Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
indicated the words 'A merry Xmas a Happy New Year 2 you all' painted there, it was formerly believed,
by King George V when he visited Antigua as a young sailor. Clambering out into the sunlight again over
mountains of mouldering nautical gear and anchors eaten by rust, we looked across the bay to the house
where the Sailor King, William IV, when he was still Duke of Clarence, and a young officer in command
of H.M.S.
Pegasus
, had lived in 1786.
A point on the quay was the scene of a strange exploit of the same Lord Camelford who behaved so
oddly off the coast of Grenada. In the absence of their superior officer, there was some doubt as to wheth-
er he or a fellow-lieutenant called Peterson was in command of the station. Camelford ordered Peterson to
patrol the harbour on the night of a ball, and Peterson, refusing to recognize his authority, dressed himself
in his party clothes, and prepared to leave. But his way was barred by Camelford, who repeated the order
and, when Peterson again refused, pulled out a brace of pistols and shot him through the breast. 'He fell a
corpse to the ground,' a contemporary wrote, 'the deadly stream welling from the wound, and staining, as
it flowed, the gay ball dress which he wore.' After several other curious incidents, Lord Camelford was
killed in a duel in London by a Mr. Best of Barbados.
Just below the waterline at the end of the quay, the stones were covered with a wonderful foliage of
rainbow-coloured sea-anemones, whose feelers gently wavered in the water with the motion of the cur-
rent. We watched them for a long time, touching the tips of their tendrils every now and then with the
end of a walking-stick, when they would at once shrink into nondescript lumps, only venturing to unroll
again after several minutes. Walking back towards the Admiral's house, we lingered a while to watch a
dozen Negroes in white dungarees and little white caps playing a primitive game of cricket on the stones.
They were the only people we had seen in English Harbour since arriving. Convicts, the guide said.
Just outside the town there is a large water-catchment, one of those big stone quadrangles that is built
on the slope of a hillside, and walled in so that, during the dry season, not a drop of rainwater is lost.
We searched here for a long time for the letters 'E L S' carved near the name of 'H.M.S.
Boreas
' in the
surrounding stone wall, reputed to have been scratched there by Nelson himself. Its presence is recorded
by Sir A. Aspinall; but we failed to disentangle it from the quantities of names with which the stone is
carved. This custom must have developed into some sort of a tradition among the sailors in Antigua, for
there are hundreds of signatures, many of them accompanied by the names of their homes in England:
Winchelsea, Rye, Deal, Portsmouth, Rochester, Chatham or Gravesend. The oldest date we could discov-
er was 1715. Like the whole of English Harbour, this was a queerly moving place, heavy with melancholy
and the allusions of ancient fame.
All Antigua seems to be like this. We saw little of it during our stay, but in Aspinall's account of the
island phrases like ' … though ruinous, is of interest,' ' … the once prosperous town … ,' 'a ghost of its
former self … ,' ' … the ruins of the old military barracks emerge from the hush … ,' ' … the ruins of
the old Great House….' ' … in former days …' Everything in the island speaks of evanescence and the
lapse of time. On the way back we stopped at the parish church of the little town of Falmouth, whose de-
crepitude bears the same rueful message, and contemplated the grave of the Honble. James Charles Pitt,
a brother of William, who died here, in command of H.M.S.
Hornet
, at the age of twenty. '
The genius
,'
we read, '
that inspired and the Virtues that adorned the Parent were revived in the Son whose dawning
Merit bespoke a meridian Splendour worthy of the name of Pitt
.' How very sad! It is such a dismal place
to be buried.
We drove back over a bleak, undulating country that was disturbingly like an English heath, planted
sporadically with sea island cotton. The sugar-cane only began as we got closer to St. John's.
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