Alone in the Caribbean

Front matter

Glass.

Book.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT y

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 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 fom 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,

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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 semi-tropic — 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 colonisation or development. While it is true that Columbus on his later voyages discovered the Lesser Antilles, a few of which he actually set foot up- - on 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.

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 knowl-

* With the exception only of Tobago.

PREFACE xi

edge of their early days is meagre, 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.

I have made no attempt to discuss the problem of the native — the more one studies it the less one has to xii PREFACE

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. Home 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; Pere 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.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Yakaboo is Born and the Cruise Begins 21

II Whaling at Ile-de-Caille 42

Chapter I The "yakaboo" Is Born And The Cruise Begins

"If a crab don't walk, he don't get fat; If he walk too much, he gets in a pot."

— From the Creole.

IS it in the nature of all of us, or is it just my own peculiar make-up which brings, when the wind blows, that queer feeling, mingled longing and dread? A thousand invisible fingers seem to be pulling me, trying to draw me away from the four walls where I have every comfort, into the open where I shall have to use my wits and my strength to fool the sea in its treacherous moods, to take advantage of fair winds and to fight when I am fairly caught — for a man is a fool to think he can conquer nature.

It had been a long time since I had felt the weatherglow on my face, a feeling akin to the numb forehead in the first touch of inebriety. The lure was coming back to me. It was the lure of islands and my thoughts had gone back to a certain room in school where as a boy I used to muse over a huge relief map of the bottom of the North Atlantic. No doubt my time had been better spent on the recitation that was going on.

One learns little of the geography of the earth from a school book. I found no mention of the vast Atlantic shelf, that extended for hundreds of miles to seaward of Hatteras, where the sperm whale comes to feed in the spring and summer and where, even while I was sitting there looking at that plaster cast, terrific gales might be screaming through the rigging of New Bedford whalers, hove-to and wallowing — laden with fresh water or grease according to the luck or the skill of the skipper. Nor was there scarcely any mention of the Lesser Antilles, a chain of volcanic peaks strung out like the notched back of a dinosaur, from the corner of South America to the greater islands that were still Spanish. Yet it was on these peaks that my thoughts clung like dead grass on the teeth of a rake and would not become disengaged.

Now, instead of looking at the relief map, I was poring over a chart of those same islands and reading off their names from Grenada to tiny Saba. At my elbow was a New Bedford whaler who had cruised over that Atlantic shelf at the very time I was contemplating it as a boy. And many years before that he had been shipwrecked far below, on the coast of Brazil. The crew had shipped home from the nearest port, but the love of adventure was strong upon the captain, his father,* who decided to build a boat from

* Captain Joshua Slocum, who sailed around the world alone in the sloop Spray.

the wreckage of his vessel and sail in. it with his wife and two sons to New York.

With mahogany planks sawed by the natives they constructed a large sea canoe. For fastenings they used copper nails drawn from the wreck of their ship's yawl, headed over burrs made from the copper pennies of Brazil. Canvas, gear, clothes, and food they had in plenty and on the thirteenth of May in 1888, it being a fine day, they put to sea. The son traced their course with his finger as they had sailed northward in the strong trade winds and passed under the lee of the Lesser Antilles. Later as a whaler, he had come to know the islands more intimately.

"Here!" said he, pointing to the Grenadines, "you will find the niggers chasing humpback whales." On Saint Vincent I should find the Carib living in his own way at Sandy Bay. Another island had known Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, and another had given us our own Alexander Hamilton. And there were many more things which I should come to know when I myself should cruise along the Lesser Antilles.

We talked it over. After the manner of the Carib, I would sail from island to island alone in a canoe.

Next to the joy of making a cruise is that of the planning and still greater to me was the joy of creating the Yakaboo which should carry me. I should explain that this is an expression used by Ellice islanders* when they throw something overboard and it means "Good-bye." " 'Good-bye' to civilisation for a while," I thought, but later there were times when I feared the name might have a more sinister meaning. So my

*In the Pacific Ocean just north of the Fiji group.

craft was named before I put her down on paper. She must be large enough to hold me and my outfit and yet light enough so that alone I could drag her up any uninhabited beach where I might land. Most important of all, she must be seaworthy in the real sense of the word, for between the islands I should be at sea with no lee for fifteen hundred miles. I got all this in a length of seventeen feet and a width of thirty-nine inches. From a plan of two dimensions on paper she grew to a form of three dimensions in a little shop in Boothbay and later, as you shall hear, exhibited a fourth dimension as she gyrated in the seas off Kick 'em Jinny. The finished hull weighed less than her skipper — one hundred and forty-seven pounds.

