When Banana Was King

When Banana Was King looks at Jamaica, and a Jamaican, Alfred Constantine Goffe — who few, including Jamaicans themselves, know much about.  Goffe, (a black man) was an extraordinary and unusual figure. He was a hotelier, a shipping tycoon and a pioneer in the export of banana and other fruits to the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Amazingly, A.C. Goffe did this at a time when black people were only a few years removed from slavery.  His own mother, Margaret, had been born a slave. Along with his brothers, A.C. Goffe helped make the Jamaican banana industry into the world leader in the early 20th century.  His Lanasa and Goffe Steamship and Importing Company was among the first Jamaican firms to enter the international banana export trade and was one of the last independent companies to remain in the field.

A.C. Goffe was a controversial figure, loved by some and hated by many others. He was arrested in the United States in 1908 and charged with conspiring with the Mafia in the attempted murder of a banana rival. Years later in Jamaica, Goffe was on trial again, this time for the murder of a man who stole coconuts from one of his plantations.

The Story of ‘Banana King’, Alfred Constantine Goffe, who played an important role in the Jamaican banana industry, is now, at long last, being told.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leslie Gordon Goffe, a New York-based reporter for BBC’s World Service Radio, grew up in London listening to what he thought were tall tales about the exploits and achievements of his great-grandfather, ‘Banana King’ Alfred Constantine Goffe.  He discovered, though, on journeys to Jamaica and elsewhere that the truth about his ancestor was much stranger than fiction.  What begun to emerge — in conversations with family members, from Jamaica’s National Archives, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and from Washington D.C.’s Library of Congress — was a portrait of an extraordinary Jamaican who helped establish two of Jamaica’s most important industries —  Bananas and Tourism.