. This was reported by The New Statistical Account well over a half-century later.30 In 1794, a minister reported how a Mrs Elizabeth Farquharson of Jamaica, originally of Tulloch in Aberdeenshire, bequeathed £400 ‘for the benefit of the poor here, and the like sum to keep school and schoolmaster in these parishes’, which was noted thirty years after her death.31 In 1831, an endowed school, Bathgate Academy, was established from a bequest of c.£14,000 by John Newlands, ‘a native of the parish, who, after being bred a carpenter, left Bathgate at an early age and proceeded to Jamaica’.32

After the abolition of plantation slavery, one parochial school in Rogart in Sutherland retained a considerable reputation for educating young men who went to the West Indies. The Revd John Mackenzie noted graduates had found employment ‘on plantation estates in the West Indies’ and were ‘reported to be persevering and industrious’. The ‘small remittances frequently made to poor relatives afford a pleasing proof that they are prosperous’.33 Unrepresentative success stories like the above glared in public for decades. West India fortunes were widely known across the country, which compelled skilled and educated young men to cross the Atlantic. Thus, the prospect of major slavery fortunes encouraged large-scale migration from across Scotland (and not the Highlands exclusively) to high-risk environments.34

West India migration, and the fortunes that came back in return, were well known to late eighteenth-century Scots. In 1792, the Revd John McKill of Durisdeer in the county of Dumfries noted ‘several of the natives have gone abroad likewise in the mercantile line, and some of them have been very successful in the West Indies’.35 And this was mainly young men. When writing the statistical account for Kells in the country of Kirkcudbright in 1792, the Revd John Gillespie noted: ‘Several young men of spirit go to the West Indies as planters and merchants’.36 Knowledge of successful wealth accumulation must surely have encouraged others to follow, which decreased the numbers of men of working age. In 1795, the Revd Dr John Scott bemoaned there were no more than four servants who had been born in the parish of Twynholm in Kirkcudbright. For ‘seventeen young men, if not more, within these few years, have gone to England, America and the West Indies, in the mercantile line’.37 The perception of colonial wealth in full public view across Scotland naturally pulled young men across the Atlantic in search of more, while the lack of opportunities pushed thousands away from their homeland forever. This became a self-perpetuating cycle of declining opportunity: young men migrated from Scotland in search of fortunes and most died abroad, a process which, in some cases, constrained the development of local economies.

Thomas Somerville, the minister of Jedburgh, was ultra-pessimistic when he summarized the fate of Scots in the West Indies in 1814:

Of all these, few returned to their native country – Jamaica in particular, from the number who died there, was long known by the name of ‘the grave of Scotland;’ – and of those who did return, few added to the stock of national wealth.38

This lament was not simply rhetorical. White mortality rates in Jamaica have been described as higher than almost anywhere else (except West Africa) in the British empire. The average life expectancy for migrants was 12.5 years. Urban mortality in 1780s Kingston was 51 per 1,000 people (5.1 per cent): twice the comparative rates in England.39 Sometimes the smaller islands had occasionally higher rates. On 14 December 1828, one commentator in Tobago noted ‘out of a resident population…not exceeding 256 Whites, the deaths since February 1826 are 73!’ This would suggest thirty-six deaths per year, a mortality rate of 14 per cent.40 These abstract percentages mask the human dimension. In 1818, forty-three men arrived in Tobago from Scotland and only two were still alive in 1825 (a master carpenter remained on the island, but the other had given up and returned to Europe).41 One historian noted that of sixteen young men who departed from the Scottish Highlands for Demerara and Berbice in early 1800, only one was still alive eighteen months later.42 With so few of the outward bound living long lives, a Scottish doctor in Dominica, Jonathan Troup, commented in 1789 about the hopelessness of the quest for wealth: ‘One man only makes a fortune in W Indies out of 500’, while it could take twenty years to accumulate ‘more than £3,–4,000’.43 If these rates are representative of the Scottish sojourning experience overall, the vast majority would have been dead before they managed to acquire any substantial fortune at all.

