Seeing what Florida is like today, it is difficult to imagine that well into this century most of it was swamp and jungle. In the 1920s, they used to have a car rally from Tampa, halfway up the state on the Gulf Coast, to Miami. The vehicles had to navigate old Indian trails, be ferried across rivers and swamps on rafts, and generally hope for the best. The journey, which today (along a route still today called the Tamiami Trail) you could accomplish in five or six hours, took eleven days.
The string of barrier islands were naturally isolated. There were towns along the coast and Fort Myers was a growing city. Edison had his winter estate there; you can visit it today and see the things he left behind. (It is interesting to know that, having been involved in the development of the telephone, he recommended that it should be answered with the word, ‘Ahoy’, a suggestion soon fortunately dropped in favour of ‘Hello’.)
In those days a ferry would carry passengers across the brackish waters of the San Carlos Sound and the communities which grew up on Sanibel and Captiva were very tight indeed. They were really the first white settlers (any business on the islands established before 1930 proudly advertises the fact). There had once been Indian tribes but they had gone. The most notable building on Sanibel, and the highest, was the iron lighthouse. It still is.
Sanibel may be an abbreviation of Saint Isabel, while the story of Captiva is that it was once used to confine women captured by the pirate Gaprilla. How anyone knows that the detainees were female is hard to understand since the only tentative evidence is said to be the stumps of a stockade. No bangles, rings or beads.
In pre-war days the inhabitants saw themselves as people apart and there was outrage when it was proposed to construct a causeway joining Sanibel to the urban fringe of Lee County on the mainland and a bridge between the two islands. But built it was and today they present a curiosity – two American suburban islands, with streets and homes and shops, supermarkets, gas stations, two golf courses, a theatre and a cinema, combined with the most extraordinary wild beaches, swamps, bayous, lagoons, and inlets, and an amazing diversity of wildlife including the sea-otter, the manatee and the American alligator. A Sanibel housewife, fetching her children from school, is likely to have to stop her car to allow a female alligator and her offspring to cross the highway. As the roadsigns indicate, the alligator has right of way.
The American alligator is a protected species and it knows it. They lounge in waterways, mangrove swamps and other backwaters, lifting an eye at any human legs that appear in view but, whatever their thoughts, doing nothing more. One lived until it was seventy and was seventeen feet long. It had always distrusted people since someone once hit it with an axe.
Each of the several local newspapers and island guides carries a stern warning about alligators. Do not feed them or they will lose their inborn fear of man. Do not annoy them. Do NOT prod them with your feet. Keep your dogs on a lead and make sure your cat does not wander too far.
‘A ’gator had my Dobermann,’ an islander told me. ‘It never had a chance.’ People also have cages around their swimming pools. Otherwise an early morning dip could bring an unpleasant surprise.
There are warnings by bridges and streams. ‘Five hundred dollar fine for feeding alligators – and possible INCARCERATION!’
‘They can be a traffic problem,’ admitted an officer leaning from a car marked Sheriff. ‘They have the right of way but if you hit one in the dark it can do a lot of damage – to the ’gator and to the car, fenders, ripped tyres, that sort of thing.’
An alligator accident makes occasional vivid reading in the homely Police Report columns of the newspapers, which otherwise list such incidents as, ‘A European lady who spoke little English called the police after seeing what she thought was smoke coming from her car engine but it was only condensation.’ . . . ‘A stranger was seen hanging about outside the Bailey Supermarket after closing on Monday. Police investigated but no trace was found.’
It could have been the great white egret which does loiter outside the supermarket liquor department because the manager there feeds it. ‘Hot dog,’ the manager said when I asked what the attraction was. ‘Small pieces of hot dog. He’s been coming every day for a year now.’
It is curious and pleasant that wild animals and birds fit so well into the social framework of both Sanibel and Captiva. Ring-tailed racoons sit by the side of the road washing the faces of their cubs, sea-otters and manatees, two species almost extinct, come close to the shore at Blind Pass on Captiva at sunset; there’s and armadillo trudging along a lane; we all run shouting and clapping to encourage a great and solitary dolphin which undulates twenty feet off the beach. My wife and the twins swim alongside it.
