Communications in 20th century Tobago

Dr Rita Pemberton

In 1900 the roads which existed in Tobago remained a legacy of the heyday of the plantation era. Despite the decline of the sugar industry, administrators on the island did not consider road improvement a priority, and the island’s roads continued to reflect plantation concerns that were based on the need to maintain security to deflect both internal and external threats. It was important for estates to be accessible to each other in order to lend support should an emergency occur. The situation did not change after emancipation, when the island’s financial challenges precluded any consideration of expenditure being allocated for road construction.

The roads, which did not connect all parts of the island were, for the most part, in a very poor state. Roads were of two types – those which could accommodate horse and carriage and bridle paths, and those which could accommodate horse and carriage were the island’s main roads. These led from the governor’s house to the port, and connected to the administration buildings, the main defence centre at the Fort and from a few plantations on the western side of the island to the town. The remaining roads were primarily bridle paths which, as their name suggests, were intended to accommodate single traffic on horseback.

The growth of village settlements after 1838 occurred without infrastructural planning, hence many of the island’s villages had no road access. The population depended on the existing bridle paths which, by 1900, were overgrown and obstacle-riddled with fallen trees and debris which remained uncleared for extensive periods of time. Road communication challenges were greatest on the windward side of the island – the source of the island’s main rivers. Traversing many of the roads in these areas required crossing these rivers which was a difficult and dangerous undertaking, particularly during the rainy season when some lives were lost. It was a common feature for some communities to be cut off from the rest of the island because of flooding during the rainy season, and further communication difficulties were posed in these hilly areas which were also prone to landslides.

Like they did during and after enslavement, the majority of Tobago’s population travelled long distances on foot from their homes to obtain the services they required, to transact business and to attend school, church, funerals, weddings and other social functions. While these challenges created a population of long-distance walkers who functioned from before day clean (early morning) to late evenings at a time when there were no street lights, life was very difficult. Women, bearing trays on their heads, plied their business selling, fish, provision, baked goods, and other items of food between villages. Except for those who were able to afford donkeys, farmers also loaded garden produce on their heads and trekked to their homes across the challenging terrain.

During this period, the many bays around the island provided relief for these communities. For the communities in north Tobago – Parlatuvier, Bloody Bay and L’ Anse Fourmi – communication with the outside world and business transactions with other villages could only occur by boat. The trade which developed between Charlotteville and Plymouth during the second half of the 19th century, relieved residents of these northern communities from a life of deprivation by allowing them to sell their produce and obtain essential items.

A critical development for the people of Tobago was the institution of a coastal steamer service which operated from 1901 to 1913, and which included areas in north Trinidad considered under-served by road access. For Tobago, this was a changed role for the bays which, during the 18th century, were seen as points of vulnerability during the era of heightened European contest for the island and magnets to illegal traders and pirates. Tobago’s administration equipped some of the bays with military installations to ward off enemy attacks and insurrections of the enslaved population. Their problem was that the cost of military equipment for the many bays on the island’s rugged coastline was unaffordable. This new role positioned the bays in service of the population.

Two steamers, the Kennet and the Spey, plied the route around the island. Travelling west from Rockley Bay in Scarborough, the steamers went around the island calling at the bays to collect produce from farmers every week. The Spey provided passenger accommodation and ice chambers for exporting fresh Tobago fish to markets in Trinidad. Their stops included the bays at Milford, Mt Irvine, Courland, Plymouth, Castara, Parlatuvier, Bloody Bay, L’Anse Fourmi, Hermitage, Man O War Bay, Tyrrel Bay, Kings Bay, Delaford, Roxborough, Richmond, Waterloo, Studley Park, Bacolet and back to Rockley Bay in Scarborough and provided employment opportunities to residents of the districts.

This service provided much needed relief from the drudgery of moving and selling produce and the difficulties of obtaining regular access to essential supplies. It made travel to Trinidad easier, put Tobago in contact with other parts of Trinidad, and facilitated increased connection with the Caribbean and the outside world. Unfortunately, the service deteriorated and was ultimately terminated when it was claimed that the Tobago route was unprofitable. Connection with Trinidad. which was provided by the coastal steamers, the SS Tobago and SS Trinidad between 1931 and 1957, never provided the level of service as that provided by the round-the-island steamers. That being said, it is to be noted that sea travel was no dignified undertaking because the lack of port development made it necessary for travellers to be lifted across the sea on the shoulders of men who waded to the waiting vessels.

At the start of the 20th century the government of the united colony initiated some efforts to construct bridges to permit safer movement of people and goods across rivers and streams. In 1904, a bridge which permitted wheeled traffic over the West Blenheim River was built, a bridge was constructed over the Courland River in 1912, and in 1930 the annual flooding and consequent sequestering of Louis d’Or from the rest of the island was terminated with the construction of a bridge over the Delaford River. However, possibilities for the island’s development remained stymied because of the lack of a road system which connected the entire island.

Road works which were undertaken between 1903 and the 1920s led to upgraded roads in the windward areas, but the secondary roads and traces which served several communities remained in poor condition, could not accommodate vehicular traffic and were impassable during the rainy season. In 1921 the first motor bus plied between Scarborough and Roxborough, in 1922 motor car traffic became possible in Castara, and in 1931 the Windward Road between Roxborough and Charlottesville was opened. However, it was not until 1948 that the road from Castara to L’ Anse Fourmi was made accessible by jeep and the Roxborough Bloody Bay Road which brought Bloody Bay into the island’s road network, was opened in 1966.

From 1925 the island’s representatives lamented the state of Tobago’s roads and raised the issue of the lack of adequate port development which continued to impose restrictions on the movement of people and goods in Tobago. This matter remained a hot topic on the island’s political agenda across the 20th century.