The micro-effects of West Indian emigration on Scottish development remains little understood, but the impact was not always positive in economic terms. On occasion, the departure of colonial adventurers was said to have contributed to the decline of a local parish. In 1792, the Revd Dr Alexander Duncan noted the population in the parish of Smallholm in Roxburgh had decreased six-fold in ninety years, with just 100 remaining in 1790. Emigration of young men, including to the West Indies, was a contributory factor, especially as ‘many of [them] never return’. As labour became scarce, wages went up and farmers relocated from the area.44 While West India success stories – usually men with great fortunes – were well-known across Scotland throughout the slavery period and continue to attract the attention of historians, the failures were publicized less often. With profits in the public eye, and deaths on estates out of sight across the Atlantic, outward migration dramatically increased. Clyde ports, and the colonial merchants who facilitated the Atlantic trades, are normally viewed as the source of Scotland’s commercial wealth that underpinned industrialization in west-central Scotland, but the insatiable demand for educated men, skilled labour and capital also contributed to the under development of other regions.

Recruiting for the plantation economy

In the aftermath of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, one author in the Scots Magazine suggested unscrupulous merchants offered young lads passage to the West Indies. The servitude that followed invariably led to a premature death, which subsequently deprived the nation of labour:

Every year we see advertisements offering encouragement to persons to go to Jamaica & c. These persons enter into indentures, binding themselves for three or four years. This is a custom worthy the attention even of the legislature, not only as by it the country is deprived of many useful hands, but also as these persons are deceived into perpetual slavery. Young men void of experience are easily prevailed upon to enter into these engagements: they hear of fortunes made in those distant parts; but they do not know, that one in ten doesn’t live, and that the lives of those who go from Britain to the West Indies cannot be computed at above three years. This demand, though the country is less able to supply it, is rather increasing than diminishing.45

In times of full employment in Scotland, high wages were the lure to entice skilled employees. In 1791, a representative of the merchant firm Stirling, Gordon & Co. revealed the previous Scottish bookkeeper they sent to Jamaica was paid £30 sterling per year, although improved terms would now have to be offered, as it was more difficult to ‘tempt’ new recruits due to the scarcity of labour in Scotland that year.46 Medicinal incentives were offered too. Partners of Alexander Houston & Co. offered a cooper, William Allason, an indenture contract in Grenada based on incremental wages that rose from £20 to £35 across the four-year period. Half of Allason’s medical bills were also to be covered.47 For young men in search of fortune, the offer of a guaranteed start with high wages and medical care must have been extremely alluring. Yet, most did not live long enough to reach the peak wage point.

The labour of many young men was retained for set periods in the Caribbean through indentured contracts signed in Scotland. The contract provided assisted passage, although it would also have tied young lads to positions for several years – usually three.48 Indentures offered in Glasgow effectively tied young adventurers to long-term occupational positions in the West Indies. The indenture system – based on an advance in wages to cover passage – prevented the desertion of skilled personnel in the colonies. The importance of indentures is revealed in correspondence from Spencer Mackay, a Scots merchant-proprietor in Demerara in the late 1790s:

The young man Mr Hill arrived here two days ago…I would never have a young man in this part of the world without indentures, I…mentioned 2–3 years. I…never intended bringing people out to the W. Indies at my risk without some security over their future services.49

These contracts became synonymous with Scots in the West Indies. One French traveller in Tobago in the 1810s was astonished at the widespread rise of the ‘thirty-six months Scotch’ who arrived as ‘bands of…poor devils…in tatters’ but soon ‘found the means to make considerable fortunes in many of the West India islands and to monopolize all the lucrative places’.50 Although conditions were undoubtedly grim for some Scots and most died abroad, some survived to accumulate great wealth.

James Buchanan was the son of a farrier near the Trongate at Glasgow. Moses Steven and James Buchanan (no relation), both partners in the merchant firm Dennistoun, Buchanan & Co., had their horses fitted at this blacksmith, thus introducing the younger son to Glasgow’s colonial elite. In 1800, young Jamie travelled to the West Indies with a letter of recommendation from both partners addressed to George Wilson, representative of the firm in Grenada:

Sir, by the ‘Louisa’, a young man goes to you, as an assistant. He is…clever; but it is a doubt whether he is to turn well or ill out. Mr Stiven is of the opinion that this namesake of mine will cut no ordinary figure in the world. He thinks he will either be the cleverest fellow, or the greatest blackguard in the West Indies; but take no notice, he is neither the one nor the other at present.51

This letter – which commented on Buchanan’s intelligence, his character as well as his father’s reputation – effectively endorsed the young lad as an able worker and ensured he was provided with employment by a stranger in the West Indies. As will be demonstrated in a later chapter, Buchanan eventually became one of the wealthiest Scottish returnees from the colonial West Indies.

