A Thousand Miles from Anywhere

by Sandra Clayton

  One of the museum’s informative displays shows how the prosperity of these islands was based on the transatlantic slave trade. From the late 16th century to the early 19th the major European powers operated a triangular trading system. For example sugar, in the form of molasses, produced by slaves on the plantations of the Caribbean or American colonies, was exported to Europe to be distilled into rum. The profits from the molasses would be used to buy goods there which were then shipped to West Africa where they were bartered for slaves who were taken to the Caribbean or the colonies and sold to the planters. In this way, no ship need ever sail empty. The result was enormous profits and 250 years of unspeakable human misery.

  When filled with the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man it is comforting to think of simpler societies who got their living from what the land and water immediately around them provided in abundance. If I had ever harboured illusions of an Elysium, however, some Nirvana, or Eden before the Fall, I am soon disabused. Around the painstaking model of Amerindian village life filling the basement are descriptions of the religious rituals, tribal customs and stifling superstitions that circumscribed and encumbered daily life. Like the Polynesian islanders – around whom the artist Gauguin wove a blissful state of innocence and freedom from guilt that was later recognised as a myth of his own making – Man has an inordinate capacity for tormenting himself and everybody else.

  We wander around the fort. There was once a small militia here and every able-bodied man from 16 to 60 was on reserve, although it does not appear to have been a serious deterrent to anybody. For as the British parliamentarian Edmund Burke said of the island in 1781, ‘Its utility was its defence,’ its commercial abilities making it ‘an emporium for all the world.’

  Back on board Voyager we consult Doyle’s cruising guide about things to see and consider climbing one of the volcanoes tomorrow, the big one called Quill, and exploring its crater and rainforest.

  On waking next morning we decide against a walking tour to the volcano’s crater even though we feel we ought to. It would undoubtedly be tremendous once we got there, but it is going to be a long uphill hike in heat and humidity and from our experience of the cruising guide so far we are a bit concerned about just how long it is actually going to take.

  As if to prove the point, when we dinghy into the harbour this morning we discover another place to disembark with less swell and a set of concrete steps to get off onto that isn’t mentioned in the guide. The only reason we’ve found it is that the place it said to use is unapproachable today because the increased swell in the harbour is making it untenable.

  This growing swell convinces us to abandon any guilt about not spending the day up a volcano. We decide instead to take a wander around the waterfront and the remains of that ‘emporium’ described by Edmund Burke.

  From 1756 Statia had been a freeport, an early version of a duty-free shopping complex, and it had become very rich. As a journal of the early 1800s in its little museum testifies, buyers could promenade through one warehouse after another bursting with silks, cottons, silver plate, tapestries, jewellery, pewter, fine furniture and virtually anything else they desired.

  Erosion and hurricanes have reduced these waterfront buildings of the lower town to ruins. But it is still an evocative experience to stand among what remains of their thick stone walls with the sea lapping at your feet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when all those bold but impoverished young men set off to the West Indies to make their fortunes, and lay the foundation of an elevated lifestyle back home, this would have been one of the places they came. Not just the fictitious Mr Rochester in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, or Sir Thomas Bertram in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, but many a real-life aristocratic family throughout Europe and America owes its present-day magnificence to these islands and their trade.

  Something else that Statia’s merchants supplied in abundance was weapons, to anyone with the money to pay for them. This made it one of the few places where the thirteen rebellious American colonies could get hold of the guns and ammunition they needed to fight the British. And although accounts of how it actually happened vary, what is undisputed is that on 16th November 1776 Statia was the first place in the world to salute an American naval vessel, thereby acknowledging the American colonies as an independent nation.

  One account says that when the Andrew Doria, an American brig, came into Statia’s harbour of Oranje Baai and fired a salute, the island’s Governor Johannes de Graaff returned the salute not realising that, although the Andrew Doria was a merchant ship, she was under the command of an American rebel navy captain.

