Dennison Moore

The First East Indians to Trinidad Dennison Moore

Of the life of Captain Cubitt Sparkhall Rundle, who commanded the Fatel Rozack that brought the first batch of East Indian labourers to the shores of Trinidad in 1845, we know little; and that little is derived mainly if not wholly from his scrapbook and from a history of the family written by his son Henry Leslie Rundle. Nevertheless Rundle's career as a sailor affords Dr. Moore an opportunity to dissect nineteenth-century merchant marine society, to lay out how merchant ships worked and what life was like on deck and in the forecastle where the sailors and boys lived. The author provides a scholarly account of events leading to the ban on Indian emigrants to the colonies in 1838, its lifting in 1842 - the year that marked Rundle's entry into the business of transporting East Indian labourers to the island of Mauritius - and of the negotiations which culminated in the decision to allow Indian labourers to migrate to the West Indian colonies of Jamaica, British Guiana and Trinidad. Dr. Moore's research on the Fatel Rozack has completely upended the findings of researchers about that vessel and her owner Abdool Razack Dugman of Calcutta, findings which they presented on the occasion of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Indian arrival in Trinidad.