Glasgow was the premier Scottish-Atlantic trade hub, with many Scots in temporary residence while in transit to the West Indies, often taking advantage of educational opportunities to acquire the skills for the plantation economy. Correspondence between George Oliphant of Kinloch, absentee owner of Grange plantation in Jamaica, his attorney John Wedderburn based in Westmoreland and James Somervell, a merchant in Glasgow, reveals much about Clyde-Jamaica emigration in the 1770s. Over a two-year period, Kinloch regularly sent young men from Perthshire to be shipped out by Somervell, Gordon & Co., his preferred merchant firm in Glasgow.52 This was a classic patronage service provided by an elite absentee planter to sons of friends, neighbours, tenants and local landowners. In a two-year period, Scots attorney John Wedderburn received so many in Jamaica that it was ‘difficult to find a place for them to live on’.53 At least some of these lads were educated prior to departure. On one occasion, Kinloch asked Somervell to improve the writing skills of a young man while he was waiting on a ship.54 Somervell, however, advised that formal training was the best preparation for the plantation economy: ‘You may give him proper advice…to be put to school immediately to Learn writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping & Navigation.’55

Glasgow’s commercial academies provided the training in skills which could be adapted for careers across the Atlantic world. From the 1760s onwards, teachers such as William Gordon and James Scruton offered commercial education in the city, and ‘useful learning’ became a large-scale enterprise by the nineteenth century.56 By 1838, nine mercantile academies were established around the commercial centre: the highest concentration of such institutions in Scotland. Academies in Glasgow provided the highest standard of commercial training in Scotland. In a two-year period after 1836, over 1,600 male and female students (aged between eight and twenty-five) attended classes taught by teachers who in some cases had connections with local firms. One had worked in mercantile houses for ten years before he opened a school in 1829.57 The curriculum was broadly similar: writing, arithmetic, as well as mercantile accounts and bookkeeping. Several made use of specialist textbooks that illustrated examples of transatlantic commerce conducted from Glasgow like those authored by James Morrison.58 The usual duration for students was one to four years, although J. McCall’s academy in the city offered a short-term course which many students attended for just one quarter. School fees ranged in price: a bookkeeping course in McDougall’s mercantile academy was just over £2 a course, while attendance at J. McCall’s academy cost from sixteen shillings per quarter-term.59 These costs compared favourably to attendance at the nearby University of Glasgow.60 Although not all of the learners in these academies would have been subsequently employed in transatlantic commerce, the excellent standard of education ensured the merchants had a large pool of candidates to choose from. This chapter now turns to open recruitment in the premier Atlantic hub.

The Glasgow-Atlantic world labour market

A survey of the Glasgow Herald between 1806 and 1834 reveals the nature and extent of Clyde shipping to the West Indies (see below for more details). The top merchant firm shippers between 1806 and 1834 were, in order of importance, John Campbell, senior & Co. (186 voyages or 9 per cent of an overall total of 1,742 voyages), John Cree, Stirling, Gordon & Co., Leitch & Smith, Robert Bogle & Co., J. T. & A. Douglas & Co. These firms were the most successful Glasgow-West India merchant houses of the period, except for shipping agents John Cree & Co. There were regular ships destined for the West Indies from Clyde ports, averaging around one a week in the period under examination. The production cycles of the plantation economy promoted specific types of departures at crucial times. Merchant firms mainly recruited towards the end of the year – September, October and November – which ensured young men travelled to the West Indies with the winter fleet, providing skilled labourers for the crop season in January.

