Place and mobilities in the maritime world

377 Pages·2012·3.34 MB·English

by  A A

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PLACE AND MOBILITIES IN THE MARITIME
WORLD:
THE ROYAL MAIL STEAM PACKET
COMPANY IN THE CARIBBEAN,
C. 1838 TO 1914

Anyaa Anim-Addo

Royal Holloway, University of London
PhD Human Geography
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Declaration of Authorship

I, Anyaa Anim-Addo, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it
is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always
clearly stated.

Signed: ______________________________________________________
Date: ______________________________________________________
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Abstract

The empirical subject of this thesis is the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company
(RMSPC), a British-based steamship company that served the Caribbean from
1842, and extended operations into South America in 1851. I construct a
postcolonial historical geography of the RMSPC as it operated in the ‘expanded’
post-emancipation Caribbean. By analysing the steamship service as a network
rather than as a ‘tool’ of empire, I foreground the mobilities constructed by this
Company, and explore how these mobilities impacted upon maritime places in
the Caribbean. In so doing, I develop a ‘tidalectic’ approach to the RMSPC’s
past, by expanding upon Kamau Brathwaite’s concept. I argue that tidalectics, in
intersection with the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, contributes to an advance in
understandings of maritime history, since together they facilitate mobile
examinations of the relationship between sea and shore.

To develop analysis of the RMSPC’s maritime mobilities, four substantive case
studies are presented. The first case study focuses on the RMSPC’s ports-of-call,
as mapped by the scheme of routes. The second such chapter considers the
steamship itself as place, particularly with reference to social and cultural
dynamics. The coaling process is the focus of the third case study, and in the
final chapter I add to the analysis the RMSPC’s two main tourist routes through
the Americas. The thesis proposes that steamship mobilities in many ways
escaped and exceeded the original intentions of company directors and managers.
As complex networks rather than straightforward imperial ‘tools’, steamship
mobilities were subject to the influence of multiple places. In the case of the
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RMSPC, Caribbean influences overlooked in previous studies have been
reconstructed and offered on the basis of archival research.
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Contents
List of figures 7
Acknowledgements 9
Introduction 10

1. A postcolonial historical geography of the RMSPC 15
Postcolonial histories and geographies of empire 16
Atlantic and maritime histories 20
Tidalectics 31
Mobilities 37
Tidalectic mobilities 41
Conclusion 46

2. The politics of mobility in the post-emancipation Caribbean 48
Withdrawal from the estates 54
Free labour, slave labour, indentured labour, and the sugar industry 59
i. The British West Indian context 59
ii. The French and Spanish West Indian contexts 62
Steamship salvation? 66
Conclusion 75

3. The RMSPC’s archive - sources and interpretive strategies 77
Along and against the archival grain 78
Beyond the grain 85
Conclusion 91

4. The steamship network and the RMSPC’s ports-of-call 92
Introduction 92
The limits of the network: marginalized places and merchants’ pleas 99
Central sites in the RMSPC’s network 106
The place of Panama in the RMSPC’s network 113
The network in crisis: yellow fever at St Thomas 124
Conclusion 135
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5. Tidalectics in motion: the RMSPC ship as place 138
Introduction 138
Maintaining order on board 146
Safe and secure ships 155
Overlapping order: Admiralty Agents 164
Civility on board: saloon culture 173
Steam creolised: deck and other cultures on board 185
Conclusion 192

6. ‘This operation is carried on by coloured “ladies”’: mobilities, immobilities
and the coaling process 196
Introduction 196
The RMSPC’s management of a mobile coaling infrastructure 203
Immobilising strategies at the coaling station
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Coaling and the circulation of debate in the late nineteenth century 234
Conclusion 246

7. ‘Winter in the West Indies’: the RMSPC’s tourist spaces, c. 1869
to 1914 249
Introduction 249
A long-term view of the RMSPC’s passenger trade 257
Promoting place: the RMSPC’s marketing of its tourist regions 266
Imaginative geographies: non RMSPC views of the expanded Caribbean 292
Flirting with space 298
Conclusion 311

Conclusion 314
Geographies of the RMSPC 315
The RMSPC and historiographies of oceans and travel 322
Postcolonialising the RMSPC’s past 326

Bibliography 331
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List of figures

2.1 The Caribbean and Central America in 1842 52
2.2 The Atlantic, the RMSPC’s region of operations 53
2.3 The RMSPC’s Brazil and River Plate extension of service 71

