Before the Battle:

ABOVE: The Queen of the Bay in the Tenth September parade in downtown Belize City.

After months of the most acrimonious debate the question came before the largest Public Meeting ever held in Belize. The issue was decided by the Free Black Men's vote at the end of the day.

Who were these Black men? According to the Belize Archives some came from up the Belize River. We can guess that the Flowers men, William, Caesar and Adam, lived at Flowers Bank Village. Perhaps others lived there as well or at Convention Town or St. James Boom or Black Creek.

Joseph Toney, together with his partner, Joseph Lascelles, was a turtler and fisherman who probably lived in Belize Town. (A little over a year later, in 1798, Toney and Lascelles reported seeing the Spanish Fleet assembling off Cozumel to load soldiers for the invasion.)

The Dawsons probably lived up the Belize River too. The family name is still well represented in Boom, Crooked Tree and elsewhere along the river.

Of the two White Men who voted with them, Thomas Robertson ran a tavern in Belize Town. George Raybon, an American Loyalist, perhaps lived somewhere around Black Creek or the Crooked Tree Lagoon.

Apparently, the leaders of the Free Black men were the Flowers families. These people had been slaves in the Mosquito Shore and owned by William Flowers from Bristol, England. In 1756 he decided to return to England and he freed his slaves before he left.

Known as the Flowers Negroes throughout the Mosquito Shore, they worked hard and provided for themselves and their children. But, in 1786 William Flowers died in England and his heirs claimed the Flowers Negroes were still slaves and tried to sell them at the Shore.

The Flowers men became alarmed at this turn of events, broke into some homes, stole guns and food and took their families into the bush determined to fight, if necessary, to keep their freedom.

The Superintendent of the Shore, Colonel James Pitt Lawrie, called a meeting of the Council, declared the Flowers families free, that they had been free for the past thirty years and forgave them for their thefts.

The Flowers families returned, gave back the things stolen and agreed to come to Belize with the Mosquito Shore people in 1787. (See Mosquito Shore Records, Belize Archives, Belmopan.)

It is not surprising that they voted to stay and fight for their freedom in Belize, even if it meant defeating their friend Colonel Lawrie's desire to evacuate the Settlement.

These twelve are the only names we know, but they were just a few of the hundreds of Black Men and Women, free and slave, who were determined to fight for Belize against the Spaniards and in spite of the cowards and fools who wanted to run away.

These Black Belizeans became the founders of families that today number in the tens of thousands of Belize Creoles.

There ought to be a monument in Flowers Bank Village or Belmopan to these men.

That vote did not completely quell the movement of Evacuation, but its proponents could not get enough support to bring the question before the Public Meeting a second time, thanks in part to the spirited written objections of Thomas Paslow. In a letter to the Public Meeting he thundered, "A MAN WHO WILL NOT DEFEND HIS COUNTRY IS NOT ENTITLED TO REAP THE BENEFIT THEREOF."

The sentence should be chiseled in stone over the doors of the National Assembly building in Belmopan, keeping in mind there are many ways for men and women to defend our Country.

For a comprehensive account of these events and the Battle you should read my book, Belize, 1798--The Road to Glory.

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