Gun Hill and heritage tourism

Sir Henry S. Fraser

Today I can send a message by email to my friends in Australia, on the other side of the world, almost instantaneously. Two hundred years ago a man on a really strong horse at a canter would take more than an hour to ride from Bridgetown to Speightstown with a message. The signal station network across Barbados, built after the slave rebellion of 1816, was the nineteenth century internet solution to the problem.

And so the re-opening of Gun Hill Signal last Saturday signalled (pun intended) a dramatic recognition of both our history and our present condition. Communication 200 years ago was slow, and progress in human civilization was slow. The delay in the long promised emancipation triggered a violent revolution, and the chain of signal stations built and operating by 1816 created a nineteenth century “state of the art” internet! A type of semaphore with movable wooden arms visible for miles was the precursor of our keyboard. And while there was no need to signal rebellion again, it must have hugely improved commercial communication across the island; the arrival of an important ship in Carlisle Bay would be news in St. Philip and Speightstown in a few minutes.

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