21st October is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and so we take the opportunity to remember the black sailors who served in Admiral Nelson’s fleet that day in 1805:
Cato doesn’t (yet!) have his own page on Historycal Roots but is mentioned in John’s article about the York Rangers where he has this to say about him:
The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up
Although this painting depicts the Temeraire on her final journey rather than at the Battle of Trafalgar, it is a magnificent painting and seems a fitting way to close this post.
My wife and I recently took a day off from black history (or so we thought) to attend a talk at Croydon Parish church about the history of the building. Although we have lived in Croydon for a combined total of over 110 years we had, somewhat shamefully, never actually visited the Minster.
The Minster sits beside a couple of busy main roads. They say the camera doesn’t lie but with careful choice of angles it can certainly be encouraged to fib a bit!
What a charming rural vision – hopefully you can’t see the gigantic crane artfully concealed behind the tree and you certainly won’t be able to hear the traffic thundering by!
The talk by David Morgan was extremely informative and even people attending who already knew a great deal about the church learnt new things, we certainly did! It was at the end of the visit that we were unexpectedly ambushed by a little piece of black history.
David had left out some pictures that provided context to his talk. One of them featured a painting by John Singleton Copley, who is buried at the Minster and who David had spoken about during his talk. You should be able to see why this caught our attention.
‘Watson and the shark’ by John Singleton Copley, 1778
Although the ‘subject’ of the painting is Brook Watson, the youth flailing in the water, and, yes, ‘the shark’, a black man is given a very prominent position and the eye is immediately drawn to him. The National Gallery of Art (Washington) comments that his ‘prominent position in the picture and sympathetic rendering were extraordinary for the time.'[1]https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/copley-watson-and-the-shark.html
We felt prompted into some research with the following questions in mind:
who was Brook Watson?
Who was John Singleton Copley?
Who is the black figure given such a prominent place in the painting?
Brook Watson
The painting depicts an actual event in the life of Brook Watson. Born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1735, he was orphaned at the age of six and sent to live with an uncle and aunt in Boston, Massachusetts. Later he became a crewman on one of his uncle’s ships and, at the age of 14, he took the unwise decision to go for a dip in the harbour at Havana, Cuba. He was attacked by a shark which on its second attack took off his right foot, it was coming back to finish the job when a group of Brook’s shipmates combined to fend off the shark and rescue young Brook.
Watson survived the attack and, although his right leg had to be amputated below the knee, after three months convalescing in Havana he was able to carry on with, what turned out to be, a very successful, if not altogether blameless, life.
He clearly must have had a good head for business as by the age of 15 he had a role in supplying provisions to the British Army at Fort Lawrence in Nova Scoria and he quickly advanced to become a commissary, a key role in the supply chain that he fulfilled for General Wolfe at the Siege of Louisbourg. In 1758 he returned to London to carry on his career as a merchant, something he did with great success.
On her visit to London in 1773 the acclaimed black American poet, Phillis Wheatley, was introduced to Watson and he gave her an edition of ‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton. On her return to America Phillis was granted her freedom and she suggests that her ‘friends in England’ played a part in this:
was presented with a Folio Edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, printed on a Silver Type, so call’d from its elegance, (I suppose) By Mr.Brook Watson Mercht. whose Coat of Arms is prefix’d. — Since my return to America my Master, has at the desire of my friends in England given me my freedom. The Instrument is drawn, so as to secure me and my property from the hands of the Executrs. adminstrators, &c. of my master, & secure whatsoever should be given me as my Own. [2]https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=771&img_step=1&mode=transcript#page1
In spite of his small gesture, which he could well afford, we gain a rather different insight into Watson’s character from an American businessman and politician, Ethan Allen, who accompanied him on a voyage to England in 1775. Allen wrote that he:
“was put under the power of an English Merchant from London, whose name was Brook Watson: a man of malicious and cruel disposition, and who was probably excited, in the exercise of his malevolence, by a junto of tories, who sailed with him to England …”[3]Allen, Ethan (1838). A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity, Written by Himself, 3rd. ed., Burlington, Vermont.
Watson was one of the founding members of Lloyds (and later became its chairman), a banking and insurance company. The company directly profited from the slave trade as it insured the ships that transported enslaved people across the Atlantic. Furthermore, Watson wrote in 1789 that he supported the slave trade and that it needed to remain in place for the benefit of the economies of the colonies.[4]https://philliswheatleyldn.wixsite.com/philliswheatleylondo/post/sir-brook-watson
Watson was appointed to be the Director of the Bank of England in 1784, he was a Member of Parliament from 1784 to 1793, became Lord Mayor of London in 1796 and was granted the title of Baronet in 1803.
