Twenty Years In The Caribbean
Caribbean Island Stories
By Pete Brand
All rights reserved. No reproduction in any form is permitted without the written consent of the author.
Foreword
My wife, Margie, and our children spent nearly twenty years in the Caribbean, living on the Island of Dominica. This is a collection of short stories, which I hope will let the reader know what it was like to live there at a time when it was almost always delightful. It was a time when the phrase “Down to the islands” stirred urges and visions of a tropical paradise and an almost unimaginably wonderful way of life. A time when one would not miss a black and white TV episode of Adventures in Paradise with Gardner McKay at the helm of the schooner Tiki in the south Pacific. Those were The Islands then, but the Caribbean Islands were getting more notice as time passed. Carlton Mitchell’s Islands to Windward brought the Caribbean more into focus. Sometimes they were thought of as a place to escape “the rat race”. To us it was all of that and more.
Although each story is of an actual happening and is as accurate as memory will allow, still I felt it necessary, occasionally, to change the names to protect the innocent and or guilty, as the case may be.
Here’s how it all happened.
Although Dominica seemed at first to be the least challenging and possibly the one with the greatest possibilities, it was, in fact, the most challenging and the one with the least possibilities, but I did not realize that at the time.
Down we went, bewildering offspring and all. Our boys were five, six, and the baby was seven months, old. The fourth was born after.
When we drove in from Melville Hall airport Margie saw for the first time the unbelievably spectacular wild wonderful tropical beauty of this place. There just is no place as beautiful in the Caribbean.
Clark Hall, established more than a century ago, was in the center of a coconut plantation with superbly beautiful old trees that seemed to reach the heavens. A lovely, clean river ran to the sea past it. Trays for drying cocoa were on the grounds and still used. John Archbold, whose family is a part of American history, did not live on the island but kept the estate house fully staffed, though it was often empty. The atmosphere there was gentle, unsophisticated, and far from inspiring but after a few days we went into Roseau, the capital city, and found it was gentle, unsophisticated, far from inspiring, and awful. Margie later confessed that she nearly cried when she saw it. It was the unbelievable beauty of the island that kept her, at this stage from encouraging us to leave before we started.
At least a quarter of the town’s perimeter structures were shacks crammed within a few feet of one another. In the town’s center some remnants of French influence showed in the many small verandahs that overhung the narrow pot-holed streets. Some expertly fashioned lovely buildings had survived, but one had to look hard to find them. Island-contemporary two story masonry buildings that most certainly had not come from an architect’s drawing board seemed to be everywhere. Few of the buildings had seen much paint.
Like living next to a railroad track, one soon ceases to see or hear the trains rushing by; this was so with the sight, sounds and smells of Roseau and, indeed, all of the towns and villages of Dominica, though I like the ever present smell of cooking thyme in the air.
There was a second main element in our decision to attempt a more serious try at making something of an effort here and that was the almost immediate friendship of Dominicans, Allendale and Delia Winston. Through their wonderful kindness we quickly met members of their family and the community who would become our fast friends. Like a benevolent rumor our contacts expanded exponentially. Our fondness for the increasing number of Dominicans we met began to weave us into the islands social fabric with such deftness that we were soon considering ourselves Dominicans, albeit adopted ones. Without effort we began to feel the secret magic which is both a gift and a curse that all Dominicans know. Some non-Dominicans suspect that Dominica is a very special place. We know it is.
We built and operated a resort hotel, Island House, bought the ice plant and Cold Store, and established the largest anthurium flower farm in the Western Hemisphere.
Years later Hurricane David took everything in Dominica from us, or took us from Dominica. We are still planning to test Thomas Wolfe’s pronouncement; “You can’t go home again.” He may have been right; we hope not.
Dominica’s history and geography:
For this I thank Dr. Lennox Honychurch whose writings have been most helpful.
Columbus left Cadiz on his second voyage September 25, 1493. He had seventeen caravels carrying 1,500 workmen, farmers, government representatives, soldiers and priests. He first sighted land very early on the 3rd of November as Dominica appeared on the horizon. It was Sunday so he named it Dominica, the Spanish word for Sunday.
Alas, Columbus found that the island had no safe harbor on the forbidding jagged coast of the windward side, so he sailed around the north end to a splendid natural harbor that is now Portsmouth. From there he left Dominica, continued north to Guadeloupe and ultimately reached Hispaniola. Later it is said that he showed Queen Isabella what Dominica looked like by crumpling a piece of parchment and dropping it on the table.
Few Europeans visited Dominica in the next century. The Carib Indians there were cannibals and extremely hostile. Also, the rugged terrain was not very suitable for farming.
While Spain’s interest gravitated to Cuba and other areas the French vied with the British for eastern Caribbean islands, including Dominica, but neither power accorded the island much importance. The French, however, were the most dedicated tenacious early colonizers of Dominica, leaving the preferred French Patois language, Creole, and dominant Catholic religion.
The first load of slaves was brought to the Americas by the Spanish from the Guinea coast of Africa in 1518. Soon thereafter they were brought regularly to the West Indies.
In 1686, nearly two hundred years after Dominica’s discovery, the French and English signed a treaty, which indicated the low value placed on the island. In part the treaty read: “The island of Dominica shall remain in the state in which it now is and shall be inhabited by the savages to who [sic] it has been left, so that neither of the two nations may place her under possession.”