  Another version claims that Commander de Graaff ‘s return salute from the canons of Fort Oranje was a conscious decision resulting from the profitable relationship between Statia and the rebel colonies. Whichever is true, it was the first international acknowledgement of what would henceforward be known as the United States of America.

  Such was the animosity felt in London that in 1778 the parliamentarian Lord Stormont claimed that, ‘If Sint Eustatius had sunk into the sea three years before, the United Kingdom would already have dealt with George Washington.’ No small achievement for an island measuring only 8 square miles, quite a lot of it taken up by volcanoes.

  What with continued arms dealing to the American rebels and giving them what became known as ‘the first salute’, the subsequent capture of a British ship was the final straw. Britain declared war on the Netherlands and Admiral Rodney invaded Sint Eustatius. It was the fourth of the Anglo-Dutch wars and proved disastrous for the Dutch economy.

  The people here are extraordinarily friendly. We have only just begun our walk up to the town when a man offers us a lift. He is a German and has a restaurant and guesthouse and he goes out of his way to drop us at the shop where we can buy a Netherlands Antilles courtesy flag which is the one our cruising guide says we should be flying. The shop owner says no-one ever flies it, they don’t have one anyway, and sells us a Dutch courtesy flag instead. We also buy a walking map and set off up a long hill to find the Jewish cemetery marked on it.

  After a long climb we reach a fork in the road which isn’t on our map and ask a passing motorist – for a very small island everybody seems to travel by car – which fork will take us to the Jewish cemetery.

  She is very sweet and says we are on the wrong road and to hop in. She takes us all the way back to where we had started, to the gates of the Dutch Reform Church. So we give up our search for the elusive Jewish cemetery and decide to look around this one instead. We visit the church and climb up its tower, which gives wonderful views out to sea while below us a small herd of goats play I’m-the-King-of-the-Castle on the family vaults, leaping up and standing on top of one until amiably dislodged by one or more of its fellows. Very sociable, goats.

  These tombs are unlike any we have ever seen before. Some resemble half-submerged wartime Anderson shelters with square ends, one of which has to be broken open to inter subsequent family members. Some are standing wide open so heaven knows what has happened to the incumbents. The largest ones are so tall that you would have to haul yourself up and straddle it if you wanted to read the tiny inscription panel on the top.

  When Admiral Rodney took control of this island he developed an interest in graveyards, too. In particular he noticed that for a relatively small community of wealthy merchants there were a surprising number of funerals. He had one inspected and the ‘corpse’ turned out to be a large haul of valuables. After mounting a search he found a great deal more treasure interred in the various burying grounds, which he confiscated as personal booty.

  What upset the British government about this was that while Rodney was busy lining his coffers with Dutch spoils on Statia – equal to millions in today’s currency – he was supposed to be defending the east coast of America. In his absence the French, with 23 naval ships and 150 merchant ships, reinforced the American rebel army which resulted in Britain’s loss of the American colonies. Only a subsequent naval t
riumph elsewhere saved him.

  We lunch at the town’s bakery on freshly-made steak pie and shop at Duggin’s supermarket. They don’t deal in Eastern Caribbean dollars here. They use guilders and US dollars. We buy a $5 phone card and telephone Layla on Antigua. We have no mail.

  America is dominant in all these islands, supplying everything from food to manufactured goods, which is hardly surprising given its proximity. Kit Kat is made by Hershey and the metal mailboxes outside Statia’s homes and businesses all have the words ‘Approved by the US Postmaster’ embossed on their sides.

  On the way back down to the harbour yet another motorist stops to offer us a lift. The steep, wide road that we are on is the old slave road, he tells us. Noting our lack of enthusiasm he wrinkles his nose and says with distaste that it isn’t really. The real one, where they brought the captives up from the ships, is further round the island but was considered too insignificant. ‘So they decided to claim this was it instead.’ His sigh says it is a sad day for humanity when the horrors of slavery become a tourist attraction.