A stellar career but of course it was built on rotten foundations. Perhaps he did not personally own slaves (his personal and business papers have not survived so we do not know) but Watson is described repeatedly as a ‘merchant’ and there really can be little doubt that, either directly through personal investment in the voyages of slave ships, or indirectly, through his role as one of the founders of Lloyds, he owed his wealth and position to the trade in enslaved people or in the goods their labour produced.
John Singleton Copley
Copley was born in Boston, Massachusetts in either 1737 or 1738. His father died when John was young and it was probably his stepfather, an engraver and painter, who taught him the rudiments of his art. Young John quickly excelled and even while still a teenager became a sought after painter of portraits in the Boston area and beyond.
But these were dangerous times in Boston, were you a Loyalist (on the side of the British colonial authorities), or a supporter of independence? Copley’s family were mostly in the Loyalist camp (his father-in-law was one of the merchants who had a consignment of his tea dumped into Boston harbour during the so called Boston Tea Party) and Copley himself was threatened by a mob who suspected him of sheltering a Loyalist. Copley himself had some sympathy with the cause of independence but generally kept his head down.
Knowledge of Copley’s ability spread and he was urged to move to England which he eventually did in 1774. He had immediate success and ‘Watson and the Shark’ was just one of many impressive paintings he made in these early years in London. In 1783 he was elected as a full member of the Royal Academy and members of the royal family were among those who sat for him.
In later years his powers declined and he increasingly relied on loans from friends to maintain his home in London’s fashionable Hanover Square. He died on 9th September 1815 and was buried in Croydon Minster.
The black sailor
As is usually the case in situations like this we are not going to be able to identify this black sailor.
But was he painted from ‘life’, in other words did an actual black man have his image painted by the artist, or is he simply a generic ‘black man’ who existed only in the artist’s imagination? In the absence of documentary evidence we can only go by the look and feel of the image. To our eyes this is not a cartoon caricature (unlike the shark – Copley had never seen an actual shark and it shows!). Copley, based in Boston, Massachusetts for many years would certainly have seen black men (and, following his marriage, he had enslaved people in his own household in Boston), and of course there was a significant black population in London too.
The outcome of the American War resulted in the establishment of a large American loyalist community, both white and black.[5]https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Population-history-of-london.jsp#a1760-1815 The best estimate of London’s black population at this time is around 5,000 to 10,000 out of a total population that was probably still a little under a million. Edward Long, a leading pro-slavery campaigner, suggested a figure of 45,000, a deliberately inflated number designed to frighten the English into believing they could be swamped by idle blacks freed from enslavement.
The case that Copley knew a black man and used him as the basis for this painting is strengthened by another painting of his.
‘Head of a Negro’ , 1777 or 1778, John Singleton Copley
This is a very lifelike representation of the face of a black man and must surely have been based on a living person known to Copley. His art was commended for his ‘startling likenesses of persons and things’ and this is a fine example.
Whether a black sailor was involved in the actual rescue of Watson is unknown, this is after all an artefact, a painting created many years after the event, not a photograph. Various sources state that infra red analysis of the painting shows that the black man in the shark painting was originally painted as having blond hair and fair skin. We cannot know what prompted Copley to paint out the original white sailor and replace him with the black man we see in the finished picture but it is true to say that everything that appears in a painting is there because the artist wanted it to be there, the presence of this black man was the result of a very conscious decision.[6]https://artincontext.org/watson-and-the-shark/ It has been suggested that Copley was making a point in favour of the abolition of slavery, after all, it is the black sailor who is holding the rope that could, literally, be Watson’s lifeline.
Copley was living in London at the time and would have seen black people as he went about his business either as servants in the houses he visited whilst doing his social rounds or destitute on the streets of the city. The ‘black poor’ in London reached the ‘something must be done’ stage in 1785 just a few years after this painting was made and in 1786 several hundred ‘volunteers’ were sent to establish a colony in what is now Sierra Leone, an ill-considered venture which led to almost all of the settlers dying within the first two years of reaching Africa. The names of those who were candidates for the venture can be seen on lists that are held at the National Archives in Kew.
Although we are stepping beyond the bounds of ‘history’ here and into the territory of ‘speculation’, it is certainly possible that the man who served as the model for Copley’s black sailor was among those on these lists.
The ‘Head of a Negro’ wasn’t the only painting in which Copley placed a black man at the centre of the action. In ‘The Death of Major Peirson’ (1783) a black servant of the Major is seen firing a rifle at those who have killed his master. The black servant of auctioneer James Christie (founder of Christie’s auction house) was the model for the figure in the painting.[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Major_Peirson,_6_January_1781
The Death of Major Peirson (detail), John Singleton Copley, 1783
Conclusion
Portraying black men in such prominent roles really was exceptionally unusual at the time these paintings were made and we can’t help but believe that ‘The head of a Negro’ painting brings us face to face with one of the black men who lived in London in the 1770s and 1780s.
