Slavery was abolished in the British Virgin Islands on August
1, 1834. By the complicated terms of the law, all slaves less
than six years of age were to be freed immediately. House slaves
had to complete a four-year “apprenticeship” and
field slaves a six-year “apprenticeship” before they
received full emancipation.
By 1840, all the inhabitants of Tortola were free, while in
nearby St. John slavery was to continue until 1848. British law
granted free status to anyone who arrived in their territory.
These factors created a situation whereby slavery and freedom
were only separated by a mile and a half of water.
The channel between St. John and Tortola, although narrow, is
generally characterized by rough seas and strong currents. Nonetheless,
many St. John slaves braved this crossing in whatever manner
that was available to them. Some arranged with friends or relatives
in Tortola to meet them in some secluded bay and take them across.
Others stole boats or secretly constructed rafts out of whatever
material they could find including estate house doors. Some brave
and hardy souls even swam across the treacherous channel.
The first major escape from St. John occurred in May of 1840
when 11 slaves from the Annaberg and Leinster
Bay plantations fled to Tortola. In another incident in 1840.
The slaves commandeered the estate boat and made their way to
Tortola in the dead of night. In Tortola, where slavery had been
abolished, they had a good chance of finding work on one of the
many small farms that had been established there.
It was a well planned escape. The day before, they harvested
whatever crops they could from their provision ground and took
them to St. Thomas to be sold.
When the plantation overseer, Mr. Davis, arrived the next morning,
he found not only that the slaves had disappeared, but that they
had taken everything they owned with them. Mr. Davis was shocked.
He couldn’t understand why his slaves had left such a comfortable
situation as he had provided for them on the estate. So Mr. Davis
tried to find out what happened. He went to the other slaves
and asked them what they knew, but no information was forthcoming.
He went to the Moravian minister and he also had no news. He
kept on trying to find the answer to the riddle and eventually
he learned that the slaves had gone to Tortola.
Then Mr. Davis went to the Land Judge in Cruz Bay and arranged
for him to go to St. Thomas and get an official pardon for the
runaway slaves. He then had the Moravian minister go to Tortola
and try to find the runaways.
The minister was successful in locating the former Leinster
Bay slaves. He explained to them that they would be pardoned
if they came back to St. John. The runaways called a meeting
during which they explained to the minister that they would not
return. Contrary to the accounts of Mr. Davis, the refugees’ version
was that Mr. Davis had mistreated the enslaved laborers on the
estate and that they would not consider returning unless he was
fired. Some years later, Mr. Davis was dismissed and several
of the refugees did return to Leinster Bay.
This Leinster Bay escape was followed a week later by another
successful escape of four slaves from the Brown Bay Plantation.
The guardhouse at
Leinster Point was built in an attempt to prevent more of these
escapes. Another stone structure, which can still be seen on
Whistling Cay, was also utilized to prevent slave escapes. In
addition to guardhouses, cannons and soldiers on the land, Danish
naval frigates patrolled the waters. The captains and crews of
these vessels were ordered to shoot to kill.
On another night in the year 1840, five slaves left St. John's
north shore in a canoe. A Danish naval ship spotted them somewhere
in the western Sir Francis Drake Channel, between St. John and
Tortola. The soldiers opened fire and a woman was killed. The
others jumped into the sea. Another woman and a child were apprehended
and returned to St. John, but the remaining two fugitives got
away by swimming the rest of the way to Tortola. The story of
their ordeal created an international incident.
The line separating St. John from Tortola was no more defined
in the 19th century than it is today. The government in Tortola
protested the killing of the woman in what appeared to be British
waters. The protest led to an official investigation of the occurrence
and the court martial in Copenhagen of a Lieutenant Hedemann
for the murder of the woman and the violation of British territory.
The lieutenant was found guilty and was sentenced to a two-month
prison term.
The St. John slaves had an underground network of contacts in
Tortola who often aided in their escapes. On the night of November
15, 1845, thirty-seven St. John slaves secretly left their plantations
and assembled at a deserted bay on the sparsely inhabited south
side of St. John. While the Danish Navy was busily patrolling
the north shore of St. John, the 37 men and women, safely and
without incident, boarded the vessels and were transported to
a new life in Tortola. Between the years 1840 and 1848, more
than 100 St. John slaves were able to find freedom in the British
colonies.
