Tracey Thorne
Intended for Jamaica
2024- Selected Works
Photograph: Loading Sugarcane on the wall of Frome Sugar Factory, Westmoreland, Jamaica, (2022), Tracey Thorne
Intended for Jamaica is an artist led body of work that has been responding to unseen archives held in the Boulton and Watt Collection at the Library of Birmingham and informed by fieldwork in Jamaica.
The new work focuses on challenging dominant, prevailing narratives about Birmingham’s heroic industrial heritage and, sets out to recover the erased histories of enslavement and imperialism that are entangled within this history.
The work seeks to shed light on the sale of the Boulton and Watt Co. steam engines from Soho Foundry near Birmingham to sugar plantations in Jamaica. It is an illustrative and reflective exploration that focuses on the power of bringing together historical artifacts and organising them in a way that connects them to the sites that they are associated with to 'yield up a kind of truth'.
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'On the basis of some information and a little guess work you journey to a site to see what remains were left behind and to reconstruct the world that these remains imply...to yield up a king of truth.'
The Site of Memory, Toni Morrison
For more than 200 years the stationary steam engine has been celebrated as a testament to the pioneering industrial heroes of Boulton, Watt, and Murdoch, who played pivotal roles in Birmingham's Industrial Revolution. Yet, beneath this celebrated narrative lies a missing chapter, one interwoven with the threads of transatlantic slavery, indentured (boned) labour and the enduring legacies of colonialism.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, James Watt and Matthew Boulton corresponded and met with some of Britain's most powerful and wealthy slave traders, plantation owners, and West Indian merchants. This evidence has never been organised in a way that enables the public to truly understand how these men and their heirs were entangled with British slavery. This work seeks to counter the inaccurate assertions that the two men simply retired and were not involved in the colonial trade.
West Indian planters, slave traders, and influential British figures such as Samuel Whitbread (British brewer & landowner) were eager from around 1770 to the 1790s to develop a scheme for adapting the steam engine for sugarcane milling in the colonies.
Cyanotype: Copy of the proposed subscription scheme Particulars of Engines sent to Boulton & Watt in 1790 - correspondence between Samuel Whitbread and the enslaver W Dawkins,
(2023) Tracey Thorne
This included the Liverpool slave trader John Dawson, who wrote to Boulton & Watt in 1790 to enquire about the purchase of a steam engine for a sugar mill in Trinidad on behalf of the King of Spain.
The artist reflected on the significance of these historical letters from the archives that help illustrate the wider context in which the firm of Boulton & Watt was operating towards the end of the eighteenth century. This, in turn, helped her to trace the history of sugar and plantation slavery in Jamaica, which began under Spanish colonisation. The large mural that stands above Discovery Bay in the parish of St Ann depicts the scene when Christopher Columbus arrived in Jamaica in 1494, claiming the island for the Spanish crown, which during this period was inhabited by the Arawak (indigenous) people.
Photograph: The Spanish Have Landed,
St Ann, Jamaica, (2019) Tracey Thorne
​Prominent British enslavers such as Lord Penrhyn were among the Jamaican planters who wanted a steam engine to power his sugar mill on his Denbigh sugar plantation estate in Jamaica. The Institute of Mechanics hold a copy of a Plan of a Steam Engine for the Ho Lord Penrhyn, Jamaica attributed to the firm of Boulton & Watt although no markings are available to authenticate the document. ​
Lord Penrhyn, Jamaica, 1790, Steam Engine Drawing, Copyright: Institute of Mechanics, BAW/3/1
Letters in the archives reveal that Jamaican planters were keen that Watt produced a prototype of the Boulton and Watt steam engine for sugarcane milling to prove its suitability before they committed to the scheme. Further research is needed but it is likely that an early protype of the Boulton and Watt steam engine was erected in Jamaica c1790s. If this was the case then the surviving unmarked engine drawing for Lord Penrhyn's sugar estate is potentially significant.
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In 1798, Edward Knowles writes to Boulton & Watt from the Spring estate 'an engine has been erected on Lord Penrhyn's estate at Clarendon'.
As Watt and Boulton retired around 1800 from daily operations at Boulton and Watt Co., their heirs, particularly James Watt Junior. Who along with William Murdoch employed at Soho Foundry, began the lucrative export of steam engines to sugar plantations. Around 152 orders for Steam Engines supplied to sugar plantations are listed in the Boulton & Watt Catalogue of Old engines which was a copy ledger of sales at Soho Foundry (C1890). It's important to note that this section in the catalogue doesn't included works sent before 1800 or other engineering works supplied to the Caribbean e.g. Waterworks these are listed separately such at the Waterworks Supplied to Falmouth Water Works company in Jamaica 1801.
