BUSINESS
the English arrive story by Mark W. Buyck, III
In the last couple of months, we have described early Spanish and French attempted settlements in South Carolina. The first successful permanent settlement in South Carolina was the English settlement of Charles Towne in April 1670. Charleston would become the fourth largest city in the British North American colonies by the time of the Revolutionary War. The only larger cities were Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. The expedition to Carolina was financed by the eight (8) Lords Proprietors of Carolina. Three ships, their crew, and passengers set sail from England in August 1669. The Lords Proprietors held a charter from King Charles, II, granting them all the land south of Virginia into Spanish Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition reached Barbados in October 1669 and spent several months there. Barbados was first settled by the British in 1627. It is the easternmost of the Caribbean Islands and British settlers found the island ideally situated for farming sugarcane. The plantation system with large numbers of African slaves was the predominate economic model. During the mid-17th century, the small island of Barbados had a larger population than the British settlements in New England and the Chesapeake Bay area. Its influence on the settlement of Charleston and the creation of the South Carolina colony remains evident today. 12
VIPMagSC.com
August 2021
a replica 17th-century trading vessel visitors can board and explore beneath the deck at Charles Towne Landing
The 200-ton Frigate Carolina was the only one of the three ships to make its way to the Carolina coast. The 93 passengers on board the Carolina sailed into Port Royal but deemed it too close to the Spanish permanently settled in St. Augustine. A friendly tribe of Kiawah Indians pointed them northward to an area they described as better suited for farming. The Carolina sailed into Charleston Harbor in April 1670, sailing past Oyster Point, the site of the Battery today, and headed slightly further inland on the Ashley River. The Carolina followed the Old Town Creek on the south side of the Ashley River as far as it could go. The new arrivals began erecting shelters and named their town Albemarle Point, after Duke Albemarle, one of the Lords Proprietors. Indentured servants outnumbered “Masters” by about two to one. The Indentured servants were typically white Englishmen bound to serve their owners for two to five years in return for passage to the new world. All free men in the colony were provided an initial allocation of 150 acres of land with an additional 100 acres for each indentured servant belonging to them. Upon service of the indentures, those free men were entitled to their own 150-acre plots.
