After the establishment of Jamestown, Virginia (1607) and Bermuda (1612), the London entrepreneurs who settled those places turned their attention to other possible sites for their corporate colonies, but to the south in the lands of the Caribbean Sea.

One of those was Providence Island, later “Old Providence”, so distinguished by the naming of an island of the Bahamas chain, “New Providence”, though perhaps in present times, neither place can perhaps be much associated with the meaning of the word in frugality, prudence or thrift, as had to obtain more necessarily in the early decades of the seventeenth century.

Nearer to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Isla de Providencia and its smaller sibling Santa Catalina Island are possessions of Columbia, following the ousting of the English settlers in the mid-1600s.

One connection with Bermuda lies in the administration of Providence Island in that our third governor, Captain Nathaniel Butler (1619—22) became its last governor, following Philip Bell and Daniel Elfrith (among others), also names associated the first decades of the settlement of our island.

Providencia today has some five thousand inhabitants; at 19 square kilometres is under half the size of Bermuda and about 1800 miles to our southwest, as the longtail might fly. Its ‘Black Land Crab’ migrates annually from the hills to lay its eggs in the sea, following the hatching of which the youngsters head for the hills.

That apparently causes a lot of duck-and-swerve moped activity (much as we once did on the south shore road before our crabs were decimated), as the Providencia crabs are a protected species.

Old Providence rose to prominence in the 1830s, at least in the literary field, as it was assumed to be the stranding spot of an English knight and his female companion, encompassed in a work, ‘edited by Miss Jane Porter’, and with title almost as lengthy as his confinement in paradise as: Sir Edw. Seaward’s Narrative of his Shipwreck and consequent discovery of certain islands in the Caribbean Sea; with a detail of many extraordinary and highly interesting events in his life, from the year 1733 to 1749, as written in his own diary.

Produced in two volumes, it was a bestseller in the 1830s: the original diary has never surfaced, nor has Sir Edward.

In the introduction to the 1841 edition of Miss Porter’s epic, however, a real-life shipwreck is mentioned as having taken place there, being that of His Majesty’s Schooner, Jackdaw (four guns), on the morning of 11 March 1835. Later that year, a court-martial was ‘assembled on board his Majesty’s ship Victory, in Portsmouth Harbour [where that ship yet resides], on Monday the 17th of August, to inquire into the particulars of the loss of his Majesty’s late surveying schooner Jackdaw, off Old Providence’, and to try Lieut. Edward Barnett, his officers and crew.

He was ‘admonished to be more cautious in future’, for the existing ‘Admiralty charts were shown not to reflect the full distance covered by the reef’.

Barnett went on to survey New Providence Island in 1839, by which time he had become the cautioned Commander of HMS Thunder, the main survey ship that HMS Jackdaw was accompanying in Bermuda and the West Indies, for the purpose of surveying reefs, such as the one that put paid to his earlier command.

He may also have been involved in the 1843-45 survey of Ireland Island, Bermuda, with its Royal Naval Dockyard (established in 1809).

In the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection at the Bermuda Archives, there is a remarkable series of pencil drawings by one George Bernard Lawrence RN, presumably an officer on HMS Thunder or Jackdaw (which he described as ‘tender to Thunder’), as he recorded each in different circumstances.

Of relevance to latter, he drew the scene of the wrecking of the vessel at Old Providence and captioned it “All Saved”, as was the case, thanks to Commander Barnett and his men.

While the sea was relentless on its attack of the schooner, the crew was able to make rafts to take everyone off to safety: ‘being a new vessel, she resisted the violence of the surf long enough to permit a larger raft to be built to preserve the provisions, and astronomical instruments’. The day after the wrecking, HMS Gannet (18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop) arrived on the scene and conveyed Barnett and all the officers and crew to Jamaica.

The main survey ship at Bermuda and the West Indies in the 1830s and 1840s was HMS Thunder, a 12-gun ‘bomb vessel’, launched in 1828 and converted for surveying in 1833; she was broken up in 1851.

The harbour at Grassy Bay, off the Royal Naval Dockyard at Bermuda, was thus surveyed by the men of the Thunder in 1843—45, which chart has survived in public archives.

The Bermuda Dockyard is now a major heritage site, whereas, according to a 2010 report by the BBC: ‘The Colombian island of Providencia in the Caribbean, which seems the epitome of a tropical paradise, lies on a key drug trafficking route out of Colombia. It is also home to the Black Land Crab whose remarkable annual migration attracts military protection.’

Dr Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum. Comments may be made to director@nmb.bm or 704-5480.