LIKE A PROUD FATHER, Dr Karl Watson watched as scores of people admired his “baby” on Saturday.
The “baby” was Morgan Lewis Windmill, a pet project of his for the past few years. The occasion was the Barbados National Trust Open Day held in collaboration with the Barbados Tourism Product Authority’s Barbados Sugar and Rum Season.
“I am very happy with what has been achieved but remember this is a work in progress,” he stressed.
“From the time I joined the trust and from the time I became president, this was my real baby. I demitted office having not accomplished what I had hoped to accomplish, but I hope to see the mill restored to working order and I dearly hope to see the boiling house restored because it’s like having lungs without a heart,” he told Heather-Lynn’s Habitat, noting that both were needed for effective interpretation.
Watson thanked the Bannister family, who had bequeathed the mill to the trust and who were supportive of the plan to restore the boiling house, which they still owned.
But as with all restorations, funding was an issue.
“We are hoping in a subsequent phase to stabilise the boiling house to prevent further deterioration and then, hopefully if funds are raised, to restore it,” Watson revealed.
“If you are going to do it properly using the concepts of authenticity, then it will be costly. You have to spend money.”
During his lecture, Watson told the scores who journeyed to St Andrew that the mill stood as a silent witness to an industry that was now on the decline.
In addition, the role of women had been understated, he said. Gangs of women, the historian explained, were the ones who laboured to shift the enormous tail tree according to the shouted instructions of the bosun.
“Very often we don’t factor in the degree to which women really contributed by their labour in terms of what they were doing,” he said.
Watson said today’s sugar industry was a shadow of what it once was.
“When I was a child, 70 000 acres of land was planted in sugar cane. Today less than 18 000 acres are planted in sugar cane, so you can see the enormous decline in sugar. But I think Barbados will still have its sugar industry because we do produce a good high-quality sugar and we can capture a niche market that will ensure the survival of sugar on this island.”