The Providence Island colony was established in 1630 by English Puritans on Providence Island. It was founded and controlled by a group of English investors, the Providence Island Company.
Although intended to be a model Puritan colony engaged in agriculture, it also functioned as a base for privateers operating against Spanish ships and settlements in the region. In 1641, Spanish and Portuguese forces, after two previous attempts, finally penetrated the harbour's defences and captured the colony. The Spanish removed all the English settlers from the island but kept the structures. This garrison was maintained on the island, now called Santa Catalina again, until 1666.
Location
Isla de Providencia, the adjacent Santa Catalina island, and four smaller islands lie within a wide lagoon surrounded by a massive coral reef. They are the visible part of a stratovolcano that rises from the sea floor, extinct for the last four million years. The total area of the islands is . Providencia is . Santa Catalina island to the north is . Providencia has a central peak high, from which spines run down to the sea enclosing fertile valleys. Temperatures are around all year. Easterly trade winds are normal during all seasons, bringing the most rain in the autumn. Summers are relatively dry. The surrounding coral reefs make the approach difficult for those who do not know the waters. The two larger islands were once one, called Santa Catalina by the Spanish, but some time between 1635 and 1641, the colonists cut a neck of land between them to make a secure retreat on what is now the small island of Santa Catalina.
Origin of the colony
The island was first documented on November 25, 1510 by Lope de Olano, a Basque sailing for Castile-Aragon. It remained unsettled and was known to French and Dutch pirates, but apparently was first visited by English ships in 1628. In that year, the Puritan Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, sent three privateer ships to the West Indies. They reached Saint Andrew, to the south of Santa Catalina, and landed thirty men there to plant tobacco for snuff. Sussex Camock, with his barque Somer Islands, remained on Saint Andrew. Daniel Elfrith returned to England aboard the Warwicke, via the Somers Isles (alias Bermuda), to report the discovery. Elfrith told the Governor of Bermuda, his son-in-law Philip Bell, of their findings.
In March 1629, Bell wrote to his cousin Sir Nathaniel Rich in England, announcing the discovery of the two islands. Bell's letter described the island as "lying in the heart of the Indies & the mouth of the Spaniards." Thus it was an excellent base for privateering against the Spanish ships. Bell considered that the island would also provide excellent revenue from tobacco and other crops. The Providence Island Company was then established. Leading members of the company included the Earl of Warwick, his brother Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland and their cousin Nathaniel Rich, John Pym, William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Robert Greville, Lord Brooke.
Philip Bell sailed to Providence in 1629, taking several Bermudians with him including whites and blacks. In November 1630 the Providence Island Company decided that Captain Daniel Elfrith was to be Governor until he returned, after which Captain Philip Bell would be sole Governor. Each adventurer (shareholder) was to obtain as many men and boys as were willing to serve, and the good ones were to be shipped next January. In February 1631 Captain William Rudyerd was appointed commander of the settlers sailing from England to Providence Island in the Seaflower. About eighty Bermudians moved to Providence in 1631. In April 1632 the Company learned that the Seaflower had arrived. Some became involved in religious disputes, and were sent back to Bermuda. In May 1632 the Company instructed the master of the Charity, who was taking another 150 settlers to Providence, that no passengers were to be brought home from Providence without a licence.
Colonial life
Until 1635 the Company discouraged planters from bringing their wives and children. To help preserve order, the Company ordered servants and other single people to live in "families". Governor Bell was instructed to "distribute all the Inhabitants into several families whereof one shalbe the Chiefe." This chief was responsible for ensuring his family did their duty and was to lead them in prayer twice a day. The company forbade swearing, drunkenness or profaning the Sabbath, and ordered Bell to "take care that Idelness as the Nurse of all Vice be carefullie eschewed." Bell was instructed to seize and destroy "cards and Dice and Tables" that had been sent to the island. Apart from his moral duties, the instructions that Bell received from the Company in 1631 included arranging lodgings for the minister, preventing men from planting tobacco but making them plant corn, and if possible sugar cane, building houses, a church and fortifications against possible attack by the Spanish.
An important difference between Providence Island and the Massachusetts Bay colony was that the Massachusetts settlement was led by resident gentry, who allowed the colony to evolve towards self-sufficiency, while Providence Island was ruled by absentee grandees who kept the settlers totally dependent on them. The colonists were only tenants, with half their profits going to the investors in the company. With a limited stake in the colony, the colonists were unimaginative about ways to improve it. There was a glut of tobacco on the market. The Chesapeake, Barbados and St. Kitts colonies were producing far more tobacco and of better quality. The directors tried to encourage the planters to grow other crops such as silk grass, cotton, sugar cane, pomegranates, figs or juniper berries. However, despite a collapse in prices in 1634, the planters still persisted in growing tobacco.
