By Gail Saunders, For The Guardian

erica@nasguard.com

Crooked Island is one of the group of three - Crooked Island, Acklins and Long Cay which are jewels in the southern Bahamas. Crooked Island and Acklins are enclosed in a shallow lagoon known the Bight of Acklins. The Lucayan Arawaks called Crooked Island Samoete which was visited by Columbus on 21 October, 1492. He was told that it contained gold but although he remarked on its beauty, he did not find any gold.

The Loyalists: Crooked Island and Acklins were not permanently settled until the coming of the Loyalists in the late 1780s. Very soon after their arrival they set up over forty cotton plantations employing over a thousand slaves. Daniel McKinnen, a British traveller, in 1802-1803, wrote that the Loyalists had settled and established forty plantations with between 2000 to 3000 acres of cotton fields and 1000 slaves. As elsewhere in the Bahamas, infertile soil and the chenille bug destroyed the crops and by 1803 the plantations were for the most part abandoned. Many proprietors left the island and some like James Moss of Crooked Island sold some of the slaves to proprietors in the sugar island further south.

McKinnen stated:

I beheld some extensive fields originally planted with cotton, but which

from the failure of crops were now abandoned, and had become covered

with a luxuriant growth of indigenous shrubs and plants...

I found the plantations of Crooked Island for the most part deserted; and

the proprietors who I visited were generally in a state of despondence, in

an agricultural point of view as to the future.

The Case of Poor Black Kate: The Mosses - James and his nephew Henry Moss were some of the largest slave owners in The Bahamas. In 1815, James Moss was the largest slave holder on Crooked Island and indeed The Bahamas overall with an enslaved population of over 1000 people.

The Mosses owned a plantation at Crooked Island. Perhaps the most brutal punishment to be meted out to a slave was by Henry Moss. Kate was a domestic slave belonging to the Mosses. She is stated to have been guilty of theft and disobedience and refused to mend her clothes and to work.

She was confined to the stocks for seventeen days in July/August 1826. During that period she was beaten repeatedly and red pepper was rubbed in her eyes to prevent her sleeping. The tasks given to her were beyond her capabilities. When she was released from the stocks, Kate was again flogged and sent to the fields to work and there died of a fever then prevalent.

The Mosses were found guilty of a misdemeanor and were sentenced to gaol in Nassau for five months in addition to a fine of £300. While they were serving their term, twenty-eight citizens, including seven members of the House, wrote to the Secretary of State asking for a mitigation of their sentence. The most respectable persons in the place visited the Mosses in gaol and when Mr. Moss was released they entertained him at a public dinner.

Pitts Town Post-Office: It seems that during the late eighteenth century, Pitts Town, a "considerable settlement" was laid out on the western shore. It was said to have been named after a principal planter at the time. Pitt's Town became a monthly mail station in the early nineteenth century for boats sailing between Europe and Jamaica and was frequented by American and Jamaican men. Mary Moseley writes in The Bahamas Handbook that "The Postmaster of a century ago who was also the "turtle merchant" was described by Michael Scott in his famous Tom Cringle's Log as "a stout conch with a square cut coatee and red cape and cuffs. She continued that from the same source "we learn that the post office mail boat flew a fed flag with a white horse in it." Today, parts of the original Post Office are incorporated in the Pitts Town Inn Development.