Providencia Island - Early Times of The Colony

Early Times of The Colony

Popularly considered a failed colony due to poor planning, internal strife (seen in faulty leadership and slipping focus on the original purpose) and economic woes, it was founded in efforts to curb Spanish buccaneers in the West Indies and to found a colony based on Puritan values. It was expected to be the more profitable and successful of the colonizing efforts in comparison with the Plymouth colony. Though the small colony was English, the island was also populated by the Dutch. The colony is now known for its involvement in the slave trade. The slaves were sold and traded in exchange for tobacco, but not for profit, per their Puritan values.

Some of the more famous characters were the governors Nathaniel Butler and Philip Bell, Bell’s father-in-law Daniel Elfrith, William Rous and Thomas Gage. Philip Bell was the first governor and was replaced by Robert Hunt, due to conflict with another colonist resulting in ungodly behavior. Nathaniel Butler later replaced Hunt. Many of these men had already had experience with England’s colonizing and economic expeditions with the Virginia Company and the Somers (Bermuda) Company.

It is possible to infer what life was like on the island based on the accounts of slaves and letters written by the colonists. They reported that some of the Englishmen who wanted to leave did so by saying, “this place is no way to live.” Life included church services, trade with English ships and hopes for corsair raids against the Spanish. The slaves say that they were considered heretics on account of their Catholicism and their rosaries were destroyed. They grew a lot of tobacco on the island and traded it in return for slaves, clothing, shoes, liquor, beer, fabric, and other household goods like ribbons. Occasionally ships from England would bring women. Before the English had adequate ships for raiding the Spanish, they traveled around the island’s freshwater streams and surrounding waters for fishing and finding turtles. They sometimes brought back Indians from their expeditions. The principal trading port had about nine small forts and several little fortresses along the bay’s entrance. There was one inside the mouth of the bay and one also by the governor’s house. These testimonies are presumed to have provided the Spanish with key information of the colony’s logistics and defenses that enabled the attack on the island.