The Maldives Comes to Manchester

A great night in the Punjab Restaurant in Manchester's Curry Mile. Our first visit to this particular restaurant, and we liked it very much.




A lot of talk. A lot of laughter. A lot of photographs.



Virtually the whole of the local Maldivian community was there.




It was a privilege for us to meet such an interesting and friendly group of people, and I think we learned far more about the Maldives than we did on our three visits there as tourists. I also learned a little about the movement of the currents in the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic!

Whether they learned anything about St. Helena from me is I think a moot point!

Our particular thanks to the amazing Aisha for having organised the event.

Maldivia - an Update

I have now gone over my original sources for the comment I made about the origins of the term Maldivia. I am afraid I have to admit an error. I think that the mention of the word "slaves" in the context of Maldivians was almost certainly my mistake. I suspect that the Maldivians were classified as "free blacks". My apologies for this, and for any upset it may have caused. I have added a comment to the original blog.

The source of my comments was Janisch's book on the St Helena records

now available online. I wish I had given the reference in my original blog. These records are well worth perusing for anyone who wishes to learn more about St Helena's history. The introduction is very apt:

Probably there are no Records of other British settlements more interesting or saddening than those which are to be found in these pages. Amongst the many incidents of the early days of the Island's history, herein recapitulated, several will be found to be highly ludicrous and entertaining, while some are revolting in the extreme.

The bits on Maldivia I found there are as follows:

[1735]
March 17.—Capt. Polly of the Drake at the distance of 150 leagues from land took up a Boat with ten Blacks of the Maldive Islands who were drove out to Sea and near perishing—three died on board, 5 Men, 1 woman and 1 boy landed here.
[Note.—The Maldivia Gardens, then a Government Plantation, derived their name from the employment of these men therein.]

22nd March 1742 —Major Thomas Lambert arrived and proclaimed Governor.
6th April—The property called " The Maldives" turned into a Hospital.

Rev Boys and Napoleon's Chair - an Unlikely Story?

BOYS, Richard, The Reverend (1785-1867). Chaplain to the Honourable East India Company on St. Helena, 1811 to 1830.





The Rev. Richard Boys was previously mentioned in my entry of December 9th 2008



Napoleon's Chair Discovered in Maidstone, 2009

A chair that belonged to Rev. Boys has now been discovered - or rather rediscovered - in Maidstone Museum. In a video embedded in a recent BBC article it is claimed that Napoleon used to sit, or rather fidget, in this chair when he visited Rev. Boys.


I have very serious doubts about the veracity of this claim - but would welcome any evidence to the contrary.







Napoleon visited very few houses on St. Helena, and as far as I am aware the house of Rev. Boys, appropriately known at the time as Kent Cottage, was not among them. (1) Had he done so, the Governor would have been informed, and there would surely be documentary evidence about the visits.




Rev Boys was a thorn in the flesh of the authorities on St Helena both before Napoleon arrived and after he had died. Any report that he was meeting Napoleon would I am fairly certain have met with some reaction. The Governor would I suspect have been glad of any excuse to get Rev. Boys off the island!

Arnold Chapin made this comment about Boys and Napoleon:

So far as the captivity was concerned, Mr Boys was brought into contact with Napoleon on one occasion only .He buried Cipriani, and for this service was given by Napoleon on April 18th, 1818, a snuff-box for himself and £25 for the poor. The snuff-box was returned, however, on account of having been given in a manner contrary to the regulations. (2)

I do think that the chair was probably Napoleon's, or to be more precise, that the chair came from Longwood. Whether Napoleon used to sit in it and was responsible for the markings on it is another matter!

Napoleon's Chair Discovered in Maidstone, 1911

After Napoleon's death the contents of Longwood were sold off to all and sundry, and it is conceivable that the Rev Boys obtained this item at that time. This at least was the view of an article which appeared in the New York Times in 1911 when the chair was last discovered!

At that time the chair on display in Maidstone museum bore the foillowing inscription:

This chair was used by Napoleon Bonaparte during his captivity in St. Helena. After his decease it was purchased by the Rev. R. Boys, then Chaplain to Sir Hudson Lowe, Governor of St. Helena, and subsequently Vicar of Loose, near Maidstone. At his decease it was purchased and presented to this museum by Alexander Randall, Esq. (3)

That sounds to me a more plausible explanation! I would be happy to be corrected.
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1. This house has also at times been known as Smith’s Gate House and Stone Top Cottage. – It is more famous as the prison of the Boer General, Pieter Arnoldus Cronjé.