From a study of the pilot chart, I found that a prevailing northeast trade-wind blows for nine months in the year throughout the Lesser Antilles. According to the "square rigger," this trade blows "fresh," which means half a gale to the harbour-hunting yachtsman. Instead of sailing down the wind from the north, I decided to avoid the anxiety of following seas and to beat Into the wind from the lowest island which is Grenada, just north of Trinidad.

My first plan was to ship on a whaler bound on a long voyage. From Barbados, where she would touch to pick up crew, I would sail the ninety miles to leeward to Grenada. A wise Providence saw to it that there was no whaler bound on a long voyage for months. I did find a British trading steamer bound out of New York for Grenada. She had no passenger license, but it was my only chance, and I signed on as a. B.

We left New York on one of those brilliant days of January when the keen northwest wind has swept the haze from the atmosphere leaving the air clear as crystal. It was cold but I stood with a bravado air on the grating over the engine room hatch from which the warm air from the boilers rose through my clothes. Below me on the dock and fast receding beyond yelling distance stood a friend who had come to bid me good-bye. By his side was a large leather bag containing the heavy winter clothing I had sloughed only a few minutes before. The warmth of my body would still be in them, I thought, as the warmth clings to a hearth of a winter's evening for a time after the fire has gone out. In a day we should be in the Gulf Stream and then for half a year I should wear just enough to protect me from the sun. Suddenly the tremble of the steamer told me of an engine turning up more revolutions and of a churning propeller. The dock was no longer receding, we were leaving it behind. The mad scramble of the last days in New York ; the hasty breakfast of that morning; the antique musty-smelling cab with its pitifully ambling horse, uncurried and furry in the frosty air, driven by a whisky-smelling jehu; the catching of the ferry by a narrow margin, were of a past left far behind. Far out in the channel, that last tentacle of civilisation, the pilot, bade us "good luck" and then he also became of the Past. The Present was the vibrating tramp beneath my feet and the Future lay on our course to the South.

On the top of the cargo in the forehold was the crated hull of the Yakaboo, the pretty little "mahogany coffin," as they named her, that was going to carry me through five hundred miles of the most delightful deep sea sailing one can imagine. I did not know that the Pilot Book makes little mention of the "tricks of the trades" as they strike the Caribbean, and that instead of climbing up and sliding down the backs of Atlantic rollers with an occasional smother of foam on top to match the fleecy summer clouds, I would be pounded and battered in short channel seas and that for only thirty of the five hundred miles would my decks be clear of water. It is the bliss of ignorance that tempts the fool, but it is he who sees the wonders of the earth.

The next day we entered the Gulf Stream where we were chased by a Northeaster which lifted the short trader along with a wondrous corkscrew motion that troubled no one but the real passengers — a load of Missouri mules doomed to end their lives hauling pitch in Trinidad.

On the eighth day, at noon, we spoke the lonely island of Sombrero with its lighthouse and black keepers whose only company is the passing steamer. The man at the wheel ported his helm a spoke and we steamed between Saba and Statia to lose sight of land for another day — my first in the Caribbean. The warm trade-wind, the skittering of flying-fish chased by tuna or the swift dorade, and the rigging of awnings proclaimed that we were now well within the tropics. The next morning I awoke with the uneasy feeling that all motion had ceased and that we were now lying in smooth water. I stepped on deck in my pajamas to feel for the first time the soft pressure of the tepid morning breeze of the islands.

We lay under the lee of a high island whose green mass rose, surf-fringed, from the deep blue of the Caribbean to the deep blue of the morning sky with its white clouds forever coming up from behind the mountains and sailing away to the westward. Off our port bow the grey buildings of a coast town spread out along the shores and crept up the sides of a hill like lichen on a rock. From the sonorous bell in a church tower came seven deep notes which spread out over the waters like a benediction. There was no sign of a jetty or landing place, not even the usual small shipping or even a steamer buoy, and I was wondering in a sleepy way where we should land when a polite English voice broke in, "We are justly proud of the beautiful harbour which you are to see for the first time I take it."