John Ellis’ latest article covers the short-lived existence of a ‘black’ regiment in the British Army, the York Rangers, that was operational from 1803 to 1805. In addition to telling the story of the regiment, John gives us an insight into his research methods.
The trigger that fired the ‘starting gun’ for John’s work was a comment he spotted in an August 1803 newspaper report (the on-going, rapid digitisation of old newspapers is a real boon for any historian), ‘Colonel Stevenson is raising, for the use of the West Indies, a Regiment of Lascars, Mulattoes &c’. The paper went on to comment that the Regiment might help tackle the problem of destitute black men on the streets of London who were in ‘the most deplorable and disgusting state of distress.’
John then identified that the ‘musters’ for the York Rangers (essentially the list of those on the payroll) were still in existence and could be viewed at the National Archives at Kew. Living in the north of England meant John would be unable to see the musters in person for some time but, for me, Kew is a short train journey away. I was only too happy to help him out (I could happily spend every day of my life at Kew, it is a wonderful resource and completely free to use). In truth my role was that of a humble photographer, here is just one of the many photos I took:
Givins’ Troop
There were dozens of photos like this which gives you an idea of the challenge John faced. If you find it hard to read the names, trust me, the originals are little better!
These photos gave John the names of many black soldiers previously ‘lost’ to history, his next task was to cross-check the names against the various databases available on, principally, Ancestry and findmypast – painstaking work which yielded some ‘hits’. Just how his work panned out can be seen here:
History is not set in stone, it moves on as our knowledge and understanding of the past grows. There is plenty more to be found out as my photos covered only a sample of the material and there are other names on other pages that, for now, remain hidden from view.
Introducing the latest article for Historycal Roots by John Ellis.
This is such an interesting one and something of a departure from John’s usual field. As he himself says, this is ‘the first time in over twenty years of researching, writing and educating’ he has written a historical article about a female, let alone a ‘woman of colour’. Let us hope it is the first of many!
This is an important subject because, again, as he comments, the voices of women of mixed heritage like Mary Ann Aguirra are rarely heard. They are marginalised by virtue of class, gender and race. I enjoyed history at school but it was very much white history, dominated by white men and men of a particular class at that. It was only many years later that I came to understand how much more varied (and interesting!) British history is.
There are many ways of viewing the story that unfolds of Mary Ann Aguirra and her daughter, Isabella. I choose to see it as a case of a tightly knit working class community coming together and resisting threats to their way of life and livelihood, more about class than race (though that might also have played a part). But I freely acknowledge that there are other ways of reading the incidents played out at the Old Bailey in September 1866. However you read the story it is hard to dispute that Mary Ann Aguirra was a determined and formidable woman. Although we don’t have an image of Mary Ann herself there is a photo of one of her grand daughters and I like to think that we can see something of her grandmother’s character in it.
Isabella Howell, 1880-1960 (reproduced courtesy of Paul Mady)
History isn’t just about ‘facts’, it’s about interpretations too. You can read John’s article here and make up your own mind about the events, but the story of Mary Ann’s appearance at the Old Bailey is only one aspect of a thought provoking article:
John is in more familiar territory with a second recent article. In this one he identifies John Charles as ‘the last Black drummer’ in the British Army to have served at the time of the campaign against Napoleon. Charles left the Army in 1845 and died in 1862:
You might expect ‘The Oxford Companion to Black British History’ to be an authoritative source. You might… However, it’s entry for the Empire Windrush has this to say:
‘when the Empire Windrush sailed on 24 May, there were 492 passengers (and six stowaways) on board.’
The only correct part of that is the date she sailed – but only if you ignore the departure from Trinidad on 20th (24th was the date she left Jamaica).
A common myth is that the ‘492’ were all men and all Jamaican. The ‘Companion’ doesn’t fall into that trap, it says that ‘most of the passengers were young adult men’ which is true, ‘most’ were. But it does gloss over the presence of many women (over 250, almost 25% of the passengers), a fair number of children (80) and some family groups.
Let’s be charitable and point out that the ‘Companion’ was first published in 2007, things move on (even history!) and we learn more. We know a lot more now than we did fifteen years ago.
Our latest contribution on the subject talks about some of the families on the Windrush, you can read about them here:
Apologies, we got so carried away with the lovely new photo of Mona Baptiste that this morning’s post contained the wrong link for the separate website about her. This is the correct link: https://mona-baptiste.com/.
Still, it gives an excuse to send you a cropped version of the photo with the full original (incorrect) caption – she was 22!
A passenger on the HMT Empire Windrush is 21-year-old Miss Mona Baptiste from Trinidad. She arrives to sing blue’s numbers on the radio and in night clubs.
