Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
their own fellow-islanders of Anguilla, many of whom sail westwards to get work during the cane-cutting
season in the American island of Puerto Rico and even, until it was forbidden by the dictator, in Santo
Domingo. Many of them, for this reason, speak Spanish as well as English. One of the Dutchmen spoke
of a small island on which, during the war, empty provision crates and fuel containers were found lying
about on a deserted beach: a place of call for enemy submarines. Very much intrigued, I asked which
island, but the Aruban said he didn't know, and it was only hearsay. Later, talking of personalities in
the islands, the conversation veered round to the Captain's name-sake, Mr. Fleming of St. Martin and
Tintamarre, whose buccaneerish reputation had reached our ears in London. According to the Captain,
he was a millionaire several times over, but always lived quietly in St. Martin, half of which he owned,
among a fleet of schooners and speed-boats. At one time he had possessed a little flotilla of private aero-
planes run by a young pilot called de Heynen: 'He's about thirty-five,' the Captain said, 'and he's wild, oh
wild. Always walkin' fast with his eyes burning. He let his hair grow long on the shoulders….Education
sure drove him crazy, so much education….But Mr. Fleming's a lovely man.' He repeated this in a sort
of incantation. 'When St. Martin was poor during the war, he keep and feed de whole island. If anybody
touch him, dey touch de whole island; dey touch me.'
The two Dutchmen spoke of the days of prohibition in America, when liquor smuggling from the free
port of St. Martin to Florida and to all the Antilles was a flourishing industry. Uncle Pete had a moral
tale of a three-masted schooner carrying thirty thousand dollars' worth of contraband liquor. The Captain
and the crew broached their own stock and were soon drunk to a man. They gave up steering and just lay
about the decks while the craft drifted south towards Venezuela, where she struck a reef and sank with all
hands except one, who escaped, but did not dare tell the tale till years later. The schooner was only spot-
ted after a couple of months by a passing aeroplane, with her masts sticking out of a lagoon whose waters
were afloat with bodies and stove-in kegs. He had once seen two whales in the middle of the Caribbean,
'swimmin' along close, like they were two sweethearts,' and as a young man he had been wrecked on
the Spanish Main, two hundred miles east of Trinidad. He was nearly killed by savage Indians, who did
not even speak Spanish—'They no Christians, they never see no priest'—and had lived with them for
months in mud huts built on a mountain-side that fell into the sea so steeply that no anchor could touch
the bottom.
The stars were blacked out in a triangle that grew bigger as we approached the extinct volcano in the
eastern end of St. Eustatius. 'We comin' to Statia,' Uncle Pete said, knocking out his pipe. Soon, from
the little island capital of Oranjestad, a single light appeared. We drew in till we were about two hundred
yards off the shore. The sails came down, and one of the Dutchmen shouted through the dark in Papia-
mento, as he thought one of the police was from his island. But when we got ashore we found a police-
man talking English (which is the language of all the Dutch Leeward Islands), who led us up a winding
track to a vaulted police station, and stamped our passports. The lantern shone on his badge of the Lion
of Orange and on his steel-scabbarded sabre. It was almost ten o'clock. The little capital was fast asleep.
The Deputy Governor sat up late with us in the dining-room of an annexe of Government House, where
he had invited us, on the strength of our telegram, to stay. It was a massive white room, from the walls of
which a crowned photograph of Queen Wilhelmina as a girl smiled benignantly down upon us.
The Dutch possessions in the Caribbean lead a life of their own, and one that is in many ways as de-
tached from the life of Holland as that of Canada is from England. Our host, Mr. Voges, was born in
Curaçao of a pure Dutch family, but had never yet been to Holland, and though he would like, out of
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