2. Arnold Chapin, A St. Helena Who's Who (London 1919). An earlier edition used the word "Longwood" instead of "Napoleon", which casts a little doubt as to whether Boys ever met Napoleon in person.

3. The article is entitled Marryat's Sketch of Napoleon on His Bier, but it refers to the chair in Maidstone Museum as well as the sketch.

Churchill and Napoleon -a postscript

Since my last blog I have had another look at Roy Jenkins's excellent biography of Churchill. Not a single mention of Napoleon - but an interesting comment about Churchill's famous ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough : as famous for ruthless self-advancement as he was for martial prowess (1).

Not surprising perhaps that the young Winston also had a great interest in Napoleon as well as in his famous ancestor. By all accounts, including his own, Churchill was a young man in a hurry - and there was no better example of what a young man could achieve in the worlds of war and politics than that of Napoleon.

Churchill's many contemporary critics, particularly after the costly failure of the Dardanelles Campaign and his support for intervention in the Russian Revolution certainly made the connection with Napoleon.

The cartoonist Low began caricaturing Churchill in a cast-off Napoleonic uniform, embodying his image as an adventurer with an obsession, like that of Napoleon himself, to conquer Russia. This image of a Napoleonic Churchill was also popular amongst contemporary opinion, as most people viewed him at the time as an emblem of concealed reaction. H.G. Wells also had little sympathy for Churchill's view of the new Communist State, and parodied him as Napoleon in his play Men Like Gods(2)

Take also this mocking article from the New York Times in 1922:

At Harrow, the lad, moody as Napoleon, was alone. ...

others lived within the regulations; he looked - sometimes leaped - beyond them. .. He thus became a soldier of fortune - a buccaneer - using the pen while he wore the sword. And his only real comrade was Bonaparte. True they did not see much of each other in the flesh, but in his library Winston collected hundreds of volumes on the Corsican, and these he has bound sumptuously in the leather with which every book is honored when it enters the archives of the British aristocracy. 'Chatting thus with Napoleon's memory, Churchill unbends; you see him in velvet, even climbing a ladder - only a short one is needed - to reach his companion's loftier pages. To say this is no reflection on Churchill, for Napoleon himself would have had to do it if he had collected so many books about Winston.

What Rosebery has admired in Napoleon is "the last phase." That is because Rosebery is our greatest living expert on abdication, and to him, St. Helena is the holy place, in fact his Mecca. But Churchill values Napoleon chiefly because in his youth he reduced the pretensions of older men. He was one who met experience with explosions. Indeed, there is only one point of strategy on which Churchill differs from his associate and that is but a passing incident - the Battle of Waterloo. This is where Churchill would have been prepared to offer Bonaparte a friendly hint. He would have warned the Emperor that while Wellington was, of course, no Marlborough, he had, like Haig, qualities which we generals of genius must not despise.

..
The final verdict on Churchill will be probably that he is interesting but expensive. He works. He thinks. He knows. He acts. He even gambles. If only his ventures had all succeeded, they would have been admirable. In some countries not far from England he would have been by now an Emperor, reigning not - it may be - in Paris, but certainly over Elba. Of England it has to be said reluctantly that she is too stupid to appreciate dictators.(3)

Churchill was of course not alone on the Liberal benches in Parliament in the Edwardian era in his interest in Napoleon. There also for a time sat two who have appeared already on these blogs, Sir Walter Runciman and William Hesketh Lever, who unlike Churchill were not soldiers but creators of very successful business empires. So also has Churchill's friend, Lord Rosebery, the former Liberal Prime Minister and author of the famous book on Napoleon's captivity. (4)

Perhaps though rather than his Liberal affiliations at that time, a far better explanation of Churchill's own interest in Napoleon lay in his military background. A recent study by Gerald D. Swick makes a good point:

Churchill was one of the rare leaders of history, men such as Frederick the Great, Oliver Cromwell, and his own famous ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, who were “born for war,” as Napoleon once described himself. These were war leaders who “instinctively understood it in all of its aspects: strategic, political, diplomatic, moral and psychological.” Moreover, as one of Churchill’s most astute biographers, Sebastian Haffner, has observed: “No one will ever understand the phenomenon that was Churchill by regarding him simply as a politician and statesman who was ultimately destined like Asquith or Lloyd George, Wilson or Roosevelt, to conduct a war; he was a warrior who realized that politics forms a part of the conduct of war. (5)

Churchill and St. Helena

Churchill never set foot on St. Helena. I doubt whether it would have interested him. By the time he appeared on the scene its importance to the British Empire had gone. It was not a place where cavalry could charge or where an officer could play a few chukkas of polo. In later life it could not compete with the attractions of Madeira and the South of France. More than that, the island was associated with the ultimate failure of Napoleon. It was a road to nowhere. Churchill was interested only in adventure, ambition and destiny.