The Glasgow Herald advertisements also reveal recruitment strategies of West India firms.61 The Glasgow-West India labour market was seemingly limited in the early nineteenth century. There were few positions available, with around only 300 relevant advertisements over a twenty-eight-year period, around eleven per year (on average). In the context of the estimated numbers of Scottish adventurers in this period (discussed below), this was a very small minority. Nevertheless, these advertisements provide insights into the top recruiters, the social demographics of the desired personnel and the skills and trades in demand in the plantation economy.

West India merchant firms usually opted to recruit young lads ‘brought up in the country’,62 although middle-aged men (aged thirty to thirty-five) were, on occasion, required for supervisory roles such as foremen. In 1816, for example, the firm D&J Connell advertised an indentured position in Jamaica for ‘middle-aged man of experience as an overseer on a Gentleman’s Estate in this Country, to take a similar charge in that Island’.63 Thus, young men – probably with no marital ties – would have been preferred for the Caribbean. The open recruitment of firms aimed to entice agricultural workers and skilled tradesmen. Of the almost 300 jobs identified in the advertisements, the positions that were most in demand were: carpenters (89), overseers (32), coopers (29), blacksmiths (26), planters (20), masons (17), engineers (13) and coppersmiths (10). Trade skills were prioritized over educational qualifications. Only one advertisement in the Glasgow Herald – looking for experienced ploughmen – requested a ‘tolerable education’.64 However, a good commercial education would have improved the chances of gaining employment with firms or in the plantation economy.

Overseers and planters were much in demand – no doubt destined to supervise enslaved peoples cultivating and processing the sugar cane – and for those experienced in husbandry to work on cattle pens adjacent to many plantations. This would have been the starting position for many Scots lads who were able to transfer farming experience directly to the plantation economy. Evidently, these advertisements were designed to recruit reliable men of lower rank from agricultural backgrounds. As noted in the statistical accounts, these processes sometimes drained local economies of agricultural labour and skilled tradesmen.

The building of the colonial infrastructure required skilled carpenters, which was the occupation desired most by recruiters in Glasgow. Many were to be employed as house or mill carpenters on estates, perhaps working in planters’ houses or windmills. Flexible tradesmen who could work as both carpenters and wheelwrights were particularly well regarded.65 Others were required to have experience in ‘country work’ such as the making of carts, wheels or roofing.66 Experienced carpenters could be employed as foremen in shipping yards, thus taking Scottish shipbuilding skills to the West Indies. Manufacturing skills were in no less demand. Blacksmiths, coppersmiths, masons, plumbers, tilemakers and bricklayers would have ensured the plantation was in working order. Such tradesmen were perceived to sit atop a Scottish-Atlantic labour hierarchy, well above the common indentures. In July 1771, James Dallas, writing from Jamaica, bemoaned his father’s decision to allow his brother to go to Dominica as an indentured labourer:

I assure you it will be a stain & reflection on his name which all his merit be if ever so great will never be able entirely to wipe off, besides the many hardships it will daily subject him to, had he been bred a mason, Carpenter, Copper or Blacksmith, he might have not only got bread, but in time acquired a fortune in the West Indies – in his present situation he will be subject to every Insult, temptation and difficulty which can render Human life in some degree miserable.67

Tradesmen were held in higher esteem due to their skills and higher earning potential and this had reputational consequences. In early 1787, Mr Dow, a mason, travelled to Carriacou looking for work where – according to one experienced Glasgow merchant – there was ‘not the least doubt of his getting employment and doing very well if he keeps his health’.68 Trade skills acquired in Scotland were in high demand in the plantation economy and individuals had the opportunity to make great wealth, a conclusion that will be tested in future chapters.

