Today started out cloudy and dull, and chilly too. A few sprinkles during the day, but it did warm up to 18 degrees, though chilly again tonight. There is a gas heAting attempt in the unit, but it is not connected for use yet. So I am well layered to beat the cold.
After a lazy start to the day, I headed back down to Kingston where I visited the two remaining museums on my pass. One was a Georgian home on Quality Row, built by convicts as home for one of the senior officers. There are a dozen or so of very similar appearance along the Row, and their pristine appearance in the midst of a penal settlement is most unexpected. I then took a wande through the cemetery which also dates from convict times and is still in use. Everyone who dies here is buried free by the government which provides coffin, hearse and grave. Family are left to arrange headstones. What struck me most was the recurrence of the same few surnames right up to today... Christian, Buffett, Nobbs, Quintal. And generation after generation use the same first names also, so there is no shortage of Fletcher Christian tombstones, for example.
A snack lunch, and I lined up at the roundabout to join the afternoon tour of the Convict Settlement. This meant I revisited most of the places I had already explored, so I needed take many fewer photos. But the tour was well worthwhile be cause the driver was a goldmine of information about life during the two penal periods and about the buildings that remain in Kingston. The sheer sadism and barbarous cruelty of the British commandants and their soldiers towards the convicts is unparalleled in history. Convicts sent to Norfolk wee never to be freed or leave the island. Each commandant had a completely free hand in how he treated them, and numbers of deaths brought no rebuke from London.
The walk through the cemetery with the driver was particularly interesting. We visited the graves of young men e executed for mutiny, but with elaborate gravestones ordered by the commandant of the day. Guilty conscience? The average age of all buried in the old section of the cemetery (up to the end of the convict period) is 27years. There were many suicides among the convicts. Roman Catholics (mostly Irish) couldn't adopt this way out. So small groups of them would do a deal. One drawn by lot would be bludgeoned to death by another drawn by lot. All would then bloody their hands and clothes before the soldiers arrived. Next day they would all be hanged for murder.. Thus escaping their unbearable life without damning their souls by suicide!
No love for the British here, even if Queen Victoria gifted the island to the Pitcairners.
Tonight I treated myself to a farewell dinner at Barney Duffey's Charcoal Grill .. a cosy establishment doing very little business but allowing the very talkative owner to sit and chat with his few customers. The meal, incidentally, was superb. I refuse to check my blood glucose levels tonight !
Tomorrow morning I check out by 10 am ... Have a few spots around the place yet to take a look at, and will drop car off at airport by 2pm. Flight leaves at 3"30 pm.
Today's photo offering is a little slimmer, and can be seen here.
Today's photo offering is a little slimmer, and can be seen here.
No comments:
Post a Comment