An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Last week, we looked at the sto­ry of the bat­tle for Guade­loupe where­in the in­ter­lop­er British forces were ex­pelled by a bru­tal fight­ing force un­der the is­land's for­mer French ad­min­is­tra­tor, Vic­tor Hugh­es in 1794. The British Com­man­der, Ma­jor Gen­er­al Dun­das, had suc­cumbed to yel­low fever short­ly be­fore the re­cap­ture and was in­terred at Fort Matil­da, over­look­ing Bas­seterre town. Hugh­es was un­for­giv­ing to his old ad­ver­sary Dun­das even in death, since the lat­ter's re­mains were ex­humed from their bur­ial place and thrown in a riv­er. It is pos­si­ble that the corpse was re­trieved, cre­mat­ed and sealed in a stone urn and from here, it dis­ap­pears from his­to­ry.

On the sub­ject of a suit­able trib­ute to Dun­das, his broth­er Charles who was trea­sur­er of the navy, pe­ti­tioned that a memo­r­i­al be ded­i­cat­ed to his ho­n­our. This was suc­cess­ful­ly car­ried as Charles was a MP. The ap­pli­ca­tion was grant­ed and an or­nate ceno­taph erect­ed in St Paul's in Lon­don for which Charles was pub­licly thank­ful. A hum­ble mar­ble tablet was al­so in­scribed and sent to the West In­dies to some un­known cor­re­spon­dent who held the urn with Ma­jor Dun­das' re­mains. This was in the year 1795.

Fast for­ward to 1839 and James Ross, a mas­ter ma­son was work­ing on the ren­o­va­tion of a house on Ed­ward Street in Port-of-Spain. His labour­ers were re­mov­ing a pile of loose stones and rub­ble and made the dis­cov­ery of a mar­ble memo­r­i­al tablet and urn.

The for­mer was in­scribed thus :

To the mem­o­ry

Ma­jor-Gen­er­al THOMAS DUN­DAS.

who, with great pro­fes­sion­al abil­i­ties,

and with a mind gen­er­ous and brave,

fell a sac­ri­fice to his Zeal and Ex­er­tion

in the ser­vice of his King and Coun­try

on the third day of June, MD­C­CX­CIV.

in the forty-fourth Year of his Age.

His Re­mains were in­terred

in the prin­ci­pal Bas­tion of FORT MATIL­DA,

in the Is­land of GUADALOUPE,

in the Con­quest of which

he bore a most dis­tin­guished share,

and in which he Com­mand­ed at his death.

This Tablet was Erect­ed

by a few of his Broth­er Of­fi­cers

as a mark of their high Es­teem

for his many valu­able qual­i­ties

and their re­gret for his Loss.

On the find it­self, an ob­serv­er present at the time wrote:

"It is wor­thy of re­mark that the spot on which this tablet, etc., were found is near to a house once oc­cu­pied by an ord­nance store keep­er of the name of Ed­wards. Two bro­ken screws of brass were found stick­ing in the holes of the tablet, by which it would ap­pear this me­men­to had been al­ready some­where sus­pend­ed; some pieces of stone or wall were al­so found ad­her­ing there­to. With ref­er­ence to the memo­r­i­al it­self, the urn was found to be in a per­fect state, while the tablet, it would ap­pear, had a small piece de­tached from the cor­ners by ac­ci­dent, and one of the pi­lasters is un­for­tu­nate­ly miss­ing. It is, how­ev­er, hoped these trilling de­fi­cien­cies can be with­out dif­fi­cul­ty re­placed, and that in tes­ti­mo­ny of the ser­vices of the gal­lant and lament­ed Gen­er­al it will find a place in the Protes­tant Cathe­dral of Trinidad, or (what would be more con­so­nant to the feel­ings of the Dun­das fam­i­ly, so mem­o­rable in the an­nals of their coun­try , for " deeds of arms") that this trib­u­tary rel­ic to the war­rior be brought over to the Moth­er Coun­try, and find a niche among the oth­er revered memo­ri­als of our il­lus­tri­ous dead, or near the tombs of his an­ces­tors."

The memo­r­i­al was quite a find and it can on­ly be spec­u­lat­ed how it ar­rived in Trinidad. The urn and tablet of Ma­jor Gen­er­al Dun­das was ac­cord­ed the ho­n­our of a place in the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral in 1840 near the mas­sive sculp­ture of Gov­er­nor Sir Ralph Wood­ford (1813-28) by Richard Chantrey. In a post­script car­ried in a Lon­don pa­per that year (in an ar­ti­cle re­count­ing the death of Dun­das) it was men­tioned:

"It may be grat­i­fy­ing to read­ers to learn that this mon­u­men­tal tablet has been re­stored and is now erect­ed in a con­spic­u­ous po­si­tion in the Protes­tant Cathe­dral in Trinidad near that of the late, no­ble mind­ed and gen­er­ous heart­ed Gov­er­nor Sir Ralph Wood­ford, the on­ly re­al gov­er­nor the isle of Trinidad has yet had the good for­tune to pos­sess."

When next you go to Port-of-Spain and can spare the time, take a walk in­to the cool in­te­ri­or of the Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral and scan the walls for the urn and tablet of Ma­jor Gen­er­al Dun­das, for you will be in the pres­ence of the last ves­tige of a vi­o­lent chap­ter of Caribbean his­to­ry.