MY article in the Sunday Observer of February 25, 2018 on England’s assassination in Honduras of a three-time acting governor and one-time lieutenant governor of Jamaica, Sir Henry Morgan, has created quite a stir.

This is encouraging, as the points and counterpoints in this discussion import a clear indication that our people are becoming more engaged and mobilised to take an interest in the multiplicity of “Kakanabu” stories, that have been masquerading for so long as Jamaican history.

I believe that something good will come from this process of renewed clinical analysis of our history and will redound to the good of your grandchildren and mine not to be as naive as our generations were while growing up. And for those who have gone into denial about the assassination of Sir Henry Morgan in Honduras, they seem to forget that England beheaded their King Charles I, son of King James 1 of the Bible, in 1649 outside the banqueting hall at Whitehall, London. That being the case, what is the difficulty in the assassination of some pirates, common criminals, albeit some with licence, including Sir Henry Morgan, after the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1670?

England needed reinforcement and support from other European powers, inclusive of Spain and France, in her fight with the Dutch Netherlands in a series of bitter wars. England could not afford, this being yet another reason to upset the Spanish by not reigning in its pirates whom, despite the Treaty of Madrid, continued their attack and plunder of the Spanish possessions, particularly in Central and South America.

Sir Hans Sloane wrote the story about Sir Henry Morgan’s life and gave an account of his death and burial at Port Royal, even naming the presiding clergyman at the funeral. He claimed he met Morgan in Port Royal in 1687 and that the pirate was a friend of Sloane’s boss, the then governor and the second Duke of Albermarle Christopher Monck, who Sloane also met on his arrival at Port Royal. Coincidentally, according to Sloane, within 15 months of his stay in the region travelling to St Kitts, Nevis, Barbados et al, both the governor and Morgan died quickly thereafter in the following year 1688.

But Sloane did not state if he was present at Morgan’s alleged funeral at Port Royal. Sir Hans Sloane’s visit to the West Indies and Jamaica paid off for him big time… in terms of higher visibility, prestige and financial profit. For example, Sloane’s collection of plants from the West Indies was one of the first to reach England, laying the foundation of the formation of the British meseum. Over 800 tropical plants were eventually sold by Sloane to the London Museum at a “very discounted price” of 20,000 pounds, and in today’s value an extraordinarily huge sum. While here on the island also, Sloane encountered a local drink made from the cocoa bean: milk chocolate beverage. He returned to England with the recipe which later formed the basis for a milk chocolate product manufactured finally by Cadbury Brothers, now a multi-billion, multinational company but…… no royalties for Jamaica. Between the two books he wrote on West Indies history (in 1707-1725), including a large part on Jamaica and his account of Sir Henry Morgan’s death and burial, Sloane was made a baronet in 1716. The books on the West Indies written by Sloane have been described as “two lavishly illustrated volumes…”. It is to be noted, and abundantly so, that Sir Hans Sloane’s story specifically about Henry Morgan, was written between 19 to 39 years after Morgan’s reported death and after the Port Royal earthquake of 1692, in which it was claimed that Sir Henry Morgan’s grave was subsumed and lost forever. What does this mean? It means that the evidence of Morgan’s grave at Port Royal is also destroyed forever and there is no point for anyone to ask for proof of the authenticity and truthfulness of that story.

Consequently, those who wish to be cynical (and I recognised unequivocally those individuals’ right to be) about Honduras’ claim of having the pirate’s grave at a cemetery at Trujillo Colon cannot deny, fabricated or not, that Honduras has its evidence of the existence of a grave with an aging gravestone in which is inscribed “Sir Henry Morgan”. Jamaica has no such evidence. It is amusing, to say the least, that the argument being used against the possibility of the Honduras story being false is no less an argument for the Port Royal Jamaica story being false also. This is the rub and against the backdrop of a consistent pattern of lies, half-truths, embellishments, omissions, exaggerations by white English chroniclers who persistently, unashamedly and disrespectfully narrate our history only for the mystification and glorification of everything British.

There are grounds for some of us, who are not pretenders engaging our tongue instead of our brain … to be suspicious also, for more than one reason, about Sloane’s account. And perhaps the final conclusion of the Honduras/Jamaican story of pirate Henry Morgan is that the stories may be just opposite wings of the same bird.

I am enjoying the back and forth with the occasional hard licks, which force me to dust off those of my archival documents of over 40 years to respond respectfully but forthrightly. We shall have a grand time and the ancestors will be proud of us being engaged in argumentation historically, leading to among other things, a greater appreciation of their contribution — instead of firing fatal bullets at one another. But there was a long period of close to over 500 years when we badly needed one another during both the Spanish and the English enslavement of the Negro.

For indeed, who we are is who we were. My writings are aimed at memorialising those times and helping to repair the damage done. Sir Hans Sloane’s image, particularly after the writing of his two books on Jamaica, Sir Henry Morgan and the rest of the West Indies, began to soar and these comments painted the picture: …”Sir Hans Sloane as a physician among the upper class was large, fashionable and innovative. He served three successive sovereigns: Queen Anne, George I, and George II.”

Sir Henry Morgan acted three times as governor but was never appointed permanently to the post by the British Authority. These were times when eligible English aristocrats refuse to come to Jamaica and when, for various reasons, internal and external, the violent state of the country and the region acted as a disincentive to those worthy aristocratic personages.

Morgan, a smart criminal himself, was there to pick up the slack when England had no one else to protect its interests on the island and even further a field. The political situation then can be best described as a continuous game of Russian roulette, and there were no restrictions for whom would be shot or assassinated in a burdensome and uncertain walk of survival within the West Indies.

Such is the nature and manifestation of raw political power in its scramble for territories and resources, especially gold. This is when every player in the game for economic supremacy and strategic physical location becomes dispensable, including King Charles I… and pirate Sir Henry Morgan whose usefulness to England was not written on his tombstone in Trujillo Colon, Honduras, or on his grave under the sea at Port Royal, according to Sir Hans Sloane.

Sloane, while Morgan took gold, took valuable medicinal plants to start the British Museum … and recipes to start multinational corporations, including an international bank. More anon.

This article could easily be titled the rigging of the world’s wealth and poverty, with the Negroes as perpetual economic and mental victims. Just to remind us that even the pirates’ labour relations policy was: No Prey, No Pay!

A closer and forensic look at the evolution of world history, in its twists and turns, reveals that the pirates’ labour relations policy remains universal. Oh Bob our brother, I can hear you singing…!

Shalman Scott, a political commentator, is the first mayor of the city of Montego Bay