Fishing to Survive: Minorcans in Britain’s Smyrnéa Settlement, Florida, North America, 1766-1777

Abstract

Established by Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a Scottish physician and entrepreneur, the Smyrnéa settlement was an agricultural enterprise that existed from 1766 to 1777 during the British occupation of Florida. Turnbull recruited approximately 1,100 indentured servants from the Mediterranean island of Minorca along with an additional 300 from Greece, Italy, Corsica, and Turkey. Within the Smyrnéa settlement, the developing cohesion of these various Mediterranean groups over time eventually led to the emergence of a distinctive «Minorcan» cultural community on the Florida frontier. Although there is substantial historical documentation pertaining to this settlement, archaeologists have only recently begun to uncover its structural and material cultural remains and add to our knowledge of colonial life in eighteenth-century Smyrnéa. Analysis of the ca. 5,000 faunal remains from the Turnbull Colonist’s House site, the first residence to be discovered, indicates that British food supplies were indeed inadequate and that the colonists took the initiative in securing protein in their diet primarily by fishing. Remains of ray-finned and cartilaginous fishes were highly abundant in the examined samples and consisted of 26 taxa of local estuarine waters.