ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN FREDERIC A. FENGER ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN Table of Contents ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN...............................................................................................................................1 FREDERIC A. FENGER...............................................................................................................................1 PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I. THE YAKABOO IS BORN AND THE CRUISE BEGINS..............................................3 CHAPTER II. WHALING AT ÎLE−DE−CAILLE.....................................................................................11 CHAPTER III. KICK 'EM JINNY..............................................................................................................21 CHAPTER IV. CARRIACOU−MAYERO−BEQUIA................................................................................26 CHAPTER V. CLIMBING THE SOUFFRIÈRE OF SAINT VINCENT...................................................36 CHAPTER VI. DAYS WITH A VANISHING RACE...............................................................................46 CHAPTER VII. DELIGHTS OF CHANNEL RUNNING JOSEPHINE IN SAINT LUCIA..................53 CHAPTER VIII. MARTINIQUE FORT DE FRANCE............................................................................65 CHAPTER IX. ST. PIERRE PELÉE. .......................................................................................................72 CHAPTER X. A LAND CRUISE THE CALM OF GUADELOUPE......................................................81 CHAPTER XI. WE MAKE OUR BEST RUN............................................................................................94 CHAPTER XII. STATIA THE STORY OF THE SALUTE..................................................................101 CHAPTER XIII. SABA.............................................................................................................................110 CHAPTER XIV. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S CHANNEL AND YAKABOO ......................................114 i ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN FREDERIC A. FENGER This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com • PREFACE • CHAPTER I. THE YAKABOO IS BORN AND THE CRUISE BEGINS • CHAPTER II. WHALING AT ÎLE−DE−CAILLE • CHAPTER III. KICK 'EM JINNY • CHAPTER IV. CARRIACOU−MAYERO−BEQUIA. • CHAPTER V. CLIMBING THE SOUFFRIÈRE OF SAINT VINCENT • CHAPTER VI. DAYS WITH A VANISHING RACE. • CHAPTER VII. DELIGHTS OF CHANNEL RUNNING JOSEPHINE IN SAINT LUCIA • CHAPTER VIII. MARTINIQUE FORT DE FRANCE. • CHAPTER IX. ST. PIERRE PELÉE. • CHAPTER X. A LAND CRUISE THE CALM OF GUADELOUPE. • CHAPTER XI. WE MAKE OUR BEST RUN. • CHAPTER XII. STATIA THE STORY OF THE SALUTE. • CHAPTER XIII. SABA. • CHAPTER XIV. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S CHANNEL AND YAKABOO ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN Being the Yarn of a Cruise in the Lesser Antilles in the Sailing Canoe Yakaboo TO MY MOTHER AND THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER PREFACE To most of us the West Indies comprise Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti or San Domingo (commonly thought to be two separate islands), Porto Rico and the smaller islands of the Bahamas, the Bermudas and Barbados, somewhere adrift off the Florida coast like a second Sargasso Sea. The lower Caribbees seem as mythical as the lost Atlantis itself. I feel that I shall have accomplished much if by means of a simple explanation and the use of a chart I can ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN 1 ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN set the reader right for all time. In general the West Indies include the Bahamas (a group of low−lying coral cays just across the Gulf Stream where it sweeps northward past the east coast of Florida) but more particularly they are those islands which stretch to the eastward from Yucatan to just beyond Porto Rico where they take a southward trend forming an almost perfect arc from the Virgins to Trinidad which is in reality the northeast corner of South America. Thus they bound the Caribbean Sea, on the north and east, which in the old days was also called the Northern Ocean in contradistinction to the Southern Ocean or Pacific which Balboa first saw directly to the south from the Isthmus of Panama. The large islands, Jamaica, Cuba, San Domingo and Porto Rico are known as the Greater Antilles while the smaller islands which take up the march to Trinidad are known as the Lesser Antilles. Of the Lesser Antilles, the Virgins, Anguilla, St. Martin, Barbuda, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique are known as the Leeward Islands; St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados and Tobago