Other tradesmen with specific skills dealt with plantation produce. Young Scotsmen bred in distilleries were sometimes required in Jamaica, no doubt destined to learn the secrets of producing OP (over-proof) rum.69 The merchants also recruited coopers to produce hogsheads which facilitated the storage and transportation of the semi-refined muscovado sugar and rum. The advertisements also provided some insight into the increasing influence of new technologies. The increasing dependence on steam-power by sugar planters as the nineteenth century progressed promoted further skilled emigration. Engineers were required to operate steam engines that served to power mills to crush the cane with more efficiency as well as for transportation. In September 1830, for example, Robert Eccles & Co. required two engineers for Trinidad to operate the steamboats that would have taken hogsheads of sugar onto the large sea-going vessels waiting in the Gulf of Paria to depart for the Clyde.70 With steam engines shipped out from Great Britain – including the Boulton-Watt version after 1803 – these engineers were part of a steam-revolution that transformed sugar production during Caribbean slavery’s amelioration era.71

The targeting of skilled migrants was also intended to improve infrastructure and labour capabilities on the islands. Merchant firms also attracted recruits from outside known networks via newspaper advertisements and certificates were required to testify to the specialist skills of tradesmen. In October 1828, Robert Eccles & Co. required for Trinidad a blacksmith ‘acquainted with Horse shoeing and Country Work in general, who can produce testimonials of his having served a regular apprenticeship to the Trade, and of being sober and industrious’.72 Such endorsements of reliability created trust which was crucial given the employees were soon to be left to their own devices across the Atlantic.73

Although advertisements offering agricultural and manufacturing positions were restricted to those with the appropriate experience and recommendations, it is noticeable that offers of commercial positions were even rarer. Of the almost 300 jobs advertised in the Glasgow Herald between 1806 and 1834, only three of these – two bookkeepers and one clerk – offered an immediate start in jobs related to finance. In October 1806, Stirling, Gordon & Co. required a young man ‘thoroughly acquainted with books to act as a Clerk’ for Jamaica. Certificates of good character were required, and liberal encouragement was promised.74 These positions were not usually openly recruited; instead, such roles were filled by trusted individuals from known networks. For example, in 1778, representatives of Alexander Houston & Co. knew of a ‘clever lad’ in Scotland to be employed as a clerk in a store in Grenada.75 As factors and agents in the West Indies dealt with accounts, the issue of trust was paramount, meaning strangers – however well recommended – were unlikely to be immediately employed in positions dealing with finance and remitting profits. Other elite merchant firms in Glasgow also recruited from within the direct ‘family matrix’ and close networks in order to minimize risk.76 As demonstrated in the chapter on Leitch & Smith, the firm employed James Smith – the brother of the principal co-partner – as their representative in Grenada and he had responsibility for remitting money home. Closed recruitment from kinship networks minimized the risk of dishonest dealings across the Atlantic and kept wealth within the family at the same time.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the importance of the indentured system decreased. Of almost 300 positions advertised by the merchant firms in the Glasgow Herald between 1806 and 1834, only around half were explicitly advertised as indentured contracts. There were very few by the 1830s, when it was very likely the merchant firms’ recruiting role became obsolete due to the declining use of the indentures in the West Indies.77 For most of the period under consideration here, indentured contracts offering an immediate start would have been the most desirable way for young men to travel to the West Indies. But many others – even the majority – who departed from Clyde ports would have travelled under their own accord towards an uncertain future.

To the West Indies

Many Scots travelled to Glasgow to secure passage on ships docked in the Clyde at Greenock and Port Glasgow. Shipping movements were well known: local newspapers contained advertisements of departing ships and the Tontine List detailed both arrivals and departures from specific islands.78 For those paying their own fare, passage could be agreed directly with captains on ships or by visiting merchants’ counting houses congregated on or near the Trongate at Argyle Street, the Tontine Rooms, Candleriggs, the Gallowgate, Miller Street and Queen Street.79 The merchant firms advertised their voyages weeks in advance, notifying the public about the availability of ‘freight and passage’ to specific colonies. Some made a point of referring to the ‘superior accommodation’ in the cabin and steerage as well as reasonable terms, no doubt hoping to entice more passengers than their rivals.80 Personal introductions might be required for those seeking passage in cabins and there were high costs involved.81