I fetched up like a startled rabbit to behold a "West Indie" gentleman standing behind me, "starched from clew to earing" as Captain Slocum put it, and speaking a better English than you or I. It was the harbour-master. I was now sufficiently awake to recall from my chart that the harbour of St. George's is almost land-locked. As we stood and talked, the clanking windlass lifted our stockless anchor with its load of white coral sand and the steamer slowly headed for shore.

The land under a rusty old fort seemed to melt away before our bows and we slipped through into the carenage of St. George's. We crept in till we filled the basin like a toy ship in a miniature harbour. From the bridge I was looking down upon a bit of the old world in strange contrast, as my memory swung back across two thousand miles of Atlantic, to the uncouth towns of our north. The houses, with their jalousied windows, some of them white but more often washed with a subdued orange or yellow, were of the French regime, their weathered red tile roofs in pleasing contrast to the strong green of the surrounding hills.

Here in the old days, ships came to be careened in order to rid their bottoms of the dread teredo. Under our forefoot, in the innermost corner of the harbour, pirate ships were wont to lie, completely hidden from the view of the open sea. At one time this was a hornet's nest, unmolested by the bravest, for who would run into such a cul-de-sac protected as it was by the forts and batteries on the hills above?

Moored stern-to along the quays, was a fleet of small trading sloops, shabby in rig and crude of build, waiting for cargoes from our hold. Crawling slowly across the harbour under the swinging impulse of long sweeps, was a drogher piled high with bags of cocoa, a hugebodied bug with feeble legs.

Along the mole on the opposite side of the carenage straggled an assortment of small wooden shacks, one and two-storied, scarcely larger than play houses. Among these my eyes came to rest on something which was at once familiar. There stood a small cotton ginnery with shingled roof and open sides, an exact counterpart of a corn-crib. I did not then know that in this shed I should spend most of my days while in St. George's.

The blast of our deep-throated whistle stirred the town into activity as a careless kick swarms an ant-hill with life, and the busy day of the quay began as we were slowly warped-in to our dock.

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A last breakfast with the Captain and Mate — and I was ashore with my trunk and gear. The Yakaboo, a mere toy in the clutch of the cargo boom, was yanked swiftly out of the hold and lightly placed on the quay where she was picked up and carried into the custom-house by a horde of yelling blacks. Knowing no man, I stood there for a moment feeling that I had suddenly been dropped into a different world. But it was only a different world because I did not know it and as for knowing no man — I soon found that I had become a member of a community of colonial Englishmen who received me with open arms and put to shame any hospitality I had hitherto experienced. As the nature of my visit became known, I was given all possible aid in preparing for my voyage. A place to tune up the Yakaboo f A young doctor who owned the little ginnery on the far side of the carenage gave me the key and told me to use it as long as I wished.

I now found that the cruise I had planned was not altogether an easy one. According to the pilot chart for the North Atlantic, by the little blue wind-rose in the region of the lower Antilles, or Windward Islands as they are called, I should find the trade blowing from east to northeast with a force of four, which according to Beaufort's scale means a moderate breeze of twenty-three miles an hour. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found that the wind seldom blew less than twenty miles an hour and very often blew a whole gale of sixty-five miles an hour. Moreover, at this season of the year, I found that the "trade" would be inclined to the northward and that my course through the Grenadines — the first seventy miles of my cruise — would be directly into the wind's eye.

I had been counting on that magical figure (30) in the circle of the wind-rose, which means that for every thirty hours out of a hundred one may here expect "calms, light airs, and variables." Not only this, but I was informed that I should encounter a westerly tide current which at times ran as high as six knots an hour. To be sure, this tide current would change every six hours to an easterly set which, though it would be in my favour, would kick up a sea that would shake the wind out of my sails and almost bring my canoe to a stand-still.

Nor was this all. The sea was full of sharks and I was told that if the seas did not get me the sharks would. Seven inches of freeboard is a small obstacle to a fifteen-foot shark. Had the argument stopped with these three I would at this point gladly have presented my canoe to His Excellency the Governor, so that he might plant it on his front lawn and grow geraniums in the cockpit. Three is an evil number if it is against you but a fourth argument came along and the magic triad was broken. If seas, currents, and sharks did not get me, I would be overcome by the heat and be fever-stricken.