are known as the Windward Islands. The Bermudas form an entirely separate group quite distinct from the West Indies although their climate is semitropic and lie 750 miles ESE of Hatteras and some eight hundred miles from the nearest Bahamas. The Lesser Antilles are apart from the rest of the West Indies in that the Spaniards played very little part in their colonization or development. While it is true that Columbus on his later voyages discovered the Lesser Antilles, a few of which he actually set foot upon and most of which he merely named as he saw them from a distance, the Spaniards made no attempts to settle on these small islands * and they lay unmolested for over a hundred years till early in the seventeenth century they were settled by the English, French and Dutch and a little later by the Danes. Aside from the patois of the Negro which varies more or less in the different islands, there are now but two languages spoken, English in the British, Dutch and Danish possessions and French in the French islands. For a time the Swedes owned St. Bartholomew which was ceded to France in 1878. * With the exception only of Tobago. The history of these small islands should be of interest to us on account of their early intimacy with our own colonies and especially because of the part which the Dutch island of St. Eustatius played in aiding us at the time of the Revolutionary War. But our knowledge of their early days is meager, hurricanes and the depredations of the little wood ant (which literally eats away the wooden houses from about their owners) being the two chief destroyers of manuscripts and their containers. What of the life of St. Eustatius scarcely eight miles in area which had its beginnings before our Plymouth colony and in 1781 when at the height of its prosperity it was destroyed by Rodney it had a population of nearly 40,000 more than either Boston or New York at that time? Its printed history does not cover much more than 20,000 words. But with history we have little to do in this account. I have limited myself to those incidents which might have a direct interest for the reader and some of them, in whole or in part, as far as I can ascertain, now appear in print for the first time. Those who are familiar with the literature of the Lesser Antilles will, I hope, be agreeably disappointed in not finding in these pages those hardy perennials of the guide books the building of schooners at Bottom Town on Saba, eight hundred feet above the sea, and the deadly snakes of the Petit Piton that killed the members of a climbing party one by one till the last man fell only a few feet from his goal. So I have attempted neither a history nor a guide book but have spun out the yarn of a lone cruise in a sailing canoe. I went to study the islands at first hand and in the craft which I believed would be most suitable for the purpose a deep−sea sailing canoe. The main portion of the cruise has appeared serially in abbreviated form in the Outing" magazine. ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN 2 ALONE IN THE CARIBBEAN I have made no attempt to discuss the problem of the native the more one studies it the less one has to say and my few explosions of choler will, I hope, be forgiven. Throughout the islands from Grenada to St. Thomas, I have made friends whom I count among my best and it is their unexampled courtesy and generosity that go to make up some of the most pleasant memories of the cruise. Those whom I would especially mention are C.V.C. Horne and T.B.C. Musgrave, who at once made me feel at home in St. George's and who, when they could not dissuade me from starting out in the Yakaboo, did everything in their power to facilitate my preparations for the cruise; Dr. William S. Mitchell, who loaned me his cotton ginnery; Jack Wildman, who helped me to much interesting material; Steady Glean, who rescued me from the mob at Sauteurs (but that is another story) ; Whitfield Smith, now at Grand Turk and whose place at Carriacou has been happily filled by Musgrave; McQueen, of pleasant memory of Top Hill days; Noel Walker I wonder if he has joined the ranks of the many who have gone west; Rupert Otway, whose hospitality I enjoyed at Union; Old Bill Wallace; V.J. Monplaisir, Monty; Captain Harry Turner, then Harbour Master of Castries and now in Mombasa; Père Remaud, I was going to say Labat; Monsieur Waddy and the whole of the Union Sportive; Mr. Frederick Woolworth, who took me in on faith and for whom I acted as cook in times of stress; Dr. John Morgan Griffith, enthusiast, of Statia; Captain Ben Hassel, Freddie Simmons, and Leslie Jarvis, Commissioner of Tortola. F.A.F. Item I order that my executors purchase a large stone, the best that they can find, and place it upon my grave, and that they write round the edge of it these words : Here lies the honorable Chevalier Diego Mendez, who rendered great services to the