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Netherlands 1965, 300 years of the Dutch Marine Corps going as far as the world extends

You don’t think of Holland as a great military power. Sea power much more so. Well a sea power  often finds the need to quickly go ashore and Holland was among the first to translate the idea of marines as shipboard soldiers to small units that could go ashore. Today that means the goal is going ashore anywhere in the world within 48 hours. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp tries to show both changes and continuity by displaying a Dutch Marine as he looked in 1665 and then 1965. The 1960s style graphic detracts from what could have been a better stamp.

Todays stamp is issue A106, an 18 cent stamp issued by Holland on December 10th,1965. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is wort 25 cents whether used or unused.

The Dutch realized the need for amphibious Marines during the second Anglo-Dutch war in the 17th century. Their first operation was audacious. A group of Royal Navy ships were laid up at a boatyard in Chatham up the Medway River. The Dutch Marines captured a river mouth fort at Sheerness and sailed up the river and boarded and burned 13 Royal Navy ships before escaping with the then Royal Navy flagship HMS Royal Charles under tow. The Dutch thought the ship unsuited for service in their navy so instead docked it as a tourist attraction. The British were deeply embarrassed by the successful raid and quickly came to peace terms with the Dutch.

HMS Royal Charles transom emblem that still sits in a Dutch museum. They eventually scrapped the ship as a fig leaf to the UK.

The Dutch Marine Corps made up with the British Royal Marines and in 1704 participated in the joint operation that took Gibraltar. They also made themselves useful during the 1940 German invasion of Holland, but the result was not as successful as Chatham or Gibraltar. The German plan was for German paratroopers landed in central Rotterdam to link up with on the march regular German infantry. This plan was thwarted by the Dutch Marines making a successful defense of Maas river bridges. The Germans responded with a devastating aerial bombing of Rotterdam.

I mentioned that for the marines had for quite a while been closely aligned with the British Royal Marines. The British call them clogies for their perceived insistence on wearing the wood shoe. The integration had gone beyond just interoperability into combined logistics functions, During Euroland integration, this was pointed to as a model as to how European nation state armies could become more integrated,

This as gone so far that old rival Germany has subsumed their own marine corps into the Dutch Marine Corps. This makes a lot of sense in terms of German politics if you can assume the Germans and the Dutch will always be on the same side. Remember the modern marines are a worldwide quick reaction force. Anything beyond natural disaster relief would be very controversial in Germany, as maybe it should be. Perhaps less so if it is happening under a Dutch flag.

Currently the Dutch Marine Corp is 2000 strong. It has the use of the Landing Platform Dock amphibious warfare ship HNLMS Rotterdam.

The Rotterdam has accommodations for marines and their equipment, has a floodable dock in back to launch smaller landing craft and a flight deck over it for helicopters.

Well my drink is empty and what a great excuse to pour another to toast the now 355 years of service of the Dutch Marine Corps. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Libya 1979. 10 years into the People’s Jamahiriya, showing off the new hospitals

The Philatelist like to show the big future plans of socialist five year plan stamps. The date attached to the plan lets you check if they actually got done what they were planning. The oil rich socialist countries like 70s Libya had plenty of resources to get such things done as this stamp issue from 1979 shows. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist,

This stamp shows at intermediate stage of a now much larger hospital complex in Benghazi. The large hospital in Tripoli was built and staffed by Italians in colonial times so doesn’t make the socialist’s point. This issue on the 10th anniversary of the green revolution that ended the Monarchy consisted of four blocks of four stamps each. This block covered health care, others education, agriculture, and the oil industry.

Todays stamp is issue A235, a 30 Dirhams stamp issued by the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on September 1st, 1979. Each block of four stamps was a different denomination. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents whether unused or canceled to order.

Libya was a large country with a small population. In colonial times, there were some hospitals built and the staff was largely Italian. Oil revenue in the 1960s and 1970s greatly increased public health spending and many Libyan students were sent abroad to study medicine so they could replace the foreign guest worker health staff. By the late days of the Jamahiriya, Libya had 96 hospitals and just over 10,000 medical doctors. 84 percent of the doctors were native.