Churchill's friend, the Prince of Wales, later for a short time to be Edward VIII, did make a brief official visit in 1925. In a speech on his arrival in Jamestown he paid his respects to Napoleon's memory in terms of which I would imagine that Churchill, as a life long francophile, would not have disapproved.

I need not assure you of the deep interest with which I set foot on an Island whose name is so well known to all students of History, not only because it was here that were written the closing pages of a great and romantic life story – the story of the Emperor whose mortal remains now lie on the banks of the Seine, where many soldiers of France have found a resting place ... (6)

Like Napoleon though, St. Helena has honoured Churchill in its stamps.

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1. Roy Jenkins, Churchill (Macmillan 2001)
2. Timothy S. Benson Low on Churchill
3. The mocking tone of the article is set from the beginning: When one discusses unseen things with Winston Churchill, one finds that he believes firmly in an all-wise and an all-powerful Being because, despite Darwin, none other could have devised the family of the Duke of Marlborough, which after centuries of uphill effort has culminated at last in himself. P.W. Wilson, Winston Churchill, His Interrogation Mark
4. See blogs on Lord Lever Art Gallery and the blog of 11 February 2008 which among others discusses Walter Runciman and his book,The Tragedy of St Helena and Lord Rosebery's Napoleon: The Last Phase .
5. WARLORD: A Life of Winston Churchill at War Debuts by Gerald D. Swick
6. Churchill's friendship and support for Edward VIII during the abdication crisis did little for his reputation in the years leading up to the second world war. Churchill's francophilia is described by Jenkins as a never to be underestimated feature of Churchill's long life. The full text of the Prince of Wales's speech is displayed in the Council Room in the Castle on St Helena. The speech also celebrated St Helena's loyalty to the Empire, and acknowledged the importance of the flax industry on which much of your material prosperity depends.

Churchill and Napoleon

Amidst his many reminiscences about the battle of El Alemain in which he appeared to have played a major part, I recall my history master recommending Churchill's My Early Life. Now, more years later than I care to admit, I have finally read it, and can confirm his judgement.

What an excellent read it is: beautifully written, at times funny, and a fascinating window into the world of late Victorian British Imperialism. I also like my Folio Society edition - in the digital age there are few pleasures greater than handling a finely bound book.

I was aware that Churchill was a francophile and vaguely thought that he was, like a number of his class and generation, an admirer of Napoleon. It was with interest therefore that I read his account of his capture in the Boer War.

Churchill, who had lost his pistol, was confronted by a lone Boer horseman whose rifle was pointed at him.

I thought there was absolutely no chance of escape, if he fired he would surely hit me, so I held up my hands and surrendered myself a prisoner of war.

"When one is alone and unarmed", said the great Napoleon, in words which flowed into my mind in the poignant minutes that followed,"a surrender may be pardoned".

I admit I had to read this more than once. Here is Churchill recording, some 30 years later, that at the moment when he was faced with likely death if he sought to escape, he had thought about what Napoleon would have done, and decided that in his circumstances the great man would have thought that a surrender was pardonable. I wondered whether this was simply another example of the ironic and self deprecatory humour which is a feature of the book, so I decided to fish around a little, and came across this extract from a recent article:

In September 1897, Churchill wrote to his mother from the North-West Frontier of India explaining the force of his ambition: "I have faith in my star--that is, that I am intended to do something in the world." As this allusion and innumerable others to Napoleon make clear, the 22-year-old soldier already imagined himself as the young emperor. During this period, he seems to have been consumed with Napoleon--he planned to write a biography of the French military genius, and the eponymous hero of his 1899 novel Savrola is nothing if not Napoleonic in his ambitions: "Ambition was the motive force, and he was powerless to resist it.... 'Vehement, high, and daring' was his cast of mind. The life he lived was the only one he could ever live; he must go on to the end." Right up to the devastating failure of the Dardanelles campaign in 1915, Churchill was routinely criticized by his colleagues for his ebullient, Napoleonic sense of himself. In September 1913, Lloyd George noted that all politicians are keen on success but most lacked what Churchill possessed in abundance, that is "the Napoleonic idea." After the Dardanelles fiasco, he concluded in a similar vein that Churchill "had spoiled himself by reading [too much] about Napoleon." (1)

Hard to believe that Churchill has become the hero of American neo-conservatives, and that the US President who renamed French Fries "Liberty Fries" had a bust of him on his desk!

