Passage to Port Royale

The first permanent English settlement of the New World was established in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. The early 17th century was a time of great expansion and exploration, especially for the English empire (the Spaniards were already well established in South America). In 1620, the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. England acquired its first permanent colonies in the Caribbean soon after: St. Kitts in 1624, Barbados in 1627, and Nevis in 1628.

But who were the first colonials, the adventurers who sought new life and opportunities upon the endless continent or on the little islands? When a country's population grows too big for its land, the first to leave are those with dreams and those who have to. They are rich, poor, and middling—but they all sail away from their monotonous lives prepared make their own futures, for better or for worse.

In 1665, six people would meet in the notorious city of Port Royale, Jamaica to put into effect a chain of events that would evoke the supernatural and the strange, a saga in its own right. But these people, these remarkable colonists, would never have met if they had not made the passage from their homeland, if they hadn't seen (or have been forced to see) the opportunities for work and plunder that lay waiting in the New World.

July, 1635

Ships were leaving London for the New World in droves. Weatherby Swann was both disgusted and proud to be part of what seemed like a mass exodus from the fair city of London. His father hadn't wanted him to go—his father, who was related to someone in the House of Lords, his father, who cared more about status than money. Weatherby had lived too long by his father's wishes (more like commandments, really), but realized that his family's status would never improve if they did not have more money. Didn't anyone realize that it was money—not lineage—that truly secured a man's future? Weatherby looked the part of a gentleman, for sure. He enjoyed riding around in a carriage and wearing rich brocades and talking politics with other stuffy gentlemen. But that was only part of who he was. The other part of him was driven by one thing, and one thing only: ambition. He wanted more than relations with political figures. He wanted to shape the English empire, to serve the crown and make lots of money while doing it.

He hadn't asked his father for permission—he bought several thousand acres of an island called St. Kitts from the King, bought several indentures and passage to the New World. Sugar plantations were turning profits quickly in the Caribbean. If he could make a profitable plantation off of cheap land, he would surely be rich. And wealth would buy him more status than his ancestors had ever garnered him. "Perhaps," he thought wryly, "I will be governor of one of these little islands some day."

Billy Turner hurried though the dank streets of London, following hundreds of other teenage boys and young men headed toward the docks. He looked around at all of the other sorry immigrants, all good English boys like himself, all leaving impoverished families whose farms would not produce, whose parents could not feed them. They were the result of overpopulation from prosperous times, and now they fled their home country out of necessity—they were a burden on the land that they loved. But some held their heads high. Billy watched these men, who on the outside looked as abject and degraded as himself, but were, for some reason, standing tall like they were privy to some secret that Billy didn't know. "How can they walk towards the docks like that?" Billy asked himself. "How can they look at those ships and see anything other than the loss of their families? Don't they know they will never see their loved ones again?" But then a chilling thought passed through Billy's mind. "Maybe they don't care," he thought darkly. But how could a man not care for his mother?

Billy's family had been farmers for as long as anyone could remember. There was nary a stitch of high-born blood in his body, but his forefathers had all been good Englishmen, followers of the King and the Church of England. His favorite childhood memories were of his grandmother's stories of Gloriana, the great Queen Elizabeth, and how she had looked when she went on progress. "Now that was a real queen," his grandmother had told him. "She always had time for her people, even for the lowliest and most undeserving."

"She would ride along with the entire court, and we would line the road, dressed in our finest, with flowers in our hair. The other young women in town and I talked about her for years on end between her progresses. She was the most beautiful creature in the world, and we all loved her more than we loved anyone else in the world. The way she smiled at us, the way she gave herself completely to our welfare. She never married, you know, because she said she was only truly married to England." Charles I, of course, was not nearly as resplendent as the last queen of the Tudor family, but Billy loved him because Billy loved England. And now he was leaving it.

There was just not enough food left. They had started breeding livestock to make more money, but then the price of livestock dropped, and they had little room for crops, and no money to pay the field hands. The Turner family had never been rich, but they had always gotten by. Finally, in 1635, the strain had gotten too great and Billy had no choice but to seek employment in the New World. He had left his family's farm on foot, headed for the great city of London. Before leaving, his mother had packed his clothes and his father had given him a few of the family's precious shillings. His grandmother, now very old and weak, had stood up and embraced him. Then, she had reached into her purse and pulled out one of her most precious possessions—a 1573 coin, minted during the time of Gloriana's reign. "Keep it always; use it to remember your duties to family and country," she had told him.

As he walked through the streets of London, he fingered the coin in his pocket and thought of his grandmother. How could he be leaving both his family and his country, not knowing when he would return? What if he died in Virginia and was not buried on English soil? Would his soul be doomed to roaming until he found his way back to the land that he loved so desperately? He held the coin tightly as a talisman, a reassurance that he would somehow survive in the New World and return the coin to its rightful place.

He finally arrived at the docks and showed the immigration officials his indenture papers. In front of him and behind him was a long line of young men just like him—young, unskilled workers looking for employment. He walked up the dock and onto the ship, which was much smaller than he thought ships carrying over a hundred passengers would be. He had never been on the sea before, and was suddenly afraid, not of leaving his family and homeland, but of what would come. The devastating possibility of failure pushed his shoulders into a slump and he trudged up the gangplank, holding the Elizabethan coin as tightly as his hand could clench.

Merchant ships, military ships, and privateer ships came in and out of London all through that hot July. So many people moved out to the New World, and a few came back, fed up with their luck there. The most who headed out were young men, seeking a better future. Some were like Weatherby Swann, looking for riches in land speculation and smuggling, among other trades. Others were like Billy Turner, forced to leave by poverty. But they all stood on ship decks at night, worrying and hoping, not realizing how severely their lives would change, not allowing the reality of the unknown to sink in. They simply looked out at the impossibly large expanse of sea, swept up in the power of its vastness.