The foreign health care workers became controversial in Libya in 1998. At the Benghazi children’s hospital, 500 babies came down with HIV/AIDS. It is now believed the outbreak was caused by poor sanitation in the handling of blood. Many of the babies died and  more were sent to Europe for better treatment. A Libyan magazine accused Bulgarian nurses working at the hospital of purposely injecting the babies with the disease. Violent protest outside the hospital lead to the arrest of 23 Bulgarian nurses. Under torture, 6 confessed to the crime and were sentenced to death. After 7 years in jail in Libya, Bulgaria was able to barter for their freedom with arms.

Bulgarian nurses during their show trial in Libya

You get a sense with these stamps how much money was being spent on Libyan wish lists. In 1979, American President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy received at least $200,000 to lobby for additional Lockheed C130 transports made in Georgia for Libya. When caught, Billy Carter belatedly registered as an agent of Libya and the then President had to inform Congress that his relationship with his brother will be altered for as long as he was president and would have no influence on relations with Libya.

Another American operation was diverted by the free flowing money of the Jamahiriya. A retired CIA agent, Edwin Wilson was sent to Libya in 1979 with a few retired Green Berets to look out for and apprehend international terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Once there they instead set up a business training Libyan and Palestinian paramilitary forces including on the use of explosives. Wilson was caught when he tried to acquire for Libya a large stock of C4 explosives. At first Wilson avoided criminal charges by staying in exile in Libya but was worried for his safety there. He then flew to the Dominican Republic where he was extradited  back to the USA.

Edwin P. Wilson

The Benghazi hospital complex has not fared well during the last decade’s civil war in Libya. In 2015 the complex was heavily looted. In 2018 there was a controversy when pictures of the rotting corpses of babies in the hospital morgue got out. This time there were no Bulgarians to blame, but I imagine the Libyans do not spend much time looking in the mirror. It is a lot easier to hire someone to build you a building than to provide decent medical care inside.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Isle of Man 1987, John Miller Nicholson brings impressionism to a tiny, ancient Celtic Island

Question; At what point does art rise above pavement art for tourists to high art that deserves it’s place among the best of it’s time? Possible Answer: When it is this good. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp comes from an issue of impressionist harbor scenes of Douglas on the Isle of Man. Perhaps commissioned for the stamp I thought, to introduce the story of interesting ships that had passed through long ago. Such is a staple of the stamps of the tiny islands where the sun has yet on the Empire. This is different though, a local artist from 100 years before that had raised the game of art on the island.

Todays stamp is issue A96, a 29p stamp issued by the Isle of Man on February 18th, 1987. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations displaying the work of artist John Miller Nicholson. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 90 cents whether used or unused.

John Miller Nicholson

John Miller Nicholson was born on the Isle of Man in 1840, the son of a house painter. His early career was as a draughtman. He had a hobby though of sketching in pencil the people and places of the island. A trip to Italy had been transformative. He had been schooled there in the technics and color choices of the impressionist art movement. He also returned with a load of watercolours showing scenes of Venice. His technic for painting was somewhat unusual. He would sketch his subject in pencil making notes as to color choices. He then returned to his workroom where his canvas was already mounted in his frame.

An early Venice watercolour by Nicholson

Word of what he was achieving got out. The then Governor of the Isle of Man Loch had the idea that the island should be a natural home for artists so founded an art school that John was involved with over a long period. Soon there were also showing of his art in some of London’s finer galleries but John did not have the skills of self promotion necessary to be recognized among the top painters in Victorian Era UK. He was recognized at home though with several posthumous biographies written and the Manx Museum acquiring an extensive collection of his work from the trust of a local collector.

There is a further connection to postage stamps beyond this stamp issue. His grandson John Hobson Nicholson was also an important local artist. He also was a stamp designer for many of the early issues of the Isle of Man.

