The short-lived English colony of Willoughbyland, in what is now Suriname, was both verdant and dangerous. In the end, it was exchanged for New York.
On July 26th, 1666, an English armada of warships and 1,000 men, en route from Barbados to recapture the island of St Kitts from the French, was struck by a devastating hurricane. Almost the entire fleet, together with the men on board, was destroyed, driven ashore at Guadeloupe, with wreckage washed up on Martinique as well. Of its commander, the Governor of the ‘Charibbee Islands’, Francis, Lord Willoughby, there would be no trace, except a couch, recognised as his own, ‘and some peeses of a ship’ washed ashore at Montserrat.
Thus ended an extraordinary career. A Presbyterian from a wealthy Lincolnshire family, Francis, Lord Willoughby was a parliamentary general in the first years of the Civil Wars. But alarmed by the ‘levelling principles’ taking hold of the army and Parliament, he defected to the Royalists in early 1648. Meanwhile, he put together an exit strategy, securing a share of the proprietorship of the English Caribbean islands. Following the execution of the king and seeing that ‘all is gone at home’, Willoughby, like many other Cavaliers, set sail for Barbados, which had declared itself Royalist.