As a collaborative doctoral candidate based in a Geography department (as well as at the NMM), I am seeking to write not the history, but rather an historical geography of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC). In other words, I am looking through a geographical lens at the Company's routes and undertakings. At the moment, I am examining the vessels' ports of call as nodal points within networks, and in particular, I am currently exploring the place of St Thomas in the RMSPC's operations.

St Thomas (Parti af Byen og Havnen) (PAD0938)

During much of the 1840s and 1850s, St Thomas occupied an important position in the RMSPC's timetable, with a number of inter-colonial branch routes departing from this island. During the early 1850s, for example, a vessel on the 'Jamaica and Mexican' route would leave St Thomas once a month and would travel to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Veracruz, and then onwards to Tampico, before returning via the same route. But unlike other islands that also acted as points of departure and Company coaling stations in the region (such as Barbados and Grenada), St Thomas formed part of the Danish West Indies. Unlike many of the RMSPC's other ports of call, which had entered into the post-emancipation period by the commencement of service, the slave system prevailed in St Thomas until 1848. The economic and social disparities at the RMSPC's various Caribbean ports of call meant that logistical considerations, such as the hire of local labour, operated differently from island to island. It is these kinds of complexities that are of particular interest to my research in the Company's activities during the period of transition in the Caribbean.