Afterward, ownership of the island passed to and from France and Britain many times in its history.
Dominica is roughly thirty-two miles long and fifteen wide, with a total of 290 square miles and so mountainous that few areas of near level land are available for agriculture.
Since the Dutch were more merchants than colonizers they were not serious contenders for land acquisition in the Caribbean. England and France were the big players, bandying the possession of Dominica back and forth. In the 1690s French lumbering was in progress increasing their occupation. The British were doing the same thing in another part of the island. In 1761 The British took Dominica from France in a battle and in 1764 the Treaty of Paris transferred it officially to the British. France later regained possession, but early in 1782 Admiral, Sir George Rodney captured it back. He had placed The British fleet in Castries harbor in St. Lucia, the island just south of Martinique, to lie in wait for the French fleet under Admiral DeGrasse at Port Royal (now Ft. de France). DeGrasse had been ordered to take Jamaica from the British and had more than ten thousand men, sufficient armament and a formidable fleet with which to do it.
On April 8th Rodney received a semaphore signal that DeGrasse was moving out and he immediately ordered hot pursuit. He placed Admiral, Sir Samuel Hood, at the fore and, Admiral, Drake, at his rear.
By the next morning they sighted the French fleet off the north coast of Dominica, but the mountains cut off much of the wind to the British ships as they moved up the leeward coast. They wallowed, waiting for wind. Finally on April 12th between the islands of Les Saintes and Dominica’s north coast two long lines of ships squared off. By now the wind favored the British and Rodney’s ship, the Formidable, burst through the French line and soon other British battle ships did the same, allowing for a withering cross fire. DeGrasse’s ship, the Ville de Paris, was taken along with four other French ships and the rest of the French fleet escaped. The four captured ships however contained the main arms and artillery pieces for the attack on Jamaica so that island was saved.
Peace negotiations ended in the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 and under its terms Dominica was returned to the British.
England possessed the island after that but the French settlers stayed on leaving the French language and Catholic religion deeply entrenched in Dominica. French Patois, (Creole) is the preferred language; English the official language. Until recent years Creole has not been a written language so I assume, in these stories, the right to spell it as I hear it, with as much impunity as the teachers of the Haitians in Florida have done recently with their bilingual education programs.
Today there are a few pure Carib Indians remaining in the Carib Reserve on the northeast coast. The rest of the island’s seventy thousand-plus inhabitants are descendants of African slaves. There were rarely more than one or two dozen whites, called be’ke’s (pronounced bay-kay) permanently living on the island when we were there and about half were American. In addition there were usually that many white technical persons from Britain and a handful of French priests, Belgian nuns and church persons on assignment.
When slavery was the norm and sugar became the richest crop in the Caribbean, Dominica failed to profit much from it while it was making almost everyone else in the West Indies wealthy. They grew coffee for a while in Dominica and it became highly profitable but disease ultimately decimated these early coffee varieties and left the island without high profit crops.
Bananas, limes, citrus, coffee, coconut oil, some high quality cocoa, bay oil, and many lesser crops are the agricultural products of the island.
Slavery ended in this region on August 1, 1834. All 668,000 slaves in the British West Indies were then freed and 14,175 of those were in Dominica. This happened several decades before the United States’ Emancipation Proclamation.
Britain, in order to create a viable commercial unit out of the Caribbean islands, plus British Guyana, and British Honduras, tried repeatedly to form a federation of them. As far back as the late eighteen hundreds some effort toward federation was made. The final try began to fail when, in 1961, Jamaica voted against federating and by May of the following year federation was doomed by the withdrawal of Trinidad and Tobago. Neither large island wanted to support the small islands, which then were named the Little Eight. Soon federating, the Little Eight failed and finally, in April of 1966, at the Windward Islands Constitutional Conference in London the plans for Associated Statehood for each of the rest were drawn. The only authority over these island that remained with Britain was Foreign Affairs and Defense until such time as each island decided on complete independence. Of course there were promises of continued aid. Finally, on November 3, 1978, Dominica became independent. The name chosen by its citizens was the Commonwealth of Dominica. Now Dominica’s National Day, November 3rd, is the same day and month that Columbus first sighted the island in 1493.
Dominica is undeniably the most beautiful in the Caribbean, but unfortunately its spectacular beauty does not seem to help the island appreciably in its striving for economic success. Dominicans are, however, almost universally loyal to and proud of Dominica and supremely confident of the country’s future.
Tourism has been the slowly growing promise of perhaps the greatest most permanent steady income for the country and the fortuitous selection of Dominica as the setting for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies produced much temporary employment and extra income. Political liaisons produce grant money from many sources for the island which continues to seek aid from the sympathetic world. For example political gamesmanship recently shifted Dominica’s support from Taiwan to Mainland China and large grants surged in along with Chinese shop keepers in the towns.
Finally, as a note on this long list of short stories I would like to add that as a trial attorney in American courts for almost all work days for years I am familiar with “causal-inference error” and though I know of none in my writing here, some may have been included. If so please forgive me.
Now my intention is to post one of my true, published, Caribbean short stories each Sunday on this blog. I hope you will pass this information along to as many of your correspondents as you can.
Thanks, Pete Brand.
.
From: Twenty Years In The Caribbean: Caribbean Island (true) Stories