Bridging Troubled Waters

In early July 1782, the British evacuated Savannah, the first of four port-city evacuations that brought the North American phase of the American Revolution to a close. Four convoys sailed that month: the first two carried refugees, militia, and several British regiments north to Charleston and New York, and the second two carried refugees south to St. Augustine and to the island of Jamaica in the British West Indies. ¹ Like Canada, England, and Africa, the island of Jamaica was one of several ports of disembarkation for both white and black refugees in the Atlantic World. Unlike the above, however, relatively little attention has been devoted to the plight of the black Loyalists in Jamaica. ² The convoy from Georgia was one in a series of evacuations that transported approximately 200 black Loyalists, upwards of 2,000 white Loyalists along with 5,000 slaves, and perhaps as many as 65,000 African Americans seized as contraband. ³ This chapter discusses the evacuation and relocation of black refugees to Jamaica during and after the Revolution. It opens with an overview of what the author has referred to as the "Jamaican diaspora" and then proceeds to discuss the life histories of Moses Baker and George Liele and the lives they reconstituted for themselves in Jamaican society. ⁴