The process of transporting adventurers can be traced in merchant correspondence. In October 1810, John Campbell, senior, & Co. advertised in the Glasgow Herald for a ‘mason, cooper, house carpenter and some overseers…who want to serve in the West Indies under indentures for three years’, who would travel on the imminent voyage of the Susannah to Grenada.82 At the request of planter John Urquhart later that year, the firm arranged for Adam Reid from Aberdeen to travel to Carriacou via Port Glasgow aboard the ship. Urquhart put up the initial costs of £24 4s 10d (to be repaid by Reid), which included £21 for steerage on the ship, £1/16s for ‘sea bedding and board’ and carriage expenses to Port Glasgow.83 In August 1821, Stirling, Gordon & Co. and James Ewing & Co. charged Mr Jeffrey £36 for the cabin and John Orr £21 for steerage on their jointly owned ship, The Hamilla, which departed from Greenock for Jamaica.84 By means of comparison, the standard steerage fare was around six months’ wages for an adult male cotton mill spinner in Glasgow.85 Indentured contracts obviously guaranteed passage, although other young men worked on the outward ships or had fares advanced by merchant firms.86 It seems most likely that most young men arriving in the West Indies had debts preventing early return to Scotland. Owing to a paucity of sources, exactly how many travelled to the West Indies will never be known. This monograph, however, offers new estimates.

In a period of almost continual war with America, France and Spain up to 1815, wartime conditions affected shipping from the Clyde. During the period of the American War of Independence (1775–83), the ubiquity of enemy shipping in the Atlantic initially prevented the development of Clyde-Caribbean commerce. Much of the conflict was contested in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, meaning shipping departures were restricted by the convoy system, which had implications for operating costs especially insurance.87 However, a cease in hostilities – such as the temporary peace with France in 1802–3 – freed up shipping and opened European export markets. In January 1802, Glasgow’s sugar merchants were said to be in favour of the French resuming trade with Jamaica, thus driving up sales and maximizing prices.88 A clause of the Treaty of Amiens in March 1802 also ceded Trinidad to Great Britain, which opened up commercial opportunities to the merchants of Glasgow, although staff at the local branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland expressed surprise at what they regarded as a risky investment.89 Thus, the spoils of war created opportunities for investment and the long-term peace with America and France cleared the way for the development of Clyde-Caribbean commerce. Many chose to migrate.

Any study of emigration is much the better with an estimation of numbers, although such a task in this context presents methodological issues. There are two issues: West India islands were not individually classified in Scottish port statistics before 1840, and there are no reliable figures of voyages (or systematic passenger lists) leaving for specific colonies.90 However, Clyde ports were the main departure point. In 1787, of the seventy-seven outward voyages to the region from Scotland, almost 90 per cent (sixty-seven) left from Port Glasgow and Greenock, the city’s satellite ports. Of the seventy voyages landing in Scotland from the West Indies, sixty-four docked in the same two ports.91 In this period, Port Glasgow specialized in tobacco imports from North America, while Greenock received more West India voyages.92 This trend continued into the nineteenth century. Data compiled just after the abolition of slavery provides a benchmark of emigration statistics. In 1841, a total of 2,104 emigrants were recorded leaving British ports for the West Indies. Of this total, 366 departed from Scottish ports (17 per cent of the British total). Of the Scottish figure, 264 left via Clyde ports (72 per cent of Scottish total): Glasgow (98 individuals), Greenock (147), Port Glasgow (19). For comparison, 1,259 individuals left London, 479 left Liverpool, ninety left Aberdeen, and eleven left Leith.93 Thus, official sources suggest as much as 90 per cent of Scottish-West India shipping, and around three-quarters of all emigrants, went through Clyde ports.

In the absence of official statistics, however, voyages to the West Indies between 1775 and 1838 can only be estimated from unofficial sources such as shipping advertisements: this approach defines current understandings concerning eighteenth-century estimates of Scots travelling to the Caribbean in the slavery period. Newspaper evidence suggests an increase in nineteenth-century Clyde-Caribbean trade and shipping. The Glasgow Herald reveals over 1,700 individual voyages were advertised to depart for the West Indies from Clyde ports between 1806 and 1834 (see Table 4.1).94 It is possible this data is an underestimation of actual voyages, and even so, the advertised numbers of ships indicate a dramatic increase from the previous half-century.95 For example, between 1806 and 1834, Jamaica was the main destination and the 615 advertised voyages from Clyde ports to the island in this twenty-nine-year period (an average of twenty-one per year) exceeds Alan Karras’ estimates of 569 for the same ports in the period 1750 to 1800 (an average of eleven per year).96

