John Gimlette's Voyages

In the UK, we tend to associate the end of this gruesome trade with William Wlberforce. But there are a few other Britons associated with abolition, all with links to either Guyana (then the colonies of Demerara and Berbice) or Suriname:-

The ancestors who vanished, somewhere in South America. Most madeirans that I met had no idea that a large body of their ancestors had gone to Guyana (or British Guiana as it was was). They're aware of the Venezuelan connection but the rest of the continent is rather vague. Several people were sure that Guyana was in Africa ...

Too little water, everything dies; too much, it drowns. In Guyana, the problem for farmers has often managing the country's vast reserves of water; draining swamps, maintaining channels; stabilising the watertable.

The Madeirans immigrants will have been astonished by the remoteness and the emptiness of the British Guiana in 1835. It was the size of the Great Britain, and yet - under its recent Dutch masters - only 10% of it had been explored. It's borders had yet to be defined, and enormous features like the Kaieteur Falls were still unknown to the outside world.

Life in the Guyanese interior has always been tough, and the hunters there will have seen plenty of danger. But for the Madeirans, no hunt was as dangerous, as remarkable or as cruel as the one they'd left behind: the whale hunt.

For the Madeirans arriving in Guyana, the wild life must have been bewildering. Madeira has no indigenous land mammals at all, no poisonous creatures, and no snakes. By contrast, Guyana has the biggest ants in the world, and the biggest freshwater fish.

Only a few of the descendants of the Madeiran immigrants to Guyana will have ever made it back to the island. The ties are too distant and the memories (if any) too unhappy.

Not suprisingly, the Madeirans who went to Guyana weren't the only ones to abandon the hard, slow life of the island. There are now 300,000 Madeirans in South Africa, perhaps 500,000 in Venezuela, and others scattered elswhere. In all, there are thought to be some 1.3 million Madeirans dotted round the world, nearly 5 times as many as live there.

The Madeiran immigrants of the 1830s were perfectly adapted to take over British Guiana's wholesale and retail trade. As farmers (see photo) they were natural savers, hoarders and investors.

Guyana (or British Guiana) has long been familiar with the wine of Madeira, long before the arrival of the Madeiran immigrants. Because it is fortified, it doesn't go off, and it isn't damaged by heat. For that reason, it was the tipple of empire-builders.