OUR STORY
Slavery and the Codringtons in Antigua/Barbuda

Most of the plantations owned by the Codringtons (in particular Betty’s Hope) was both an agricultural and industrial enterprise besides residential area. The outlaying fields were normally reserved for pasture and provision grounds for the labourers while the residential and industrial compounds were occupied within the central part of the estate.

Planting of cane began during the rainy season by “holeing” the soil with a hoe into 4-foot squares 6-8 inches deep. Pieces of cane were then placed horizontally in these squares and covered with soil, mixed with manure. Sprouts grew from both ends of the stalks, reaching their mature heights of about 12 feet in 14 – 16 months according to the soil and weather.

The cane fields, of 10 – 20 acres each, were laid out in grids with the cane rows running east to west to let the wind pass through. The intervals between the fields, about 12 – 18 feet wide, served as fire barriers and roads for the cane carts during the harvest.

Cane was subject to a disease called the “blast” and to devouring by insects and rats which the mongoose was eventually imported to combat.

Harvesting started at New Year’s time with the onset of the dry season and lasted until the end of July. A cutlass or cane “bill” was used to trim off the leaves which were piled up to be carted off for use as fodder or roofing material for the slaves’ houses. The stalks were cut into 4 foot lengths, bundled and piled high on carts pulled by oxen or mule to the windmills.

As cane juice would be lost or sour very quickly, the amount of ripe cane cut per day had to be coordinated within the extraction capacity of the mill.

• 1 acre of land normally produced 25 – 30 loads of cane or 1 ton of sugar.
• 1 load of cane could produce up to 100 gallons of juice, depending on rainfall and age of cane.
• In 1831, a crop estimate for Betty’s Hope lists 270 barrels or approximately 400,000 pounds of sugar.

The juice had to be extracted from the cane as soon as possible after cutting. Unlike many of the other island, Antigua relied on animals and the steady northeast wind as a source of power for crushing the cane until steam was introduced in the mid-19th century.

Feeding the cane into the crushing rollers was dangerous work and adjusting the sails to suit the strength and direction of the wind required skill and vigilance by the “bosun” in charge.

Antigua is known for having more windmills per square mile than any other island. Several large plantations had two mills, but the only twin towers remaining in Antigua today stand at Betty’s Hope, built around 1700. The northern mill on Betty’s Hope, is now restored, and the southern one may remain sealed for water storage to which it had been converted after a steam-powered operation was installed.

The cane was carried in through the widest opening and crushed through 3 cast iron rollers. The juice then dripped into a pan underneath the rollers and was then pumped and piped to the boiling house.

The pressed stalks, called “bagasse”, were tossed out through the second widest opening and spread to dry before being used as fuel in the boiling and distilling processes.

The tall narrow slit (third opening) was needed for changing the long central drive shaft when it had to be replaced due to wear.

Remains of the sugar and rum Factory still exists at Betty’s Hope. Although only the base of the curing house and the floor of the boiling house are visible today, those remains are testimony of the sophisticated and magnificent design and the skills of the builders.

The cane juice was received in the Boiling House into a clarifying vat to which lime (calcium oxide) was added to begin purification. It was then boiled in 12 coppers, large cast-iron basins, to be refined into “muscovado” sugar. The fire was stoked with bagasse from the outside of the building, and the heat distributed through horizontal flues underneath the coppers. While the juice was gradually ladled from the largest to the smallest copper, and the heat increased, scum rose to the surface and was skimmed off into a gutter leading to the fermentation tank. When the mass reached just the right caramel-like stage, it was “struck” or removed from the smallest “tache” and flowed through a trough to the wooden drying flats along the eastern upwind wall. After cooling for some hours while being agitated with a spatula, the crystals were packed into “hogheads” (barrels) or clay pots made at the site. These containers were then placed on rafters for drainage in the Curing House for about a month. Molasses dripped from the sugar crystals and was used both to flavour the rum and as a separate by-product for consumption.

One gallon of juice converted to approximately one pound of sugar, and one hogshead of sugar weighed 15-1600 pounds when it was shipped.

Rum was produced from the fermented mixture of the residue from the boiling process, water and molasses. Five large cisterns can be seen along the outside of the southern Still House wall. Here the vapours from the stills were condensed through coppercoils immersed in the cooling water collected from the roof into these cisterns. At the bottom of each cistern are holes for the pipes which contained the raw rum. The rum flowed into casks to be aged or re-distilled to increased the percentage of alcohol before export. Click here to view.

Reprinted from Carstenson Birgit. (1993) Betty’s Hope – An Antiguan Sugar Plantation. Betty’s Hope Trust. Antigua.