  We return to the boat, put up our new courtesy flag and flop. After a very roly night, on Saturday morning we get the 8.30 weather forecast and leave our mooring in Orange Bay soon after. We should have liked to remain longer but the swell is increasing and there is no protection from it here. We put up the genoa and follow the coast northwards. Once past the tip of the island we sail north-easterly for some distance towards St Martin, with the small island of Saba on our port side.

  We should have liked to visit Saba, despite the 800 steps up to the town. Sadly, despite a forecast swell from the north, the wind is actually coming from the south-east and a swell from this direction will make Saba’s anchorages uncomfortable and getting ashore difficult. We gaze across at the little island from our cockpit as we pass. It is only five square miles and very tall, its potentially-active volcano, Mount Scenery, at 877 metres making it the highest point in the Netherlands. But the thing you notice particularly about its green, almost perpendicular rise is the distinctive road that zigzags crazily up it.

  ST MARTIN

  39

  A Schizophrenic Island

  The first three Caribbean islands we have visited – Antigua, Nevis and St Kitts – all share their recent history with Britain. Statia and the elusive Saba are Dutch. The island where we are currently headed, and which is named for St Martin, is divided in two. The southern half is Dutch, the north is French.

  St Martin’s history inevitably follows the pattern of its neighbours in the Lesser Antilles: that is to say, Amerindian crop cultivation, interspersed with tribal raiding parties. From around 800AD St Martin was settled by Arawaks from South America. They were subsequently joined by Caribs who called the island Soualiga after its salt deposits. One imagines they rubbed along pretty well for nearly seven centuries – give or take the odd cannibalistic war ritual – until attracting the attention of Europe’s major powers.

  In 1493 Columbus, an Italian, claimed it for Spain and named it after a 4th century French saint famed for dividing his cloak and giving half to a beggar. One version of the story has it that during the night St Martin’s cloak miraculously became whole again. By 1631 a small Dutch colony was collecting salt at Groot Baai (Great Bay) while the French quarter produced a little tobacco.

  From 1633 onwards the island was continuously fought over by Spain, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain and changed hands at least fifteen times. By 1816 the Dutch and the French were the only ones still circling the remaining chair when the music stopped and they decided to revive an earlier agreement whereby, like Martin’s cloak, the island had been divided into two parts.

  This previous division of the island had occurred in 1648 when, according to folklore, the Dutch and French communities had chosen a walker each, stood them back to back at one extreme of the island and told them to walk – not run – in opposite directions along the shoreline until they met at the other extreme of the island.

  A line was then drawn between their start and finish points with the French ending up with around 60% of the island. This, the French claimed, was because their walker had chosen wine for his refreshment whereas the Dutchman had opted for gin. The Dutch accused the French walker of running.

  We arrive in Sint Maarten, the Dutch half, at Philipsburg in Groot Baai – where the Caribs and those early Dutch settlers had gathered salt – at around 4pm at the end of the day’s racing. It is Heineken Race Week and very crowded but with a very amiable atmosphere and we find a nice space to anchor behind an old black-hulled ketch called Lady Carola that turns out to be a floating bar. So it’s all rather jolly and companionable and also rather pretty, because if Nevis has a constant accompaniment of brown pelicans, Sint Maarten has yellow butterflies. Not exotic ones, just your basic flying cornflakes, but so many of them. From a lack of pesticides, presumably, as little is grown here due to a lack of fresh water.

  Few of these islands, even the ones with water, grow crops commercially. Most import virtually all foodstuffs, including fruit and vegetables. The import duties, combined with transport costs, make for a high cost of living. When you ask the obvious question, the answer that comes back is that there have been attempts at home production.

  A typical venture mentioned is growing bananas. Although once the new plantations began to produce fruit, it is said, the importer dropped its own prices below anything which the local growers could match. Prices would stay low for several years until the local businesses went under and then the price of imported bananas went up again.

