The Nantucket Clipper traveled north from Antigua to St. Kitts, where we’re spending the day. The boat is docked at the capital city, Basseterre ("Bass-sah-tear"). St. Kitts is the larger island of a two-island nation called St. Kitts and Nevis. We found a Kittian guide, Mr. Carlton, to show us around the island and tell us about the history of St. Kitts. He explained that St. Kitts and Nevis have a connection to U.S. history. In 1757, St. Kitts’ smaller sister island, Nevis, was the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of the American Constitution. Pick up a $10 dollar bill. That’s Alexander Hamilton’s picture on the front! Mr. Carlton told us another founder of our country (our second president and writer of the Declaration of Independence) spent time on St. Kitts. Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather had a sugar plantation on the island and Thomas Jefferson spent time there. In fact, Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather is buried at the old Anglican church, in Old Roadtown, near his plantation. We visited his old plantation and carefully climbed around the ruins of the sugar mill, once used for processing sugar cane. Mr. Carlton explained that back in the 1700s, around the time the United States was formed, sugar was the most important crop in the world. Everyone loved sugar. Sugar cane grows in warm, tropical climates and the Caribbean islands where the perfect places to grow it. If you wanted to get rich during that era, you went to the Caribbean to grow sugar cane. European settlers England, France, Spain, and Holland (now called the Netherlands) came to the region, cut down the islands’ forests, and planted sugar cane. The valuable crop was used to make sugar, molasses, and rum. Any Caribbean island with farmable land was used to grow sugar cane. Around the time of the American Revolution, 68 sugar plantations existed on St. Kitts alone! The plantation owners sold their sugar products to American, British, French, and Dutch customers – and anyone else who wanted to buy them. Because of the American Revolution, the British wanted to punish the United States and the countries that helped it. So the British made a law that only England could buy and sell with British Caribbean islands. American ships were sometimes captured by British ships, from Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua, trying to buy sugar from plantations. Today St. Kitts is the only island in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean to still grow sugar cane. We learned that these cane fields will probably be gone soon, too. Sugar cane is very expensive to grow, harvest, and process. The St. Kitts and Nevis government runs the only sugar mill on the island and is losing millions of dollars to keep it in operation. Next year, they’ll close the sugar factory and St. Kitts will not grow sugar cane anymore. We’re glad we were able to see these cane fields before they are gone forever. |
Our expedition ship the Nantucket Clipper.
Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather owned this sugar plantation, which now lies in ruins.
An old St. Kitts sugar plantation, surrounded by sugar cane fields.
We visited this old British fort with big cannons that overlooked and protected the sugar cane plantations on St. Kitts for the British Empire. The island in the distance is St. Eustatius.
These St. Kitts sugar cane fields will be cut down next year. |
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December 26, 2000
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