The following is taken from the book “A History of Antigua” by Brian Dyde (with permission from Barbara Arrindell who holds the copyright.) Pages 145-147.
It was not until after he had succeeded his uncle as the lessee, and Lord Lavington had taken over as Governor, that any progress was made. After more behind-the-scenes dealings Codrington’s attorney was able to report in June 1801 that ‘I am . . . informed by Lord Lavington . . . that he has by a late Packet received an order from the King in Council to execute a new Lease of Barbuda to you for Fifty Years from the 5 June 1805 when the old one expires.’
Three years later, just to make sure, Codrington petitioned the King for renewal, concentrating on the claim that since 1705 ‘the said Petitioner’s Family had expended very considerable sums in cultivating and improving the said island, and in stocking the same so as to make the same of great use to the said Petitioner’s other Estates in the Island of Antigua’, but making no reference to wrecks or salvage. The petition was eminently successful and on the due date the lease was renewed for another fifty years, in return for ‘one Fat Sheep if demanded’ and the right for military or naval forces to enter at any time if the need arose.
The ‘right to wreck’ remained intact, which was just as well as hardly a year passed without at least one ship foundering and a profitable salvage operation taking place. Wartime brought even more wrecks, and references to salvage operations and awards litter the correspondence sent to England by the various Codrington managers and attorneys throughout the long period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. From a Swedish schooner wrecked in 1799 ‘the cargo saved did not amount to six hundred pounds’, moaned the attorney of the day, ‘and you were awarded one-third of the gross sales.’ In September 1809 however, another wreck earned Codrington no less than £3369, and four months later he was informed that two more ships were being worked on at the same time, the second ‘laden principally with Spanish Red Wine’. And if that were not enough in July 1810 he was informed: Sir, On Friday Night the 22nd of last month, the American Sloop ‘Uniform’, from Rode-Island bound Antigua, with Corn and Provisions, was wrecked on the North reef of Barbuda, the whole of her deck load consisting of Fish and Wood Hoops, was thrown overboard immediately on her striking; the remainder of the Cargo has been saved with the exception of some Corn which got wet.
It was not only merchant vessels which ran aground: the British frigate HMS Griffon ran aground off the south-east coast in 1760, and in 1813 the larger frigate HMS Woolwich was ‘totally wrecked in a furious hurricane’ on the northern reefs. All the crew of the latter were saved, which, though fortunate for them, was unfortunate for Codrington as the sailors carried out most of the salvage work and his share of the eventual award was a mere £243. But even then all was not lost, as the hull remained fast on the reef long after the crew had departed, and this provided plenty of work for the island’s manager, John James, and the slaves. So much of the ship’s anti-fouling sheathing was recovered that, as a visitor to the island remarked twelve years after she had been wrecked, ‘HMS Woolwich . . . is now commonly called Sir Bethel Codrington ’s copper mine.’
Some idea of the scope of the salvage operations, and the amount of labour involved, is provided in letters written by James to Codrington about several ships which were wrecked after the wars ended. In August 1817 a French brig ‘from Guadeloupe bound to Bordeaux with Sugar, Cotton, Coffee and Rum’ went aground off the south-east coast: Immediately on her striking which was about ten or eleven O’Clock at Night the Captain and Crew took to their Boat, without taking in a single Sail supposing themselves to be on the [Anegada] Reefs; she was in sight of the Fort, and a signal was made at day light for a Vessel in distress, but from the distance she was, and having the boats to carry over land three Miles, and then about ten to row against the Wind, it was noon before I could get on board her, by which time in consequence of the Sails having been left standing her bottom was so much injured that she was nearly full of Water, at least as high inside as it was out. I immediately proceeded to unbind her sails, and get down her Yards and topmasts to make her lay more easy. In spite of her condition salvage operations involving the removal of everything which could conceivably be of value or use were still going on ten days later.
For the slaves this sort of work, involving lengthy boat trips followed by the manhandling of rotting cargoes inside broken, moving hulls at the fastest possible speed, would have been both dangerous and totally exhausting – at no time more so than in the middle of 1821 when James reported: At the time of writing you last I was about to proceed to the Wreck of the Spanish Schooner in search of Money said to be on board of her, but after every exertion nothing of the kind could be found . . . I was obliged to return to Barbuda in consequence of another Vessel running on shore on the West side of the island . . . laden with Sugar, Rum and Cotton . . . [which later] went down in about twenty-five feet of water consequently her decks are covered, and all the sugar lost, the Rum is saved, and so I hope will be the Cotton, the latter but a small quantity.
The ‘fort’ to which he referred in his earlier letter was a three-storey, stone-built tower with an elevated gun platform which had been built in the late eighteenth century to guard the main landing place, known as ‘The River’, on the south coast. ‘The best anchorage’, according to the Sailing Directions of the day, ‘is off the fort and martello tower, with a flagstaff on it . . . This being the principal export place of the island, the road from thence to the town is very good; should a stranger land here, and hoist a flag on the fort, horses will always be sent down to meet him.’
The tower also provided an excellent vantage point from which to keep a lookout for vessels in distress and to summon the salvage team, as was proved with the French brig in 1817. The road between Codrington village and the fort, along which the team had had to haul their boats on that occasion, was described by Henry Nelson Coleridge during a visit he made with his cousin, the first Bishop of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, in 1825: The vegetation on either side . . . appeared here more like a young forest, the trees and bushes being so high as to preclude the possibility of seeing twenty yards to the right hand or left of the road. The surface of the country is at the same time such a dead level, except an inconsiderable hillock at the other end of the island, that none but the veteran woodsman can traverse it with certainty.
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