While Jamaica was the favoured port of call, as the nineteenth century progressed new colonies became increasingly popular destinations. Voyages to the other first-phase colonies of Antigua, Barbados and St Kitts represented a small proportion (under 5 per cent) of the destinations in the advertisements. This reflects the relatively minor importance of trade between Scotland and the classic English settler colonies. Indeed, the destination of St Thomas – then part of the Danish West Indies – was a more popular destination than these three colonies together, although this probably reflects the island’s status as a first landfall in the Leeward Islands. Of far more importance were the second- and third-phase colonies subsumed into the British West Indies after the Union of 1707. The advertisements seem to reveal an increase in trading activities with the newer colonies, especially Demerara, Grenada and Trinidad. Demerara was the second most important destination after Jamaica throughout the period, replacing it as the principal destination by the early 1830s. Trinidad was the third most popular destination, with voyages more than doubling in a ten-year period after 1820. As new colonies opened up, shipping numbers increased compared to the previous half-century.

Table 4.1 Destinations of ships departing from Clyde ports for West Indies, 1806–34.

Source: Glasgow Herald, 1806–34.

This monograph now enters the realm of speculative history to provide tentative estimates of adventurers who departed from Clyde ports to the West Indies. Historians have estimated eighteenth-century departures from Scotland. Alan Karras examined over 1,000 advertisements of ships leaving for Jamaica and the Chesapeake from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leith and Aberdeen during the period 1750–1800. Working on the assumption of five passengers per ship (and some from English ports), Karras estimated 6,000 Scots travelled to Jamaica during this period.97 However, based on Trevor Burnard’s analysis of passengers arriving in Jamaica by ship (average of 7.39 per ship), Douglas Hamilton revised the Karras figures upwards: it seemed most likely that 10,800 Scots arrived in Jamaica during the period 1750–99 and, by extension, between 17,090 (7 per ship) and 20,800 (9 per ship) Scots departed for the West Indies in the same period.98 While these historians provided estimates of Scottish adventurers travelling to first- and second-phase colonies of the British West Indies, there has been no complete analysis including the third-phase colonies settled after 1800.

As shipping advertisements in the Glasgow Herald dramatically increased between 1806 and 1834, the obvious inference is outward passengers did too. But not all ships would have left, while some could have carried few passengers. On the other hand, many would have been at full capacity while leaving the Clyde. Based on the assumptions of passengers per ship noted above, between 8,700 and 15,600 departees (300 to 540 per year) could have left the Clyde for the West Indies during the period 1806–34 (see Table 4.2). These figures facilitate new estimates of Scots departing for the West Indies between 1750 and 1834. Phillip Morgan estimated 34,000 Scots travelled to the West Indies in this period, but this appears too low.99 Based on estimates derived from the Clyde shipping data, this study suggests between 37,000 and 46,000 Scots departed for the West Indies (from both Scottish and English ports) during the period 1750 and 1834.100 This was around half the level of Scottish emigration to North America between 1700 and 1815, and around 3 per cent of the Scottish population in 1801 (see Table 4.3).101

Table 4.2 Estimated adventurers from the Clyde to the West Indies, 1806–34.

Source: Glasgow Herald, 1806–34.

Table 4.3 Population of Scotland, by region, 1801–31.

Source: HCPP (1841) Accounts of Population and Number of Houses according to Census, 1841, of Each County in Great Britain, p. 6.

West India sojourners intended to return with wealth, however, in contrast to North American migration. In theory, Caribbean sojourning should have had a more significant effect on the economic development of Scotland, especially as there was relatively limited capital compared to its southern neighbour. However, there are almost no surviving emigration records showing the characteristics of those who departed from Scotland for the West Indies, never mind those who returned. Nevertheless, Douglas Hamilton has argued – based on a register of emigrants, which provides rare data on journeys from Greenock to the West Indies in September 1774 and July 1775 – there were two main differences in the patterns of emigration to the West Indies and mainland American colonies. First, he noted migrants to the Caribbean were mainly young, single males. Second, Hamilton argued that these skilled migrants intended to ‘follow their employment’. That is, the migrants were not escaping destitution but instead had elected to seek more profitable opportunities in the West Indies.102