Labour on Providence island was originally undertaken by indentured servants from England, although Bell brought some enslaved Africans from Bermuda. Around 1634–1635 the four-year terms of the indentured servants expired, and planters demanded the right to use black slaves in their place. One colonist, the pastor Samuel Rishworth, spoke out against this practice, saying that Christians should not hold slaves. Bell tried to silence this man on instructions from the Company, so he could not encourage the slaves to seek their freedom from their masters. Specifically, the Company told Bell to, "Condemn Mr. Rishworth's behaviour concerning the negroes who ran away, as indiscreet ("arising, as it seems, from a groundless opinion that Christians may not lawfully keep such persons in a state of servitude, during their strangeness from Christianity")'America and West Indies: April 1635', in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 1, 1574-1660, ed. W Noel Sainsbury (London, 1860), pp. 201-206. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/colonial/america-west-indies/vol1/pp201-206 [accessed 19 June 2020]. By 1635 there was a population of 500 white men, 40 women, 90 blacks and a few children, scattered across the island. The village of New Westminster had just thirty houses, mostly of timber. Only the church and the governor's house were of brick. Forty guns were distributed between thirteen forts at different points on the island, making no one point particularly strong.
Internal problems
When the English arrived they found a small group of Dutch privateers living there. Elfrith invited the well-known privateer Diego el Mulato to the island. Samuel Axe, one of the military leaders, also accepted letters of marque from the Dutch authorizing privateering. The settlers were concerned that the presence of these men would draw Spanish retaliation, and also resented having to contribute to building and manning the defences. In 1632 they were near mutiny, led by their chaplain, Lewis Morgan. There were also quarrels over religious practices, with the captains sometimes advocating stricter practices than the settlers were willing to follow. The ministers were often inexperienced, argumentative or otherwise unfit.
Benjamin Rudyerd wrote to Governor Bell in 1633,
At first the island was vulnerable to attack. Samuel Axe and Workmaster Goodman were given responsibility for fortification. Both men became involved in a dispute with Governor Philip Bell and left with Sussex Camock to Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Mosquito Shore to the west. Other men also moved to the Cape. Gun carriages, ropes and powder were spoiled by the rain on Providence Island because the settlers did not have boards to make sheds, and did not have sawyers to make boards. At the start of 1634 the Reverend Hope Sherrard reported that there were far too few men to man the forts or repel a landing force, and only enough ammunition for one day's fight.
On 30 July 1634 the company wrote to Captain Sussex Camock approving of his achievements in opening up trade with the Miskito people, but said there was discontent in Providence, caused by so many men having been taken from it, and that the island needed strengthening. They hoped that Camock could allow Captain Axe to return to Providence to work on the fortifications there. In June 1634 Captain William Rudyerd told the investors in England that the island had no worth other than as a base for privateering, but if properly fortified, the island could be held against any force by 600 men. In December 1634, a Dutch captain told the company that the fortifications were now "handsome, and their ordance fit to prevent the approach of ships."
Hostilities with the Spanish
The Spanish did not hear of the Providence Island Colony until 1635 when some enslaved blacks that had escaped from the island were interviewed in Portobelo, on the Isthmus of Panama. Francisco de Murga, Governor and Captain General of Cartagena, dispatched Captain Gregorio de Castellar y Mantilla and engineer Juan de Somovilla Texada to destroy the colony. The Spanish fleet anchored outside New Westminster in July 1635, and Castellar sent a messenger to demand the surrender of Providence island. Governor Bell refused. The Spanish launched an attack at a poorly defended point, but were repelled by gunfire from the heights and were forced to retreat "in haste and disorder". The Spanish took prisoners, who told them of the "Ysla de Mosquito" (presumably the Miskito Keys). Castellar and Somovilla were sent back in October 1635 to search for the Mosquito Island, but they were unable to find it.
After the attack, under pressure from the Company, King Charles I of England issued letters of marque to the Providence Island Company on 21 December 1635. These authorized raids on the Spanish in retaliation for a raid that had destroyed the English colony on Tortuga earlier in 1635. The company could in turn issue letters of marque to subcontracting privateers who used the island as a base, for a fee. This soon became an important source of profit. Thus the Company made an agreement with the merchant Maurice Thompson under which Thompson could use the island as a base in return for 20% of the booty.
In March 1636 the Company dispatched Captain Robert Hunt on the Blessing to assume the governorship. Various changes were made with Hunt's appointment. His passage and that of his wife and three children was paid, and he received one hundred acres of land with twenty servants to work it, but he was paid no salary. Also, the Company refused to pay for the defence of the island. On the other hand, the colonists were encouraged to engage in privateering, paying the Company one fifth of the value of the plunder. According to Thomas Gage, talking of the Spanish treasure fleet sailing between Panama and Havana in 1637,