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The first official order was placed for Trinidad in 1803, and despite Jamaican planters expressing interest in the scheme since the 1780s, the first steam engine order for Jamaica was fulfilled in 1808. Commissioned by Sir Alexander Grant, who was from a wealthy Scottish slave-trading family of merchants and plantation owners.
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Between 1808 and 1850 around 54 steam engines were supplied by James Watt Junior from Soho Foundry to sugar plantations in Jamaica, where the sugar mills were operated by the enslaved workforce. After slavery was abolished in 1834, sugarcane plantations used a variety of forms of labour including workers imported from India under contracts of indenture.
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The planters drive to power their steam engines using steam power was largely to address issues relating to productivity and profits. Virtually all the enslavers that owned sugar estates in Jamaica opposed the abolition of slavery. Boulton & Watt steam engines were supplied with the full knowledge that they were to be operated by the enslaved and that thousands of enslaved people would be required across Jamaica to cut the sugar cane and undertake the many other jobs involved its its cultivation, harvest and export.
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Blueprint Boulton & Watt Order Book cyanotype using a photograph of the original volume in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023), Tracey Thorne
Blueprint Fragment of Boulton & Watt page from the Catalogue of Old Engines cyanotype from the section marked Engines Supplied to Sugar Plantations, (2023), Tracey Thorne
Photograph: Cyanotype, Denbigh Jamaica montage over original engine drawing. Letters (c1790s) from the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023), Tracey Thorne
Blueprint Worthy Park, Jamaica cyanotype made in response to an original engine drawing (c1845) in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023), Tracey Thorne
Blueprint Drax Hall, Jamaica (2023) cyanotype made in response to an original engine drawing (c1841) in the Boulton & Watt Collection, (2023), Tracey Thorne
Cyanotype: Recovering the Past James Watt Junior montage with sugar plantation names connected to the Boulton & Watt steam engines that he supplied from Soho Foundry, to Jamaica, 2023, Tracey Thorne
Cyanotype: James Watt montage that explores his entanglements with slavery, steam power, sugar and Jamaica, Tracey Thorne, (2023) Intended for Jamaica
Ralph Walkers Sugar Mill with a Steam Engine sent to James Watt Junior (1816) from the Boulton & Watt collection, MS3147/5/1355a, Intended for Jamaica
Laing & Andersons Steam Engine for a sugar mill 1814 in a folder marked Pirates & Other Engineers Engines shows the enslaved operator that is invisible in the Boulton & Watt drawings and history, MS3147/5/1353 next to a cyanotype fragment of a Boulton & Watt pump cylinder supplied to Dry River Estate (1821) MS3147/5/833, Intended for Jamaica
On the Road to Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Eighteenth Century Windmill Green Park Sugar Plantation
On the Road to Worthy Park Sugar Estate
Selected Photographs: from the series
Intended for Jamaica, 2024
Intended for Jamaica Photographic Essays
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The artist research resulted in the development of extensive body of work that given the history of Boulton & Watt and plantation sites in Jamaica was too much to fully explore in the exhibition. Therefore, this led me to start to write a series of photo essays that I hope to complete by mid August. These are available on my blog but listed below for easy.
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Dem Tell Me What They Want to Tell me
Engines of Oppression: James Watt
Cane Cutting in Jamaica - Midgham Sugar Plantation
The Past is Present - Gren Park Plantation
Discovering Helen Caddicks - Native Sugar Mill Jamaica Print
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Photographs: Hyde Hall Great House, from the series
Intended for Jamaica, 2024, Tracey Thorne
About the Artist Work
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The artist's new body of photographic work includes creation of cyanotypes (blueprints), representing a creative and reflective response to archival materials and field trips in Jamaica. The intention is to delve into the intricate connections between Birmingham and Jamaica by exploring locations (sites) where steam engines were sold. The themes explored in this artistic work connect to issues relating to place, collective memory, and colonialism, with an emphasis on both environmental and social legacies.
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The use of cyanotypes, a photographic printing process known for its distinctive blue colour, aims to evoke a sense of historical documentation and symbolise the intertwining of past and present, echoing the historical significance of the steam engines in Jamaica.​
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The project's visual narrative, using photography and cyanotypes, seeks to excavate layers of history and memory in the context of Jamaica. The act, in this context, involves a careful and deliberate exploration of the remnants of the colonial era and the legacy of the steam engines in Jamaica.
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The work is currently being exhibited in a new exhibition at The Library of Birmingham in 2024 called Intended for Jamaica . The exhibition has been extended until 14 December 2024 - details here
The project is supported with a grant from Arts Council England. See an earlier blog made at the start of the project published in 2022 here - Sugarland
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Bibliography & additional notes are available here
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