Well my drink is empty, so please come back Monday when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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French Guiana 1947, Wondering what goes on in the interior

In the French region of Guiana there was a trading post on the coast at Cayenne and more famously a penal colony off shore on Devil’s Island. The French territory extended far inland though into an area named Inini after a river. Many years into the colony it was decided to make more use of the interior. Interesting what that effort looked like in this time frame. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp displays a riverside scene, one assumes the French riverside, of the Moroni River that forms the border between French Guiana and Dutch Guyana,(now Suriname). Traveling the rivers was the only way to get into the jungle interior to make any sort of survey of what was possible there.

Todays stamp is issue A24, a one and a half Franc stamp issued by the French Overseas Department in Guiana on June 2nd, 1947. Becoming and overseas department ended the seperate administration of the interior. This was a 17 stamp issue in various denominations that mainly emphasized the interior. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 85 cents unused.

The interior of Guiana was very sparsely populated with only about 5000 residents in this time frame that were mostly indigenous. The French presence was miniscule with 7 French Army officers as administrators and nine military police. The administration consisted of three offices, forest management, water management and mines. An established gold mine was the only productivity beyond subsistence hunting, fishing, and farming. The French had the idea to open up the interior to colonization so they set up Inini as a separate colony and drew up plans for a road and railway into the interior. Anyone who has seen “Bridge on the River Kwai” knows what the Japanese did with a similar challenge in Burma. What would the French do in Inini/Guiana?

Well their effort was pretty similar. 535 Vietnamese prisoners of war from an uprising in French Indo China were brought in. Unlike the Japanese, guarding them was also outsourced. A unit Senegalese Trirailleurs from French West Africa were brought in to guard the Vietnamese. By 1936, the colonial Governor was expressing confidence that the railroad and road would soon be finished.

Senegalese Trailleur French soldier. All West Africans were referred to as Senegalese

It was not to be. Cholera and intestinal parasites were plaguing the Vietnamese workers and they rebelled against the Senegalese guards at work camp Crique Anguille in 1937. The rebellion was put down but it was decided to abandon the construction project. It was decided to condemn the remaining Vietnamese prisoners to Devil’s Island. Some were held in custody until 1953.

Camp Crique Anguille 68 years after the Vietnamese rebelled there. The jungle is gradually taking it back

In 1940, initially the colonies of Guiana sided with the Vichy Government after the fall of France. This became a difficult situation as Suriname was temporarily administered by the USA during the occupation of Holland and Brazil to the south declared war on the Axis in 1942. By this point the tiny French presence in Inini was concerned most with border control. In 1943 Inini changed allegiance to the Free French. In the 1944 Brazzaville Conference, it was promised that all citizens of French colonies would become French citizens and this was followed through in 1946 with all of Guiana including Inini becoming an overseas department of France. The interior has since been divided into communes for administration.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait till tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Japan 2001, Showing off Nikko’s temples now that it is a world heritage site and not merely a national treasure

This stamp was part of a series of souvenir sheets that celebrated historic sites around Japan that were now recognized as world heritage sites. I often make fun of the United Nations for fecklessness, but this is one of the best things they do. Recognizing what is important culturally and historically  and speaking above politics and with one world voice for the preservation. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

One can see from the detailing how much care was taken to show these stamp subjects in the best light. This stamp issue comprised six sheets of 10 stamps each. Think of the effort that must have gone in to getting just the right photo and then making sure that it is going to show properly on a small postage stamp. Now add the detailing for the rest of the souvenir sheet. Now combine that effort 60 times over and remember this is all just one stamp issue of many. Good job, Japan.

Todays stamp is issue A2129, an 80 Yen stamp issued by Japan in 2001. Each of the 6 souvenir sheets contained 10 stamps and showed views of the UNESCO World Heritage site in a certain locale, in this case Nikko. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents individually used. The full sheet of 10 is worth $18. All the six sheets and all the individual stamps have the same stated value.

The Nikko temple and shrines complex was built in the 17th century. The 103 buildings of the complex include 3 temples, two of which are Shinto and one of which is Buddhist. The buildings are still under the ownership of their respective religious organizations. The whole complex is surrounded by an old growth forest that dates from the time of the buildings. They are considered to be great examples of the Edo period of Japanese architecture and are quite reverential to Shogun Tokugawa leyasa. This period is important because at the time Japan was united but closed off to the outside world, with the exception of a small Dutch trading post. The growth of a new aristocracy led to decorations from this period to be notably elaborate.

