Carrera, The Prison Isle

He soon gave up that idea, partly because strong currents sweeping around the isle made landing difficult, and partly due to the malarial mosquitoes that flew across the short stretch of water from the swamps on the mainland.

However, like the other Diego Island, Kronstadt, Carrera proved to be a convenient source of limestone to ballast ships leaving Port-of-Spain. Carrera had a business partner named Hart. In 1854 the Superintendent of Prisons, Lovelace Hart — possibly a son of Carrera’s partner — seeing the difficulties encountered by fishermen battling the strong currents around Carrera, put forward the idea of cutting a canal to separate Point Gourd from the mainland.

It was an ambitious project, but since it would also serve to drain the swamp which was a breeding ground for mosquitoes, a canal roughly 667 yards long, 15 feet wide and four feet deep was cut, using prison labour, supervised by Lovelace Hart himself. Officially opened in May 1856, it was called Hart’s Cut.

Though there are no official records as such, it appears that even at that time Carrera was an unofficial place of detention. Just ten years after the official opening, Hart’s Cut began to silt up and was in dire need of an overhaul.

The Cut was deepened, a breastwork of stone quarried by convicts on Carrera reinforced the sides — but, despite occasional maintenance carried out by convicts when Carrera became a permanent convict depot, silt won the battle so that little remains of Lovelace Hart’s ambitious project. Although the canal has long since disappeared, it is known as Hart’s Cut to this day.

With Indian Arrival Day 2005 still fresh in memory, it should be of interest to Trinis of Indian descent to learn that, with more and more Indians arriving every month, the Colonial Hospital was overcrowded with Indian immigrants recovering from the voyage and awaiting medical inspection before being distributed to the estates. In 1866 the Acting Governor petitioned the Legislative Council for monies to buy the buildings on Carrera and convert them for use as an Immigration Convalescent Depot, declaring that immigrants already in residence there "derived great benefits from the pure air and sea bathing." However, that project was soon transferred to the Five Islands, partly, one supposes, due to the perils of bathing where there are strong currents and mosquitoes still surviving in the remnants of the swamp.

After that brief interlude with immigrants the island seems to have reverted to a penal role. In 1876 Inspector of Prisons Percy Fraser reported that quarrying stone and breaking it into road metal meant that hard labour at Carrera was one of the most severe forms of punishment. From the authorities’ point-of-view, it paid well because convict labour, at the rate of a shilling a day per convict provided enough money for their food and care — such as it was then.

At that time (1876), 48 prisoners on Carrera were crammed into tiny "temporary" cells less that half the size of the cells in the Royal Gaol on Frederick Street. Then, as now, there was a public outcry against crime, and calls for police to take swift and effective action against (as the Trinidad Palladium described the situation) "bands congregating and dancing in yards of Port-of-Spain and attacking peaceful citizens. Apart from imprisonment, what is needed is whipping, solitary confinement, and severe labour."

The authorities heeded the call and a new prison was constructed in record time on Carrera. Punishment, rather than reform, was the aim of imprisonment on Carrera; the rationale being that the harsher the conditions, the less likelihood there would be repeat offenders. The prison diet may have been as severe a form of punishment as the excessively hard labour in the quarry.

For the first two months, a prisoner sentenced to hard labour on Carrera got only two meals of 12 ozs of bread and plain water. Thereafter two ozs of biscuit and a half pint of "ginger tea" appears to be the staple diet for breakfast, with more biscuits (12 ounces) and ginger tea part way through the morning and at 4.30 pm 12 ozs of corn meal or rice and three or four ozs of salt fish for an evening meal. Sundays and Thursdays were the only days when vegetables were served with Australian mutton and "pease" instead of the corn meal/rice and salt fish on other days.

Prisoners who misbehaved were put back on the bread-and-water diet and put in irons in solitary confinement. The records show that there was very little flogging, a threat to reduce the day’s meagre ration of food seems to have been more than enough to enforce good behaviour.

The prisoners built their own new prison — under the direction of the prison authorities, of course. The increase in population — and crime — led in turn to a demand for more cells. Fr de Verteuil notes that in 1901 there were 211 separate cells, each one approximately 600 cubic feet — the size of a bird cage at the Emperor Valley Zoo.

Not surprisingly, in view of the restricted diet and brutally hard labour, 11 prisoners died during an epidemic of dysentery between 1901 - 1905. Conditions on Carrera were so bad that convicts went to extreme lengths to avoid work in the quarry. Some ate their own faeces to provoke an attack of dysentery. Others caught crabs and crushed the thick, black contents of the crabs’ stomachs into their eyes, so destroying their sight — and every possibility of being sent back to work in the quarry. Others used whitelime to damage their eyes.

The prison diet was improved after the outbreak of dysentery. Convicts were given cocoa with sugar, corn bread, rice and peas, salt pork, onions, vegetables, fresh beef, soup. There was a sound economic reason, as well as humanitarian one, for improving the prisoners’ diet because prisoners were expected to earn their keep; more, and better food meant the men were better able to withstand the backbreaking work of using crowbars and sledge hammers to break off large pieces of rock, and reduce them to road "metal."

Writing in his Guide to Trinidad in the 1880s Collens noted "On Carrera’s rocky summit stands an imposing and substantial prison for 56 prisoners and the staff, who are engaged in quarrying stone... about 7,000 tonnes" (of quarried stones) "...are produced annually. Flats are continually conveying metal from this depot to the various bays around the coastline for road-making purposes."

In time a trolley on rails was used to transport rock from the quarry to the wharf and a stone-crushing machine was installed to speed up the production of road metal. Demand for the material for road building and maintenance was such that the Public Works Department contracted with Carrera for the supply of 30,000 tonnes per annum.

The "flats" referred to by Collens were sturdy, broad, flat-bottomed (hence their name) sailing vessels that were the main means of transport for bulky raw materials, for sugar, gravel and timber as well as road metal.

Over time it was felt attempts should be made to rehabilitate and reform prisoners by teaching them to read and write (in 1930 a survey found two thirds of the prisoners were illiterate) and a trade; however it seems even to the present day, reform and rehabilitation programmes in prison are, at best, haphazard.

Recently members of ALTA (The Adult Literacy Tutors’ Association, the NGO dedicated to teaching adults to read and write) have been very successful in helping some prisoners to read and write; so much so that the prisoners themselves have taken on the role of tutors to fellow prisoners. Anglican and Roman Catholic priests visit the prison regularly to give instruction and hold services twice a month; ministers from other denominations and different religions are also allowed to counsel and minister to prisoners.

Hard labour in the Carrera quarry is no more. By the end of 1970 much of the island had been levelled to provide suitable sites for more buildings for prisoners and staff. By February, 2002 there were 490 inmates on the prison isle of Carrera.

Fr de Verteuil writes that today "Carrera is more of a Correctional Facility than a Penal Colony." Specially qualified trade officers give instruction in masonry, tailoring, joinery, carpentry, plumbing, welding, painting and mat making. Cricket, football, table-tennis and basketball are an important part of the rehabilitation and reform programme.

Fr de Verteuil also notes the delicate process of reintegration into society once a prisoner has served his term. There is a pre-release programme which includes aggression and anger management — but finding jobs for ex-convicts, however, reformed and rehabilitated, isn’t easy with so many who have never run afoul of the law out of work and under-employed.

Carrera remains today as a place of detention, but one where it is possible for a man to learn a trade and, God willing, become a useful member of society.

Next week (space permitting): all Five Islands, Caledonia, Craig (+1), Lenigan, Rock and Pelican.