Everyone’s a nature observer. The man at the gas station mentions, ‘That osprey is sitting in the tree right across there, looking out to sea. He’ll be going fishing soon. It’s his eating time.’
On the eastern side of Captiva is an extensive area of mangrove swamp and salt water lagoons, letting out onto Pine Island Sound, and called somewhat uncomfortably the ‘Ding’ Darling Reserve. J. N. Darling was a cartoonist who signed himself ‘Ding’ in the New Yorker and other journals, and as a project in retirement bought and developed the reserve. Cartooning must have paid well.
It is the sort of place where with luck, you might see wonderful creatures. Or you might drive at a snail’s pace for five miles along the dirt road and have to make do with a few cleric-like cormorants and the antics of pelicans.
At evening is the best time when the brackish water is slightly polished and the rosette spoonbills, their legs and feathers glowing pink in the sunset, gather to feed with the heron, the ibis and the ibiquitous white egret. The ibis, with his arched beak, struts along the beach too, picking out morsels from the sand, jumping comically as the wave comes in, to save his feet from getting wet. Sandpipers scurry in formation like teams of emergency workers, and a solitary heron stands in a line of fishermen, staring out to sea, now and again helping himself from the bait bucket.
But it is the pelicans I enjoy. They seem to me living proof that God has a sense of humour. Nothing appears to fit; body, beak and wings somehow out of symmetry and synch, the legs left over from some other creature and added as an afterthought. There are many patrolling the shores of both islands, brown and some white. They are like flying basset hounds. Of an evening they clank up and down looking for fish, flinging themselves idiotically into the sea, wings all askew, every dive looking like the first time.
Mike Dooley comes from the Florida Keys but likes to fish off Captiva Island (so does his son, Casey, aged four, who while we were there caught a snoek only slightly smaller than himself). Mike, a lean and humorous man, was with me on the offshore sandbar. We were both fishing, I did not get a bite. He pulled a silver and yellow pompano from the water. Two pelicans cruised close by eyeing his catch. ‘Now and then they’ll go for it,’ he said in his Deep South accent. ‘And then sure they get the hook as well as the fish. Catching one of those birds is something you have to see. It takes three men. One to get the hook out and two to hold the pelican.’
On the white scarf of beach that runs the entire western flank of Captiva, the loggerhead turtles lumber along to lay their eggs in the sand. The strand is sparsely populated by humans but the buried caches are detected and marked by more devoted conservationists. A small notice is displayed threatening imprisonment or at least a fine for the disturbance of the eggs. The lady loggerhead returns to the water and leaves the eggs to hatch themselves. When they do, the baby turtles come out like a crowd leaving a football ground, scampering towards the sea. People with seaside houses are asked to extinguish any illuminations facing the beach because the tiny turtles, not knowing any better, scramble towards the lights and the living-room instead of going to their proper home in the gulf.
But the truly mysterious creature of this warm coast is the manatee. There are said to be only a thousand remaining and these are helped and cossetted with all the concern
that American conservation can muster. They are encouraged to keep within the immediate waters because it is feared that should they venture out into their natural home, the open sea, they would not long survive. It is difficult to see the whole animal because only the puppy-like nose and mouth ever break the surface of the water. The remaining three thousand pounds or so of the animal, which looks like a type of walrus, only more ungainly, if that is possible, rarely appear. They live mainly in the harbour at Plantation – a glossy vacation resort, on the upper end of Captiva, where a thoughtful hotel management provides them with outlets of warm water which they enjoy.
*
It is from Plantation that a bright, imitation riverboat Jean Nicolette (the ‘Jean’ is pronounced the French way, the captain informs passengers) voyages almost the length of Pine Island South to Cabbage Key. The entire trip is on water so shallow you could walk it keeping your head above the surface. Even the flat-bottomed vessel has to keep to a marked channel. ‘She’s pretty, but she can be tough,’ said one of the crew. ‘In difficult weather getting her berthed at Cabbage Key can be like shutting a barn door in a gale.’
