NationNews.com continues celebration of Black History Month, with another article written by a student from the visual and performing arts division of the Barbados Community College. All students in that section are required to take a course in Caribbean Cultures.
IT IS IMPORTANT that the history and culture of any people be preserved in an effort to give future generations evidence of their past.
The windmills of Barbados are such pieces of concrete proof, as they tell their own unique story of why they are presently scattered across this land. Because of the importance they once held, I will now be the voice of the past 300 years or so, to research the windmills that once formed a part of the Barbadian landscape and relate the history of these spinning treasures.
For any nation to survive there must be a constant flow of income. In the 17th century, the main money earner for Barbados, tobacco, ran into difficulties. Since the profits were not as promising as in the earlier days, because of lower prices from America and heavy taxes when the tobacco was imported into England, farmers saw the need to switch to sugar, since they “heard that three times as much sugar as tobacco could be produced from a given piece of land”.
This three to one ratio seemed promising and so mills were introduced to grind the sugar cane.
This sugar revolution started in 1637, when a Dutchman introduced canes from Brazil. At first, the mills were propelled by horses and then by cattle, but “later windmills were set up as being better still”.
Therefore, the birth of the windmill resulted in the death of the animal-turned mill and so Barbados was on its way to becoming a nation having one of the highest number of windmills, second only to Holland.
It is worth noting that “James Drax built the first windmill in Barbados of a Dutch design, with heavy rollers to crush eight tonnes of cane a day”.
The bulk of windmills built were made from solid coral blocks. These were able to withstand the climate so minimum repairs had to be done to the outside of the millwall.
Some mills had slight variations, whereas the blocks at ground level were made of coral but those at the top were more rubble-like in nature and filled with mortar. Since Barbados is made up mainly of limestone coral, these would have been easy to obtain on the island.
These stones were intertwined with one another, layer after layer, starting with a wide base and narrowing at the top. The millwalls or mill towers were built in a circular way, allowing the wind to move around them easily, without causing damage to the structure.
In order for the windmill to operate at its best, it had to be built where it was windy. During the crop season, the sails were attached to the arms of the windmill. Then two oxen or mules pulled the tree tail and this allowed the whole structure of the mill to rotate, facing the wind at all times (Yates: 101). Workers carried the canes to the mill, where they were dumped on the ground and fed manually in small bundles.
The mill contained the metal rollers needed to crush the canes and extract the juice. They passed through the rollers twice to ensure that all the juice was removed. Juice was then transported in open gutters to the boiling house.
Often accidents occurred and workers’ body parts sometimes got trapped between these metal rollers. Needless to say, the advent of the windmill was profitable for the plantation owner but many suffered and some lost their lives as a result of progress.
Nothing lasts forever and soon there was no need for use of the windmill. As a progressive nation, there was the need to modernise the industry because there “was a shortage of prime male labourers resulting from the Panama migration”. A lot of energy and work had already gone into the sugar cane business and the planter class saw it necessary to have modern facilities, if they wanted their industry to thrive.
The uses of the windmills were therefore doomed to die a natural death, since the “factories, whose higher quality produced and increased capacity, attracted canes from surrounding estates”. This move made good business sense, because the factories could now produce more sugar in a shorter space of time and fewer lives would be lost.
Today, most of the windmills spread across this island are in ruins. Fortunately, the Morgan Lewis Mill in St Andrew has not suffered this same fate. It is the last windmill to operate on the island, grinding its last bundle of canes in 1947.
It is the only one that is preserved with its sails intact. Given to the Barbados National Trust by the owner Egbert Lawrence Bannister, the windmill was restored and completed in December 1999. It is the only functional windmill in Barbados today.
The windmill has been such an important physical structure of this island’s landscape that Government decided to incorporate it as a national symbol and a reminder of our past. It is printed on the back of the Barbados $2, and featured on the front of the 25¢ coin. In 1970, the Barbados Postal Service also issued a stamp featuring the Morgan Lewis windmill.
As people acquired land where these windmills were found, they were demolished to erect modern buildings, but in the meanwhile a piece of our history is gone forever. The only memories that future generations would have are pictures of these historic treasures.
Government should therefore move swiftly to restore these icons that are still in good condition or encourage landowners to restore these derelict structures and incorporate them as a part of their homes.
REFERENCES:
F. A. Hoyos. Barbados our Island Home, 4th ed. Macmillan Caribbean, London, 1992. Pg 87.
F. A. Hoyos.. Pg 88.
Trevor Fishlock. Barbados: Fishlock’s Empire. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/centralamericaandcaribbean/barbados/722146/Barbados-Fishlocks-empire.html
Ann Watson Yates. Bygone Barbados, 1998. Black bird Studios. Cole’s Printery Limited Barbados, p. 101.