Tilbury, 22 June 1948
Mona on board the Empire Windrush at Tilbury, 22nd June 1948 ((c) topfoto.co.[1]https://www.topfoto.co.uk/groupitem/68/)
We recently came across this photo of Mona Baptiste on board the Empire Windrush. Mona had celebrated her 22nd birthday the day before this was taken and was getting ready to disembark and start her new life in England. We have no particular excuse for posting it today, but we make no apologies for doing so, it’s a lovely picture that captures the hope and optimism that many Windrush passengers would have felt.
You can read about Mona’s life in our book ‘What about the Princess? The life and times of Mona Baptiste’. Since publishing the book we continue to find fresh snippets of information and we publish these on our sister site https://mona-baptiste.com/, if you are interested in Mona why not take a look there?
We have long been intrigued by the story of Evelyn Wauchope, the female stowaway on the Empire Windrush. We were able to find out quite a lot about her and in July 2019 published what we knew (we have now updated the article):
firstly, although we reached out (admittedly in a slightly random way) to various organisations in White Plains, New York, in an effort to find out more about her time living in the community there we, essentially, drew a blank;
secondly, we had no idea what she looked like.
Until now!
Evelyn Wauchope, photographed on arrival at Tilbury Docks, June 22 1948 ((c) topfoto.co.uk)
We are grateful to Audrey Dewjee for drawing out attention to a fantastic trove of photos on this site: https://www.topfoto.co.uk/groupitem/68/ and also to Ioan and Flora for licensing the photo to us at a reduced rate.
I think we can safely say that Evelyn looks ‘pensive’ but who can blame her?! Having used her initiative to get to England she now faced the daunting prospect of making a new life for herself in a strange and, very probably, hostile environment.
Pensive, maybe, but Evelyn was a determined woman who repeatedly overcame the challenges life threw at her. She absolutely deserves to be regarded as a ‘Windrush Pioneer’ and we are so glad that we can finally see what she looked like on 22nd June 1948 as she arrived to start the next chapter in her life.
I expect you know where Guadeloupe is, I mean, exactly where it is, beyond ‘in the Caribbean somewhere’? I’m going to confess that I didn’t – sometimes I learn more than history from articles by John Ellis!
John’s latest contribution features William Buckland. Born on Guadeloupe in about 1786, he went on to serve in the British Army from 1810 until he retired on a small pension in 1823. His medical records show that he was ‘worn out and unable to march’ and had ‘imperfect vision of both eyes’ – not exactly conducive to life as a soldier!
The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, where William Buckland went for his medical examination
After leaving the Army he registered as a British Merchant Seaman from 1835 and obtained work as a cook and steward. Having retired in Limerick he moved to Liverpool, possibly driven out of Ireland (along with many others) by the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. He spent the last years of his life working as a merchant seaman, based in Liverpool, as so many seamen were.
John’s exploration of the historic black presence in the British Army continues apace and you can read about William Buckland here:
The article in the link below isn’t written by regular contributor John Ellis but he has clearly made a big contribution to the research that informs it.
The story starts with the birth of Henry Tite in Waterford, Ireland, in around 1804. When Henry enlisted in the British Army in 1825 the records identify him as a black man. This raises the intriguing question of how a black man came to be born in that place at that time.
A letter recently discovered in the archives at Chatsworth House raises the possibility that Henry was descended from a young crew member of a ship that docked at Waterford in 1756. It was a French ship and, as Britain was at war with France at the time, the ship and its cargo were impounded by the British. The letter recently discovered in the archives at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire is from Lord Frederick Cavendish, stationed in Ireland at the time with troops of the 29th Worcestershire Foot Regiment, to his brother. In it he mentions ‘three little Black boys’. The boys are mentioned in the same sentence as the cargo which implies that whether they were technically ‘free’ or enslaved was a moot point as far as Lord Cavendish was concerned. In the letter he makes it clear he regards them as ‘his’ to dispose of as he chooses.
John Ellis has identified a soldier with the 29th Worcestershire Foot Regiment, Joseph Provance, who could very possibly have been one of the ‘black boys’ mentioned in the letter, the speculation is that Henry Tite may have been descended from another.
You can find out more by following the link. Before you do I would add the point that if we take literally the description of Henry Tite as ‘black’ then that suggests he had a black mother as well as a black father. That raises the even more interesting question – who was she? In fact, the balance of probability is that Henry’s mother was white and he was of mixed heritage but, as nothing is known about either of Henry’s parents that question is likely to remain unanswered.
Although we are stepping beyond the bounds of ‘history’ here and into the territory of ‘speculation’, it is certainly possible that the man who served as the model for Copley’s black sailor was among those on these lists.