There has never been a mishap, however, and it is a satisfying journey of a couple of hours on a good day, in the company of seabirds and dolphins. If anyone has any doubt that the endearing dolphin likes human company, then a trip on the Jean Nicolette should dispel it. They come pounding across the water at the sight of the vessel’s bow and perform their tricks all around the hull. They seem to appreciate blasts on a whistle, shouted approval (the ‘whoops’ at which the Americans are so practised) and even sedate applause.
So low-lying are the barrier islands that little can be seen of them from the navigation channel. They lie like carpets on the sea. North Captiva is reduced to a few pointed roofs and a water tower and on the Pine Island side the sole distinguishable features are the stilted huts built years ago by Cuban fishermen, sometimes now occupied by adventurous squatters. It was in these waters and along these shores that the CIA rehearsed (insufficiently it would seem) its forces for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1963.
Cabbage Key is what counts as an observation point in these latitudes. It rises all of thirty feet above sea level, the remnant of an ancient Indian mound (either a midden or a monument) surmounted by a house, now an inn, built by the American novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart in the 1930s.
Before that it had been occupied by a series of people who fancied the life of a castaway. One owner, known for his miserly ways, a mixture of Robinson Crusoe and Ebenezer Scrooge, received a tax bill for ten dollars from Lee County, of which Cabbage Key is a part. ‘Ten dollars!’ he bellowed waving the piece of paper at the distant mainland. ‘I’m not paying ten dollars. You can keep the place!’ Whereupon he packed his belongings, rowed over to Florida and never went back.
The most extraordinary thing about Cabbage Key is apparent as soon as you walk into the inn. Once your eyes become used to the dimness you see that every wall is covered with dollar notes. They are everywhere, in every room, like wallpaper. Most are inscribed with the names of visitors. I found an inscription from a man who lives half a mile away from my house in England.
‘It started with the Cuban fishermen, years ago,’ said the barman surveying the room. ‘They would have a good day and sell their catch well and they would come to Cabbage Key for a drink. They got into the habit of pinning a few dollars to the wall against the time when they didn’t get any fish. And the habit sort of caught on. Nobody’s counted but I guess there are close on 30,000 bucks hanging up there now.’
There was a fit and friendly man, who jogged three miles along the sand and shingle on Captiva every day while his dog ran ten. He used to pass our house to go between the trees and he always called something to us. One morning he shouted, ‘We got Andrew coming!’
My first reaction was to assume we were to get a visit from a member of the British Royal Family. ‘Hurricane Andrew,’ he corrected. ‘He’s coming at force five. And they don’t come any harder than that.’
I was not alarmed. I had long suspected that the people of Florida overreacted to the warnings of hurricanes. There was a marked ‘Evacuation Route’ along the only possible way off both Captiva and Sanibel, the single main road leading to the causeway; there were area wardens in charge of emergency measures; every house had a list of dos and don’ts posted on the wall – have a supply of fresh water and tinned food – torches, batteries, etc; and only that week the local newspapers had splashed the story of the island’s new toy, a device which would interrupt television to allow the mayor to broadcast the portentous evacuation order. I had a notion that everyone secretly enjoyed all the excitement and anticipation in the way that in wartime Britain there was a frisson about the air raids and the threat of invasion. After all there had only been two major hurricanes in that area in the last half century, the second more than twenty-seven years before. The sun shone steadily and the sea was amiable. We decided not to store water and canned food.
But the television commentators were becoming increasingly emphatic. They kept showing satelite pictures of the Bahamas, off the east coast, enveloped by a nasty looking blodge. Hurricane Andrew was heading for Florida.
A million people were reported to be fleeing Miami. On Captiva householders began to batten down the windows. I kept looking at the sky. It looked back innocently.
Someone told us that the risk was the causeway. Big seas could easily sweep over the top. Waves could reach eleven feet. The island was scarcely eighteen inches above sea level. Joe and Charlie, the seven-year-old twins, were three feet high. I began to feel anxious.