Further examination of these sources provides details of occupational status as well as place of home domicile. The records reveal thirty-four Scotsmen travelled to the British West Indies from Greenock in September 1774 and July 1775. The average age was twenty, the eldest was thirty-four and the youngest fifteen. This group who crossed the Atlantic – thirty to Jamaica and four to Antigua – testified as to their occupations, and the high incidence of those intending to enter mercantile rather than planting occupations seems to be significant. Almost 80 per cent described themselves as merchants and clerks. While it is possible some, such as the sixteen-year-old James McLean, characterized themselves as merchants in anticipation of new employment rather than based on previous experience, most sought employment in the mercantile line. The remainder described themselves as planters, a farmer, a land surveyor, a blacksmith and a wright. Francis Stewart, who was on his way to Antigua, was the solitary ‘gentleman’. It seems very likely these ships carried mainly lower- and middling-rank men.103

While one can speculate on previous experience and occupational aspirations, former residences are definitely known for thirty-four of these Scotsmen, which provides a rare insight into regional migration from Scotland to the Caribbean (see Table 4.4). Forty per cent of this group of the outward bound hailed from the Western Lowlands. By contrast, just under 10 per cent hailed from the Eastern Lowlands and 5 per cent hailed from the Borders. Almost half of the outward bound departed from the Highlands (20 per cent), north-eastern Scotland (20 per cent) and Caithness (2 per cent) combined. Given the relative decline in the Highland population as a proportion of Scottish society in this era (see Table 4.3), the implications of this relatively high outward migration from the Highlands are significant and will be explored more fully in a later chapter. A transient class of young men from across Scotland with agricultural, manufacturing and especially commercial skills internally migrated to Glasgow and the outports before travelling to the West Indies in the hope of employment. Exactly how many succeeded in Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad will be addressed next.

Table 4.4 Home residences of individuals departing Greenock for the West Indies in 1774–5, compared to Scottish population.

Source: V. R. Cameron, Emigrants from Scotland to America, 1774–1775 (Baltimore, Md., 1990), pp. 45–6, p. 80; HCPP (1841) Accounts of Population and Number of Houses According to Census, 1841, of Each County in Great Britain, p. 6.

Conclusion

Scots were a highly mobile group of people before, during and after the slavery period. The perception of quick riches in the West Indies attracted many young men who hoped to return in a wealthier position, a general mentality that has implications for studies of Scotland and the Caribbean. Glasgow was the premier Atlantic trade hub and attracted migrants from across Scotland. Some were beneficiaries of patronage, offering privileged starts in the colonies. Many more were recruited by merchants via open recruitment. Scots were offered attractive incentives to go the West Indies including indentured contracts and assisted passage, high wages and sometimes even medical care. Many were recruited in Glasgow – often through advertisements placed by planters and merchant firms – for positions in the plantation economy. Some of these young men were educated, although commercial academies – the best in Scotland – involved relatively high costs. Nevertheless, the merchants and planters of Glasgow had a large pool of candidates to recruit from on an annual basis. Practical experience gained by lads on the farm and skilled craftsmen was much in demand, as it was transferable to the West Indies. Partners in merchant firms less often recruited employees from kith and kin networks to work in trusted roles dealing with finance and commerce. This was a professional – mainly skilled or educated – class of men who travelled to take up important positions in medicine, trade and commerce. What is clear is that education, skills and experience acquired in Scotland opened up many possibilities in the plantation economy.

The merchants and planters of Glasgow were the main agents – both recruiters and shippers – of Scottish emigration to the West Indies. Passage was readily available from Glasgow in the 1800s. Some paid their own way, others secured indentured contracts, but many would have travelled under their own risk or with high debts, which prevented an early return. It is very likely that many thousands of Scots landed in the British West Indies towards the end of Caribbean slavery, especially in Jamaica, although Grenada and Trinidad became favoured locations. As will now be revealed in the next three chapters, many young men succeeded and were able to accumulate and repatriate large fortunes to Scotland, while many, even most, failed in their quest.