Yashamon Gate, Nikko

Japan applied and was successful in applying for the UNESCO declaration of the importance of the site at Nikko which was granted in 1999. Already back in 1950 the whole complex was declared a national treasure that limited changes that could be made. The site is blessed in that it has never gone through a period of being looted or neglected. In 1957 the old growth forest that provides such a strong background and context to the site was made a national park to avoid development.

The biggest threat to a complex like this is fire and this is where changes were allowed. Sprinklers and hydrants now abound and there is a designated fire brigade.

Well my drink is empty and I will happily pour another to toast Japan for doing such a good job with their heritage sites and their stamp designers for highlighting the effort. Come again tomorrow for another storythat can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Congo 1969. President Mobutu just before he became Authentic

Sometimes dictators can be fun when viewed from afar. President Mobutu wanted his country to be more authentically African. So he picked a Portuguese name to replace the Belgian one. He wanted a whole new style of clothes and found inspiration in China. Some of the changes though could have only come from him. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This was a long running series of stamps. They lasted through the renaming of the country to Zaire. The launch of the new currency also called the Zaire, the renaming of President Mobutu and the devaluations of the new currency. The post offices were still selling you versions of this stamp after this style of dress had been banned by the country. The country got it’s moneys worth from the De la Rue design.

Todays stamp is issue A127, a three Franc stamp issued by the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1969. It was a 15 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused. There is also an imperforate version of the stamp, but the value only rises to 30 cents.

Joseph Mobutu was born in 1930 the son of a hotel maid that had escaped the harem of her home village chief and his father was employed as a cook of a Belgian judge, The judge’s wife took a liking to Joseph and taught him to read and write in French and when his father died secured a place for him at a Catholic Boys Boarding School. Joseph ran away to the capital Léopoldville with a girl but when the priests caught up to him, he was done with the school and joined the colonial Askari army. In the chaos that followed independence Mobutu was made a high officer as was done with many Askari corporals. Mobutu became President in a coup in 1965.

At the start of the 1970s Mobutu got serious about remaking the Congo more legitimately African, a common theme then and now. He was counseled by a Portuguese anthropologist on the importance of the Congo River to the country. He hit upon the anthropologist’s mispronunciation of the Kikongo word nzere. He realized that  in many tribal languages Zaire would be understood as the the large river that swallows the lessor ones. Mobutu decided on the the three Zs with Zaire becoming the name of the river, the country, and the new currency. The President also required the Priests in the Catholic country to stop Baptizing with western names.

The renaming got to Mobutu himself. He dropped the Joseph and added Sese Seko. His full name now translated to,” The all powerful warrior, who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake” The evening newscast began with a graphic of Mobutu descending from heaven. During this time the newscast was not allowed to name any other person just the title they held.

The style of clothes also changed. Mobutu was inspired by a 1972 trip to China and their style of dress. He designed a abacost, which translates into “Down with the Suit”. It was often worn with a toque hat and was to replace the coat and tie. Mobutu’s were tailor made for him in Brussels.

President Mobutu wearing his Abacost and toque

Eventually Mobutu’s popularity declined and in 1990 he was forced to allow some opposition figures into the government. For some strange reason they got the enforcement of the new rules suspended. When Mobutu was overthrown and replaced by Joseph Kabilla, the African authenticity program ended and the country reverted to it’s old name. The opposition was sure Mobutu had stole billions but after his death they only found 3 million dollars. I bet he spent it all. Kabilla turned out just as bad a ruler as Mobutu but was even worse as he completely lacked style.