Size is Important

One of the things that the British have always held against Napoleon was his height, or rather his lack of it. A recent article in the left wing tabloid Daily Mirror described both Napoleon and President Zarkozy as French pipsqueaks . Napoleon has even been rewarded with his own syndrome, although modern scholars seem to think that he was actually of fairly average height for his time, 5' 6" - 5' 7". So the big question is, how tall was Sir Winston Churchill?
The answer seems to be 5' 7"!

Churchill on Captivity

Finally I was struck by Churchill's comments about captivity. When reading this it is worth recalling that he escaped after less than a month:

Prisoner of war! That is the least unfortunate kind of prisoner to be, but it is nevertheless a melancholy state. You are in the power of your enemy. You owe your life to his humanity, and your daily bread to his compassion. You must obey his orders, go where he tells you, stay where you are bid, await his pleasure, possess your soul in patience. Meanwhile the war is going on, great events are in progress, fine opportunities for action and adventure are slipping away. Also the days are very long. Hours crawl like paralytic centipedes. Nothing amuses you. Reading is difficult; writing impossible. Life is one long boredom from dawn till slumber
Moreover, the whole atmosphere of prison, is odious. Companions in this kind of misfortune quarrel about trifles and get the least possible pleasure from each other's society. If you have never been under restraint before and never known what it was to be a captive, you feel a sense of constant humiliation in being confined to a narrow space, fenced in by railings and wire, watched by armed men, and webbed about with a tangle of regulations and restrictions. I certainly hated every minute of my captivity more than I ever hated any other period in my whole life.

Although there are striking differences between Churchill's brief captivity and the captivity of Napoleon, this passage surely gives some indication of how Napoleon and his companions at Longwood must have felt.

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(1) Paul Stevens, "Churchill's military romanticism"Queen's Quarterly , 2006.

Maldivia St Helena Revisited.

Another email, this time from Aishath Naaz, a clinical psychologist from the Maldives and a member of the Maldives 1st Human Rights Commission, who is currently living in Manchester where she is studying for a PhD.

Your Blog Reflections on a Journey to St. Helena, I think has caught the attention of every Maldivian who has access to internet. The article written by you on, Thursday, February 14, 2008 Maldivia, St. Helena has caught our attention and it has touched many in a very special way.

We never knew that our people were captured and taken as slaves, and something moved me to tears reading about these 10 people ( From the Jamestown Records) who were then made to work on these plantations. Our history is buried in mystery, may be even the fates of these people but after 256 years we suddenly, through your blog came to know that these people from our country settled elsewhere and lived and died as slaves.Yet, they left behind the name"MALDIVIA' perhaps so that one day ......that is today we would come to know some of our people lived and died...in this spot.
I am very interested in finding even the smallest clue on what happened to these people,...any more details ...any possibility of finding any thing more about what happened to these people.
I would be very grateful if you can give your response.

Aishath has supplied a link to the Dhivehi Observer;
there is also a link to Aishath's blog, which deals with issues of real substance, and makes my efforts seem rather trivial and inconsequential.

I can understand why she and other Maldivians are so touched by this. Surprising perhaps that it has taken so long for them to find out about it. One more indication of the tremendous power of the internet. I just wish I had more information that I could pass on. If anyone can add anything to this story please let me or Aishath know.

Dartmoor Prison: 200 Years Commemoration

Michel Martineau has an interesting blog Les couleurs françaises sur une autre prison anglaise !, mostly in English, about an Anglo-French ceremony that took place on May 24th 2009 at Dartmoor prison.



Exactly 200 years earlier a long line of French prisoners straddled the 17 miles from Plymouth Harbour, where they had been kept in appalling, insanitary prison hulks, to Prince Town where a new prison was constructed to house them and later American prisoners of war. (1) Apparently there was snow on the ground when they arrived.



Painting by Paul Deacon.

Over 1100 Napoleonic prisoners subsequently died at Dartmoor prison in 1809-1816.

More information may be found on the Napoleonic Organization web site.

I notice on the Devon Council web site that

The brutal mistreatment of American prisoners of war was investigated after the war by an Anglo-American commission, which awarded compensation to the families of those who had died there.

According to this same site

Between 1812 and 1816 about 1,500 American and French prisoners died in Dartmoor prison and were buried in a field beyond the prison walls.

One sometimes wonders if we intentionally give the French cause for grievance! The 200 or so American casualties were dwarfed by the casualties suffered by the French, and there is no record of any compensation to French families for mistreatment of their relatives.

The following contains a video giving interesting historical background on the prison, which apparently now attracts 30,000 tourists a year. St Helena could do with some of those!

