Seascape with monkeys and guinea-pigs: Britain's biological weapons research programme, 1948-54

The British biological weapons (BW) research programme based at Porton Down continued after the Second World War. Five series of BW experiments with animals at sea were undertaken to supplement laboratory work. The causative organisms for plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis and Vaccinia viruses were tested in the Caribbean near Antigua in the late 1940s, in Hebridean waters (north-west Scotland) in the early 1950s and off Nassau in the Bahamas in 1953-54. In September 1952, at the end of Operation 'Cauldron' off the Isle of Lewis, a trawler, the Carella, passed through the danger area when a toxic cloud had been released and was covertly watched until the incubation period had passed in case those on board had come into contact with the plague bacillus. Publicity about the trials was avoided, but a press statement was issued in March 1954. The last series provoked sustained agitation in Cuba. More recently an outline of the sequence has emerged in the UK parliamentary record and in Porton's official history, and a fuller account of the Scottish trials has awakened some interest locally.