ANNABERG HISTORIC TRAIL -

In calm weather cane stalks were crushed on this circular HORSE MILL. Here, mules, oxen, or horses, harnessed to the poles, plodded the circular course, turning the upright iron rollers in the center of the platform. Slaves passed the cane between rollers which crushed the stalks and released the juice. A box at the base of the rollers caught and held the juice until the factory called for it. Then, through the brick pipe and wooden gutter, the juice flowed to the first of five "coppers," or iron kettles, inside the factory. Three to five hundred gallons of juice could be produced per hour.

The Horse Mill at Caneel Bay Plantation in 1844

BOILING BENCH - Here in the factory building you will learn how the cane juice was made into brown sugar. The boiling bench directly in front of you held the five coppers, for the boiling process. Coming through a hole in the wall directly above the boiling bench, the cane juice flowed into the largest copper (the one remaining) at the far side of the boiling bench. (Note the Oyster Plants growing in and around the coppers.) Fires, fed with dried cane stalks (magas), heated the coppers from beneath. Workers added lime and brought the cane juice to a boil, evaporating some of the water. After skimming off the impurities used for making mortar or saved with other sweet drippings to ferment, they ladled the juice from one copper to the next down the line to the last and smallest copper. They then poured the concentrated and purified juice into flat wooden pans to cool, crystallize, and drain off excess moisture. During this process a worker occasionally spaded the sugar to make sure that uniform small crystals formed, after which he scraped the finished sugar into wooden barrels. Each barrel, or hogshead, held up to 1600 pounds of sugar.
Planters counted a pound of sugar from a gallon of raw juice as good recovery.
Watching the last copper was a very important job. Removing the concentrated juice too early prevented sugar crystals from forming and caused molasses to form instead. (Of course, when they wanted molasses, that's what they did). On the other hand, if the juice was left too long, it burned. To get good sugar crystals, juice had to come off the last copper at just the right moment.

DRIPPINGS CISTERN - Workers stored the hogsheads of wet sugar on trestles in back rooms of the factory. Liquids dripping from the hogsheads funneled into the cistern on the right in the room below. And the owners used this sweet liquid, adding to it the washings and all other sugary drippings, to produce rum. They wasted nothing.
A great quantity of water was needed to process sugar and rum, and to support the people living and working on the estate. As ground water was not readily available, rain from the roof flowed through wood, metal, and masonry gutters into this CISTERN. Also, during torrential downpours, other cisterns collected water and brought it down to this area by an aqueduct. This cistern holds about 20,000 gallons.