  On Sunday morning we go into Philipsburg, Sint Maarten’s major town. This is a duty-free port so there are no Customs formalities to be completed, but we do need to clear in with Immigration. According to Chris Doyle’s cruising guide we should do this at the police station. So we dinghy into Bobby’s Marina, tie up and set off into town.

  On the way we pass through a wonderful jumble of decking, small jetties and cobbled terraces. The variety of textures and building styles is delightful and very Dutch. We stop at a tourist information booth and ask the woman there if she can give us directions to the police station so that we can clear in with Immigration. ‘To the courthouse,’ she says, ‘and second right.’

  There is a vibrant street market in the square near the courthouse while the congregation in the Baptist church to our right sing their hearts out. The rhythms and enthusiasm are so infectious that I long to go inside, but looking at the young man on the door – with his neat black trousers and shirt, patterned waistcoat and white tie – I fear our rumpled, straight-off-the-boat look might indicate a lack of respect, so we continue on to the police station, swaying along to the singing as we go.

  The policeman behind the counter says Immigration is on the other side of Bobby’s Marina, where we left our dinghy. At Bobby’s Marina the security staff there says it is at the big pier, out by the entrance to the bay, and best to take the dinghy.

  It is a long ride, about three-quarters of a mile, to a very large pier intended for large commercial vessels but with nowhere to tie up a small boat nor any clear means of climbing up onto the top of it so that we can walk ashore. There is also a really big swell out here. We rise and fall alarmingly as we try to work out how to climb up from our very small dinghy onto this very high pier, until glancing around us we realise that there is no sign of a Port Authority or Immigration Office anyway. Nothing at all, in fact, except a very high pier and us, in a very small dinghy, surging up and down, the way seabirds sometimes do, only they always fly off pretty quickly to somewhere more congenial. I feel extremely vulnerable. If one of these huge surges of water breaks, we’re done for.

  We dinghy back to the marina complex and after a long walk down a wooden pier end up in a dive shop and ask there. ‘Where you were,’ says a diver. ‘There’s a place in the corner to get off.’ It must have been pretty well hidden because we didn’t see it, and I am not willing to embark on another test of nerve to find out if this land
ing place really does exist. Especially since, so far, nothing else has.

  Instead we take a long, hot walk down a busy, dusty road without a pavement and with the grit from passing cars intermittently peppering our faces and bare limbs. The Port Authority is in a small shed, tucked away among containers and silos on an industrial estate which is just across the road from the long, high pier but not visible from as low in the water as we were. When we ask where exactly we should have disembarked from our dinghy the Immigration Officer, a kindly man, shakes his head. ‘Nobody’s supposed to land there,’ he says.

  Mindful of our experience in Antigua, and as we have done at each new island ever since, before filling in the length of our stay we enquire as to the penalty for overstaying. As British subjects, he says, we automatically get three months. He is bewildered as to why Antigua, formerly British, should be so perverse and says that if he fined everybody who overstayed, Sint Maarten would be rich.

  We have spent an entire morning simply clearing in and by the time we get back to our dinghy we are into the hottest part of the day. Not a time when I am at my best. We go into the cool of a shady bar for a pina colada and remain for lunch. It is heavenly. But then it usually is when you don’t have to cook it.

  On the way home we stop off again at one of the tourist information booths to pick up a free local publication of Sint Maarten events. A very engaging woman tries to sign me up for a visit, right now, by taxi, to a 5-star hotel complex with scuba diving and $60 off dining as long as I tell the people back home how good it is.

  By now it is apparent that these booths are not official Tourist Information at all. They are hustling for business, which becomes glaringly obvious when I open the expensively printed, full-colour brochure of local events that I have just been given. It doesn’t actually contain any events, not even Heineken Race Week, only advertisements for jewellery and restaurants. The publication’s French founder, whose svelte lines grace the contents page, is described as a ‘pioneer in the field of tourist publications’.