Well my drink is empty. I wonder if Mobutu was still around would he be quarantined in one of his palaces only wearing the top half of his abacost while live streaming. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Canada 1997, Canada gets ahead of the game by delving into supernatural goblins while still in the 20th Century

Attracting kids to the hobby is a goal of the creators of stamps. Here we have Canada with comic book style images of vampires, werewolves, goblins, and ghosts. This stamp issue in now over 20 years old. At some point will we realize that stamps should tell us about their part of the world and give up trying to catch the eye of the never collector. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The need to write things out in two languages was clearly a challenge. The writing had to go up two sides and leaves the image of the goblin off centered. Makes you wonder how it came when you bought a sheet of them. I presume they were attached together as standard horizontal stamps as I have chosen to have mine photographed. I usually base this decision on the direction of the denomination. The stamp designer is perhaps inviting the sender to affix it in a diamond shape. Judging by the cancellation on mine, the user was confused or unnoticing and put the stamp sideways.

Todays stamp is issue A681, a 45 cent stamp issued by Canada on October 1st, why not 31st, 1997. It was a four stamp issue all in the same denomination. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used. Canada had issues on serious subjects that same year and the low valuation is the same according to Scott. Not sure if this means that this stamp failed to attract the kids or just all the stamps failed to attract.

The image of a goblin as a miniature monster goes back far in European folklore. The word comes from the Greek Kobalos. Others think the word derives from a diminutive of the French name Gobel. Either way he a treacherous and sneaky character who lives in a hollowed out rock. He can take the form of a Gypsy King in Moldovan fiction or as a green arch rival of Spider Man in the comics or even as a banker in the Harry Potter universe. Watch out in Scotland for the goblin wearing a red hat. It is red because it is dipped in blood. He often accosts a traveler, perhaps giving the useful advise to be aware of your surroundings while in a strange place.

In modern times, the goblin has been a continuing part  of the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. A player may face a combat encounter with a goblin or an orc, which in older fiction are the same thing. The game master periodically is to role the dice and consult a random encounter table as to whether a questor will face an goblin while travelling. The percentages change based on the terrain being crossed. Fighting off the goblin wears down the player costing him valuable hit points and forcing him to use up his healing potions.  I am more a Avalon Hill game player than D & D. Random encounters with goblins became less popular in video games as players found them annoying and repetitive. The Tales and Final Fantasy series’ have dropped the random goblins.

Final Fantasy, now random goblin free. Take note postage stamp designers!

Well my drink is empty and and I hope to be leaving you wondering about your random encounter with a new postage stamp when you visit The Philatelist again tomorrow.

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Housekeeping, Join me in trying to get used to the new WordPress theme

John C Publisher

There was a php update yesterday that caused an outage and forced me to change the theme to get the site going again The functions that used to be on the side bar are now on the bottom if you scroll down. Change is hard. The ads seem fewer which is an improvement but still keep an eye out for them.

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Germany 2005. Die Brucke, For 100 years there has been a bridge, should you take it?

“We call all young people together, who carry the future in us, we want to wrest freedom of our actions and our lives from the older comfortably established forces”. This was from the manifesto of the young German expressionist art group that this stamp remembers 100 years later. The group called itself the bridge, but was that really the only bridge to take? Might there have been another that uplifts the viewer of the art not just the artist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Look at the darkness of this woodblock image on the stamp. An underage girl, not trying to make a record of her innocent beauty, but rather how she appeared in the twice her age artist’s den of “free love”. Was the artist made better from the experience. Was the young girl. Was the viewer of the art. Or are we all just a little dirtier.

Todays stamp is issue A1174, a 55 Euro cents stamp issued by Germany on May12th, 2005. It was a single stamp issue. According to Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 75 cents used.

Around 1900, there was much innovation going on in the Paris art world. Where does that leave the artists of other places. To a group of German artists toiling away at their upper middle class University this was an opportunity. They were not interested in creating traditional art. Rather they wanted to to do a more German version of what was going on in Paris with the Fauvists. Typical not as smart as they think they are out of the box thinking that is really pressing up on the box. There were of course paintings, but they went back to pre Christian Germany and sought to recreate the old woodblock art of that time. To banish their minds of their upper class comforts, Die Brucke rented a former butcher shop in the seedier side of Dresden. The studio justified their mostly underage subjects by saying the bodies are less damaged by the corsets of period mature women. Also more fun to have in a free love den where nudity was encouraged.

