CAB9-1_PT1 — Page 222

Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. June 1894.

Page 222

CONFIDENTIAL.

ST. LUCIA.

Defence Scheme of January 1894.

ST. LUCIA.

No. 205.

Remarks by Colonial Defence Committee.

PART II.

(Not for communication to the Colony.)

1. THE Colonial Defence Committee, having considered the Defence Scheme of St. Lucia, desire to direct attention to the unsatisfactory state of affairs which it discloses. The works and armament have been provided at a large cost; the Admiralty consider the port to be their chief coaling station in West Indian waters, and are incurring a large expenditure there on Naval Store Buildings; yet over two-thirds of the garrison laid down as necessary to defend the station, the General Officer Commanding and Staff charged with the defence, and most of the necessary stores, are at Barbados, and, so far as the Committee can gather, there seems to be no intention of making any but the most gradual arrangements for moving them.

The abolition of the old system of piecemeal detachments of the British army, giving no real protection, and only serving to invite attack, and their concentration at certain points selected to suit the requirements of Her Majesty's navy, formed the policy on which Port Castries has been defended; but though its permanent defences have been completed, the garrison, without which those defences are useless, is still distributed in fractions, and, unless some more decided steps than at present are taken to accelerate its concentration, the old condemned detachment system promises to be perpetuated in the case of St. Lucia for many years to come.

Conceding the assumption that the requisite shipping is readily to be obtained on emergency, that the transports are unmolested, that the transfer of the troops from Barbados is completed within one day, and of the stores within three days, there always remains the possibility that the move- ment may not be undertaken in sufficient time, for any attack by the French on St. Lucia would probably be attempted as a surprise, and at the first commencement of a war. It might treacherously precede the actual declara- tion of war, and it would be unsafe to assume that troops might not leave France before an open rupture, ostensibly to reinforce one of the French West Indian garrisons, but be directed by sealed orders opened at sea on St. Lucia. It is to be noticed that the Defence Scheme contemplates such a contingency, and draws attention to the disadvantage at which the existing small garrison would find itself placed in the event of a sudden attack, and of being obliged to depend on its own resources.

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