Then it was settled for me. The mayor, who must have been itching to use his new machine, did so. We were watching the main newscast when a noise like a police siren came from the set and the picture blanked out. On the screen came the mayor’s grave voice, the words reinforced in outsize letters on the screen. ‘Sanibel and Captiva Islands must be evacuated within the next three hours.’
The twins looked excited. ‘What are we going to do?’ they asked together.
‘We’re going,’ I said decisively. Diana nodded and made for the suitcases. ‘Get your teddy bears.’
Almost everyone got out before us. When we drove out at seven o’clock on a broody evening, with the sea flat and copper coloured, there was hardly a soul on either island. The only islanders remaining were the police (for some reason in anti-riot gear) and a lone jogger wearing earphones and a steadfast expression. I wondered if he had heard.
The road was empty. It was uncanny. We were on the mainland in no time. I was unwilling to join the traffic on the main routes north, spectacularly jammed according to the radio, so I merely drove into Fort Myers and went to the Sheraton, which looked more or less stable, where I got two rooms on the twenty-second floor.
I was not sure what a hurricane would be like up there but people from the South were coming in all the time trying to get rooms. I decided to stay put. At eight o’clock the next morning the edge of Hurrican Andrew pussy-footed by the window. I said I had played golf in worse weather.
But ten degrees south tens of thousands were already frightened and homeless. It was being called America’s worst natural disaster. A week later, I was in Miami and there was still no drinking water, some places were without electricity, the traffic lights were out of action and thousands were sleeping in the open.
Matthew and Sophie returned to the island that night. There was no power but little damage. A big surf was running.
On the following morning, Diana and I returned with the twins over the causeway and then the bridge to Captiva. The sun was bright. The beach shone. The pelicans flew. It was almost like going home.
SANIBEL situated latitude 26°26′N and longitude 82°10′W; area 22 sq. m (57 sq. km); population approx. 5,000. CAPTIVA situated latitude 267°31′N and longitude 82°12′W; area 9 sq. m (23 sq. km); population approx. 500
Saba, St Maarten, St Barthélemy
The S
urprise Isles
Look stranger, on this island new
W. H. AUDEN
Of all the many islands of the world I have come to know, Saba in the Dutch Antilles of the Caribbean is the most astounding. A slab of rock rising 3,000 feet to meet a cloth of cloud, its houses clinging like seabirds to its ledges. It is a wonder anyone lives there at all for until recent times it was all but inaccessible; there was no harbour, no airfield, no road. And yet it has always had a population of some hundreds, white people living in the hamlets of Hell’s Gate, Windwardside and Bloody Hill, and in the tiny red-roofed town quaintly called the Bottom.
The large message outside the airport on St Maarten, the nearest island, meant well, but read ambiguously. ‘Have A Good Flight,’ it said. ‘Hope You Come Back.’
As the twin otter aircraft banked tentatively alongside Saba I began to believe they meant it. The island climbing like a wall on every side, cloud-wraithed, with a zig-zag scrape down its flank that I knew was its single, all but vertical, road. At the foot of the road, the size of a piece of sticking plaster, was the airfield, a place so minute that I thought the best policy was to close my eyes and hope the pilot did not do the same.
We curled over the purple-troughed sea, thudding against patient rocks; we rocked in the cross-currents of air, engines shrieking, cabin bucking, and bounced onto the only flat piece of ground for many miles. The wheels bumped and squealed, the plane pulled up like a car at a sudden change of traffic lights and there we were at the Juancho E. Yrausquin airport (its name longer than its runway), and one of the world’s astonishing places.
Saba (pronounced ‘Say-ber’) is a Dutch colony populated mainly by the descendants of settlers who came from the Shetland Islands north of Scotland and possibly from Jersey in the English Channel. One of them, Wilf Hassell, a gingery fair young man with a brick-coloured face, met me in his yellow taxi. His family have been on the island since 1672. How many Hassells were there now? ‘Nearly 400 out of a thousand people,’ he answered as we started up the almost vertical road.
My World of Islands Page 7