4.1 A page from the RMSPC’s 1885 scheme of routes 92
4.2 The RMSPC’s May 1843 scheme of routes 93
4.3 The RMSPC’s May 1843 scheme, showing routes 3 and 8 94
4.4 The RMSPC’s 1843 Northern Islands route 100
4.5 The RMSPC’s routes via Barbados and St Thomas 109
4.6 Map showing the Panama region 116

5.1 The RMSP Trent 140
5.2 Destruction by fire of the Amazon mail steamer 160
5.3 The RMSPC’s Steam Ship Medway 174
5.4 St Thomas (Parti af Byen og Havnen) 188
5.5 Royal Mail Steam Ship Shannon 190

6.1 The RMSPC’s Caribbean coaling stations 202
6.2 Sailing vessels chartered by the RMSPC 210
6.3 The Carenage in St George’s, Grenada in 2010 221
6.4 Coaling the RMSP Trent at St Thomas 231
6.5 Coaling a steamer at Kingston, Jamaica 238

7.1 The RMSPC’s passenger income 1860-1902 257
7.2 ‘Winter in the West Indies’ poster 273
7.3 The first page of Tours in the West Indies, season 1907/08 276
7.4 The route of the RMSPC’s ‘A’ tour 279
7.5 The route of the RMSPC’s ‘B’ tour 280
7.6 The route of the RMSPC’s ‘C’ tour 281
7.7 One of several ‘Street’ images in Tours in the West Indies 284
7.8 A page from the Guide for the South American route 288
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7.9 Kingston, Jamaica, by William Lionel Wyllie 296
7.10 Table number 3 in the 1872 scheme of routes 301
7.11 The Myrtle Bank Hotel, Jamaica, after the 1907 hurricane 308
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Acknowledgements

This research has been generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council and The National Maritime Museum (NMM) in Greenwich. I would like
to thank my supervisor David Lambert, and my co-supervisor Nigel Rigby for
making this possible and for all of their guidance. I would also like to thank my
advisor Felix Driver for his support. Thanks are due, too, to David Gilbert, Phil
Crang and Tim Cresswell for their encouragement. Thanks also to everyone in
the Social and Cultural Geography research group at Royal Holloway, especially
Kim for discussions about all things maritime, and John for discussions not quite
so maritime. In addition, I must thank a number of people at the NMM, including
Janet, Sally and Lizelle. I thank also the staff at the Caird library for their
assistance, and particularly Martin for answering numerous questions with great
patience. Equally, I must thank Jerry, Andrew and Graham for welcoming me
into their office in 2009.

Thank you to everyone who offered feedback via questions at conferences,
workshops and seminars. For permission to reproduce visual images I would like
to thank the Picture Library at the NMM, the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library, Senate House Library, and History Miami. Special thanks to Jenny in
the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway for her expert cartographic
assistance.

Thank you to my friends for their patience when I was buried in my work.
Finally, and above all, thanks to my family, because your support is endless.
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Introduction

The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC) was a steamship service that
transported mail, passengers and cargo between Britain and the Caribbean from
1842 onwards, and extended operations into South America in 1851. Although
the name is no longer widely recognized, the RMSPC was a major maritime
presence, similar to the Cunard line, in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. As
a recipient of a British Government mail contract, the RMSPC was at once a
transportation service and a communications system linking Europe and the
Americas.

This study examines the steamship service not as a ‘tool of empire’, but as a
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mobile network that facilitated imperial and colonial interactions. My way of
advancing this argument is to shift analytical focus from London and
Southampton (where its management decisions were taken) to the ‘expanded’
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Caribbean, the Company’s first region of operations. I focus on the places
constituted by the RMSPC’s service at different scales, and consider how these
places were shaped by imperial and colonial mobilities. Although this study is
ordered thematically, its chronology covers the period from the Company’s
establishment to the eve of the First World War, which disrupted its operations.

1
Daniel R. Headrick, The tools of empire: technology and European imperialism in the
nineteenth century (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
2
Peter Hulme has developed the concept of the ‘expanded’ Caribbean, which encompasses
southern plantation areas of the United States, as well as north-eastern Brazil. In this thesis I do
not strictly adhere to Hulme’s geographical boundaries, but draw on his precedent by examining
an area wider than that which is traditionally understood as the Caribbean. The RMSPC’s initial
scheme of routes covered the Caribbean, the northern coast of South America, Central American
ports, and extended into North America and Canada, with stops at New Orleans, New York and
Halifax. This scheme, however, was quickly scaled back, with the result that the 1843 scheme of
routes included the northern coast of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The
1851 extension of service developed operations along the east coast of South America, with stops
in Brazil and Argentina.