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1. It is now often forgotten, by Brits if not Americans, that the UK was at war with the United States in 1812-1814 as well as with the French! Prince Town was named after the Prince of Wales, who later became George IVth.

The Racehorse Blucher and St Helena

I have said on a previous blog that one of the best things about blogging is the emails that you get.


I have recently had a very interesting query from novelist and historian Mike Hutton about one of the horses that raced on St Helena in Napoleon's time.






Some Background: Horse Racing on St Helena

During the captivity horse racing took place twice a year at Deadwood from April 1817. The organiser was the young Captain (later Admiral) Henry John Rous, pictured above in later years, who was to become the 'dictator' of English horse racing. (1)

Napoleon used to watch the races from behind the shutters at Bertrand's cottage (2). I understand that his horses were lent for the racing, as were those of the Governor.

The horses which took part in the first meeting were

African, Brickdust, Blucher , Bacchus, Botherum, Comet, Creeper, Dolly, Emperor, Feather, Fidget, Grinder, Hambletonian, Hope, John Bull, Kutusoff, Manks, Marske, Mansel, Negro, Pringle, Prime of Life, Regent, Royal Oak, Regulus, Sebastian, Salamanca, Toussaint, Tom Tit, Tom Crop, Tickler, Whiskey.

Basil Jackson's Reminiscences are worth recording

... recalls to my memory our St Helena racing,
over which Captain Rous ruled with all the authority he so long exercised at Newmarket. We had our Turf Club, and an excellent mile-and-a-half course at Dead wood. It is true that our horses were not of high quality, but they afforded quite as much amusement as if they had been thoroughbred Rous infected me with his racing taste, and he found me an apt pupil, though invariably opposed to him. The Gover- nor was very liberal in his patronage, giving two handsome plates annually, and generally attended the sport in person ; he also placed his horses at the command of Captain Rous, and as they, or some of them, were English, and the best in the island, he enjoyed great advantages. The light weights of both army and navy furnished jockeys, and all turned out in proper racing equipment.
(3)

The Mystery of Blucher


To return to the query from Mike Hutton. He is doing some research on early English horse racing and is trying to find out what happened to the famous English race horse Blucher. This horse won the Derby in 1814 and was recorded as being at stud in the UK in 1817, but disappears without trace from the records by 1822. He wondered whether the horse on St Helena which was listed as racing in the first meeting in 1817 was the same horse.

There is fairly incontrovertible evidence of the sale of Blucher along with 3 slaves Under the Tree on St. Helena in 1829. I am inclined to doubt that this was the famous Blucher, although the sellers might have been happy to give that impression. Jackson indicates (see passages in bold above) that the standard of horse racing on St Helena was not very high, and I would have thought that the presence of a Derby winner would have received much notice. If anybody can help Mike to resolve the mystery of what happened to the famous Blucher, or any more information on the 1829 auction then please let me know, and I will pass the information to him.

________________________________________________

1. Henry John Rous (1795 –1877), second son of the 1st Earl of Stradbroke, British admiral, steward of the Jockey Club, author of the standard work on the Laws and Practice of Horse Racing, Conservative MP and First Lord of the Admiralty. Rous came out to St. Helena in the Conqueror, in August 1817 he was appointed to command of the Podargus. In January 1818 he was transferred to the Mosquito, and he left St. Helena in July 1819.

2. See my blog entry of March 4th 2008.

3. Basil Jackson Notes and Reminiscences of a Staff Officer, Chiefly Relating to the Waterloo Campaign and to St. Helena Matters During the Captivity of Napoleon (1877 & 1903). Jackson also describes an event that I have referred to on an earlier blog: : During the first day's sport after our arrival,
an awkward circumstance occurred on the course, which everybody regretted when it could not be helped. A certain half-mad and drunken piqueur of Napoleon, named Archambault, took it into his head to gallop within the ropes when the course was cleared, and the horses coming up. For this transgression he was pursued by one of the stewards, and horse-whipped out of the forbidden limits. This gentleman knew not that the offender belonged to the Longwood establishment, or he would, no doubt, have spared his whip — particularly as Napoleon at the time was sitting on a bench outside his residence, looking at the crowd through a glass, and we were apprehensive that he might in-terpret the accidental chastisement his servant had received, into a premeditated insult to the master.

But we did Napoleon injustice by the sup- position. Mr O'Meara told me the next day, that he had distinctly witnessed everything thai passed, and had been very angry when he saw Archambault galloping alone along the course, and was pleased to see him chastised ; and that he had called him into his presence, and ex- pended on him a few f- beies and sacri cochons, afterwards.