Self portrait of the artists of Die Brucke. Notice the pink factory outside the window to give them that “men of the people” look.

Most of the artists of the group faded away into jobs in academia. Their art, though remembered, was not commercially successful in the period. As the young rebels matured they faced a different Germany that was as denouncing of them as they were to their parents. The style of art was branded un German, anarchist, and Jewish, some of the artists were some weren’t. The Nazis were or course wrong about so much, but I am not sure they were wrong about Die Brucke.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those that push back against the drive away from civilization. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Saint Kitts & Nevis 1920, The Society of Adventurers survives the Bloody Point thanks to Barbe

Saint Kitts and Nevis are islands in the Leeward chain that are only two miles apart. The portraits of British King George V show him in an explorative mood, so why not learn a little of the colonies founding. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe. take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

These issue of stamps show the King in various adventurous poses beside his official profile. This is perhaps in keeping with the colony being founded by a Society of Adventurers acting with a Royal patent. Most would not have thought of George V as an adventurer. Philatelists knew different. The King had put together one of the world’s great stamp collections. To do that requires more than a little adventure.

Todays stamp is issue A3, a half penny stamp issued by the Crown Colony of Saint Kitts and Nevis in 1920. The two islands now have separate stamp issues. This was a thirteen stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $6.00 used.

Before Europeans found the islands, there were three groups of Indians that had occupied the volcanic islands. Not much of known about the first group called Sibony because they left behind no relics of having been there. The Taino people followed about 800 AD but were believed to be fewer in number. Lastly the islands were conquered by the Caribe Indians, who were quite warlike, and perhaps because so, were again fewer in number. Christopher Columbus was the first European to spot the islands on his second voyage and later Sir Francis Drake visited. One early British explorer that did well financially from his visit was Bartholomew Gilbert. He did not try to set up an outpost but rather collected samples of exotic plant life and their seeds that he then traded back in Britain. He had done the same thing on Cape Cod in the USA.

In 1620 three British gentlemen received a patent from King James I to colonize the Leeward Islands. They formed a Society of Adventurers and arrived on Saint Kitts with 15 settlers in 1623. They found Caribe Chief Tegremante agreeable to selling some land. Tegremante already had a steady business offering refuge to Frenchmen needing a place to hide. The first years tobacco and vegetable crop was mostly wiped out by a hurricane that September but the colony survived. In 1625 a heavily armed French warship arrived and both the Society of Adventurers colony and the Caribe came to terms with the French presence. They were heavily armed. When Cardinal Richelieu heard of the success, he formed a French company to exploit Saint Kitts and bought 60 slaves in Senegal  for it.

Chief Tegremante decided in 1826 there were too many Europeans and slaves on his islands and began quietly bringing in extra Caribe warriors to raid the French and British settlements. A native woman named Barbe warned the Society of Adventurers what was about to happen. The settlement then invited the Caibe for a large party where the liqour flowed freely. Then overnight they themselves raided Chief Tegremante’s camp when they were not in a position to know what hit them. Most of the high chiefs including Tigremante were killed.

The next day the thousands of Caribe warriors were angry but in disarray. At a place now called Bloody Point there was a large battle. 2000 Caribe and two hundred settlers died. Several more settlers were left insane from injuries sustained. The Caribe had been dipping their arrows in a poison from the machineel tree. It was decided jointly with the French to remove the remaining Caribe to Dominica. Barbe was allowed to stay. This is portrayed today as a genocide among those steeped in sore loserism.

The Society of Adventurers merged into the Royal African Company in 1664. The French company also merged into a larger one in 1665. After that relations between the French and British settlements on Saint Kitts deteriorated. In 1666 at the battle of Sandy Point the French were defeated and the British had the islands to themselves. The new company management was more about profit than adventure and the main cash crop moved from tobacco to more slave labor intensive sugar cane. The planters became rich, and Saint Kitts was the richest colony per capita in the British Empire at the time of the American Revolution. That number of course requires you to not count the many slaves and count the Jewish planters of Spanish heritage as British.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting