Things that Matter: Portvale Factory and the Barbados Sugar story

I recently paid a visit to Portvale Factory – the last remaining sugar factory in a country which used to have more than 500 sugar mills and several hundred factories, “boiling houses” or ingenios, as they were called by Richard Ligon in his seminal True & Exact History of Barbadoes (1657). And I was blown away. My guides were sugar guru Patrick Bethel and the brilliant young Sugar Production Consultant Keriann Maynard-Browne, and the several technical experts I met along the way, up steps and down gangways and into laboratories in this magnificent modern factory.

And so I was inspired to take a thorough look at the sugar industry that made Barbados “the richest jewel in the English crown”, provided the highest level of literacy in the Caribbean, and made it the most respected country in the Caribbean, with the highest living standards in the region. And is now suffering severely from a possibly malignant disease, with a high risk of succumbing.

But what is amazing is the roller coaster ride of the sugar industry over its 376 years since Colonel Holdip of Locust Hall started the ball rolling in 1640. The industry has suffered crisis after crisis – virtual collapse after collapse, victim of droughts,   disease, duties, hurricanes and competition from the sugar beet – even a plague of caterpillars in the 1660s! Bankruptcy has been a common factor at regular intervals, with plantations lost in chancery and changing hands over and over again, until today most of our former sugar lands are covered either with concrete or the latest immigrant, river tamarind.

The early settlers with their press-ganged indentured servants from the docks of East London grew tobacco, ginger and cotton. The Dutch Jews brought the know-how to grow sugar cane on an industrial scale, and within ten years Richard Ligon could describe the rapid progress made, with more than half of a plantation’s acreage planted in sugar cane. Within 20 years, the slave based economy was well established. The other consequence of the shift to sugar was that small land owners could no longer compete, and many suffered financial ruin and were forced to emigrate to escape heavy debts. The result was amalgamation of lands, and a dramatic fall in the number of landholders from more than 10,000 to less than 1,000 by the 1660s. 

But disaster followed disaster. An epidemic of yellow fever in 1647 and severe droughts compounded the problems of the small land owners. Hurricanes in 1667, 1674 and 1675 caused major problems. And excessively heavy rains were as bad as severe droughts on the sugar crop. The introduction of cane holing – a practice that other sugar growers apparently came to Barbados to learn – saved the soil by preventing the loss of earth in heavy rains. (This is a problem again today, of course, with the change in farming practices and loss of kus-kus hedgerows along the roadside.) Improvement in the design of the mills and the boiling of the cane juice greatly improved the yield of sugar, and so, for a few brief years in the 1680s, there was a period of prosperity for the farmers, offset by small pox epidemics, dysentery, typhoid and elephantiasis. 

Cattle distemper in 1715 signalled the end of the old cattle mills and the transition to wind power, but hard times came back with severe drought. Major emigration occurred once more, to South Carolina and Pennsylvania, as well as to neighbouring islands. In the drought of 1733 many people reputedly died of starvation, and the hurricane of 1731 and another small pox epidemic in 1738 drove many more from the island. Further improvements in the technology increased production but there were more disasters to come – plagues of rats, of “sugar ants” and in 1780 the great hurricane of October 10th, which almost destroyed the island, with losses of more than 2,000 lives and some 1.3 million pounds in damages, or more than a billion dollars in today’s currency. And 50 years later came the other great hurricane of 1831.

The industry survived emancipation simply because the planters were paid compensation for “loss of property” and could invest in improving production, and because most landowners lived here and were determined to survive, while most of the slaves had nowhere to go and were forced to accept first the apprenticeship and then the tenantry system. Adjustment was assisted by the introduction of the steam powered mill – a major development, although windmills continued at a few places until the 1940s.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period of continuous crisis. Competition from the sugar beet industry in France, and sugar cane disease caused bankruptcy of many plantations by the 1890s, with the disappearance of many of the older planter families and acquisition by the emerging middle class of overseers. Salvation came in the form of the research of Mr. John R. Bovell and Dr. Harrison on sugar cane breeding and new varieties, while the First World War and the loss of the sugar beet industry raised the price for Barbados sugar, and produced a temporary windfall before a further serious fall! The roller coaster continued, as we’ll see in Part 2 next Sunday.

Sad departures: The last few days have seen the departures of many wonderful people – Kean Springer, Harley Moseley Sr., my dear first cousin Rosemary Hawkesworth Watson Deane, and Tony Cozier. All have made an impact beyond their family circle, but of course Tony “Tono” is one of our greatest cricket icons, a legend across the cricket world for his brilliant commentary on radio and in the written word. And other Lodge School boys will recall his equally brilliant commentary as a school boy on the marble racing down the long gutter of the Science Lab, when we were in the first and second forms. Thank you Tono, for your life long wisdom and good sense, and deepest sympathy to the families of all of these dear departed.

(Professor Fraser is past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine. Website:  profhenryfraser.com)