I slept but lightly that first night on shore. Instead of being lulled to sleep by the squalls which blew down from the mountains, I would find myself leaning far out over the edge of the bed trying to keep from being capsized by an impending comber. Finally my imagination having reached the climax of its fiendish trend, I reasoned calmly to myself. If I would sail from island to island after the manner of the Carib, why not seek out the native and learn the truth from him? The next morning I found my man, with the blood of the Yaribai tribe of Africa in him, who knew the winds, currents, sharks, the heat, and the fever. He brought to me the only Carib on the island, a boy of sixteen who had fled to Grenada after the eruption in Saint Vincent had destroyed his home and family.

From these two I learned the secret of the winds which depend on the phases of the moon. They told me to set sail on the slack of the lee tide and cover my distance before the next lee tide ran strong. They pointed out the fever beaches I should avoid and told me not to bathe during the day, nor to uncover my head — even to wipe my brow. I must never drink my water cold and always put a little rum in it — and a hundred other things which I did not forget. As for the "shyark" — "You no troble him, he no bodder you." "Troble" was used in the sense of tempt and I should therefore never throw food scraps overboard or troll a line astern. I also learned — this from an Englishman who had served in India — that if I wore a red cloth, under my shirt, covering my spine, the actinic rays of the sun would be stopped and I should not be bothered by the heat.

It was with a lighter heart, then, that I set about to rig my canoe — she was yet to be baptized — and to lick my outfit into shape for the long cruise to the northward. I could not have wished for a better place than the cool ginnery which the doctor had put at my disposal. Here with my Man Friday, I worked through the heat of the day — we might have been out of doors for the soft winds from the hills filtered through the open sides, bringing with them the dank odour of the moist earth under shaded cocoa groves. Crowded about the wide-open doors like a flock of strange sea fowl, a group of black boatmen made innumerable comments in their bubbling patois, while their eyes were on my face in continual scrutiny.

And now, while I stop in the middle of the hot afternoon to eat delicious sponge cakes and drink numerous glasses of sorrel that have mysteriously found their way from a little hut near by, it might not be amiss to contemplate the Yakaboo through the sketchy haze of a pipeful of tobacco. She did not look her length of seventeen feet and with her overhangs would scarcely be taken for a boat meant for serious cruising. Upon close examination, however, she showed a powerful midship section that was deceiving and when the natives lifted her off the horses — "O Lard! she light!" — wherein lay the secret of her ability. Her heaviest construction was in the middle third which embodied fully half of her total weight. With her crew and the heavier part of the outfit stowed in this middle third she was surprisingly quick in a seaway. With a breaking sea coming head on, her bow would ride the foamy crest while her stern would drop into the hollow behind, offering little resistance to the rising bow.

She had no rudder, the steering being done entirely by the handling of the main sheet. By a novel construction of the center-board and the well in which the board rolled forward and aft on sets of sheaves, I could place the center of lateral resistance of the canoe's underbody exactly below the center of effort of the sails with the result that on a given course she would sail herself. Small deviations such as those caused by waves throwing her bow to leeward or sudden puffs that tended to make her luff were compensated for by easing off or trimming in the mainsheet. In the absence of the rudder-plane aft, which at times is a considerable drag to a swinging stern, this type of canoe eats her way to windward in every squall, executing a "pilot's luff" without loss of headway, and in puffy weather will actually fetch slightly to windward of her course, having more than overcome her drift.

She was no new or untried freak for I had already cruised more than a thousand miles in her predecessor, the only difference being that the newer boat was nine inches greater in beam. On account of the increased beam it was necessary to use oars instead of the customary double paddle. I made her wider in order to have a stiffer boat and thus lessen the bodily fatigue in sailing the long channel runs.

She was divided into three compartments of nearly equal length — the forward hold, the cockpit, and the afterhold. The two end compartments were accessible through watertight hatches within easy reach of the cockpit. The volume of the cockpit was diminished by one half by means of a watertight floor raised above the waterline — like the main-deck of a ship. This floor was fitted with circular metal hatches through which I could stow the heavier parts of my outfit in the hold underneath. The cockpit proper extended for a length of a little over six feet between bulkheads so that when occasion demanded I could sleep in the canoe.

Her rig consisted of two fore and aft sails of the canoe type and a small jib.