The trick was to first grab both sides of the dory and launching oneself out of the water with a firm kick of the flippers (fin-foot) while swinging your rear-end (bonke) on to the seating plank (thwart – pronounced ‘tort’). An experienced diver or dory man could perform this movement without his companion even feeling a shift in the equilibrium of the craft! Of course there were those that could never master dory skills and who would be forever teased and berated by the experts. I made sure to practice and become skilled but it wasn’t after being called marble-bonke and crankey a few times.

The freedivers made hay while the sun shined but of course with the demand for lobster tails and more and more boats out on the banks and more divers around the islands (Bonaccians had jumped on the bandwagon and were producing some very talented young divers as well as Calabash Bight, Fiddler’s Bight and Punta Gorda down the shore on Roatan), lobsters became scarcer and were living even deeper.

Only very skilled and experienced freedivers who had memorized their special holes could come up with a decent payday. There were special quirks and inside knowledge to lobster diving; A diver looking down at coral rocks from above would see the sand whiter and cleaner with maybe a few shell fragments at the mouth of a rock crevice where a lobster was living; of course if a lobster was in a crevice and fending off small fish it would wave its antennae (whips) to reveal its location to the diver who would be snorkeling above.

There were fatalities and injuries.

Tanking started to be practiced by the Helenians in the 1990’s following the Miskito Indians (Waikna’s) lead. But this was barebones tank diving, no buoyancy compensator (BC), no depth guage and no pressure guage! I learned to tank dive like this and was taught, just like I was taught to freedive by the best Helenian divers and the critical advice was 1. When the tank started to make a ringing sound it was getting empty and it was time to come up. 2. Never ascend faster than the speed of your bubbles and 3. If the air in your tank finishes on your way up don’t hold your breath but exhale as you float (not swim) to the top.

Needless to say there were fatalities and injuries with a few young men left to live the rest of their lives, bedridden or in wheelchairs, if their families could afford it.

Diving on Helene is still a way of life, both freediving and tanking; in fact there are a few small locally owned boats that venture out to the banks and do quite well nowadays with the implementation and observance of a Lobster season. Freedivers do well at places like Alligator Reef and Half Moon Reef (located about 70miles East of Barra Patuca) where the lobsters are in relatively shallow waters. Rich lobster producing banks and reefs like Quita Sueño (150miles east of Puerto Cabezas), once frequented by Bay Islands boats and Miskito and Helene divers are now too far to travel to with the cost of fuel and fuel range of small boats prohibitive, not to mention the advanced technology of GPS surveillance which limits Honduran vessels to remain in national waters.

I was fortunate to have lived this life for a couple of years living in Saint Helene, I was accepted by this community and my curiosity was rewarded by these humble yet very tough folk who taught me, unselfishly, all the skills I needed to survive and live the very basic life of a Helenian. I did a few trips out on the fishing banks, the first of which was on a small 60ft wooden hull called the Lady Hilda skippered by the owner Charles Tatum (popularly known as ‘Uncle Pete’) who confidently navigated his vessel hundreds of miles from these islands placing the boat at exact points with just a compass, an old maritime chart yellow with age and a VHF radio. No Loran, no Satnav, quite incredible but we trusted him implicitly. But that’s for another story!

The Helenians have had a hard time making a living from farming since they first arrived in the 1830s, much like the island’s earlier inhabitants, the Payan Indians. Fishing, turtling, lobstering and conching at a subsistence level were—and still are—an integral part of Helene culture. Each man had his small holding, or “ground,” where he would grow a couple hundred plantain suckers, dozens of holes of cassava and watermelons in season.

Much of this economic activity and these survival methods were commonplace across the Bay Islands. Two exceptions were lobstering and conching, which were developed extensively in St. Helene, mainly due to the island’s proximity to the extensive reefs surrounding Barbarat, Morat and Helene itself.

In the 1950s and ’60s — and long before that — lobsters and conchs were abundant. A short walk along the shallow bar at any given time could provide a family-sized meal. Wealthy people in the thriving city of La Ceiba, a six- to eight-hour sail away, learned of this and opened a window of opportunity for the Helenians by buying all the conch and lobster they could get.

There was one problem — the lobsters had to be kept alive. Catching them was the first task. Scuba diving was not even mainstream in the First World, let alone on a small, Third World island. Rudimentary diving equipment — mask, snorkel and fins — was unheard of, so small, open wooden boxes with glass bottoms were built and inserted into the water, allowing the lobster fishermen to see the antennae, or “whips,” of the lobsters extending from the rocks.

Once the lobster was spotted, a long wooden pole with a wire snare on it was slowly lowered. The lobster was carefully teased out of its hole and snared. This sounds easy, but imagine doing all of this while holding the small wooden dory steady over the rock in question

Lobster was carefully teased out of its hole.

The struggle didn’t end there. To keep the lobster alive, instead of pulling it into the dory, they were placed in onion sacks that allowed water to circulate and were towed alongside the dory. It was not worth making the odyssey to La Ceiba for just a handful of lobsters, so a trip there would represent several days’ worth of lobstering.

Where were the lobsters kept after they were snared and towed alongside the dory, you might ask? They were kept in a pen, or corral, that was built using palmetto logs. The lobsters traveled over to La Ceiba in onion sacks. Imagine all this work, and the lobsters used to fetch 10 cents. In those days, a single dollar could buy quite a bit. The lobster fishermen bought goods with the proceeds. Those included small luxuries like yellow cheese that they could bring to sell back home.

In the 1970s and 1980s, enterprising islanders who had gone to work on shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico with U.S. fleets came back with investors. They started seafood packing plants, and the Bay Islands’ shrimping and later lobster-trapping and diving fleets sprang up.

A couple of enterprising Helenians, Norin and Iverson Bodden, followed by Victor James, obtained kerosene-powered freezers and began purchasing lobster tails for export to the U.S. market. That made the process much easier. With demand rising, the lobsters slowly moved deeper to avoid the increasing number of eager divers. Lobsters could no longer be reached with the old wooden pole and snare.

The free diving era began in earnest and general stores in Oak Ridge— such as Gough’s and Lem Ebanks — started carrying masks, snorkels and fins. Those who had relatives working on steamships overseas would have diving equipment brought down. Hook sticks became a popular tool for catching lobster, and free diving became increasingly popular. Besides being a way to make a living, it was also a sport. Helenians developed techniques to expand their lungs before diving, allowing them to go deeper and stay down longer.

Islanders learned ear-clearing techniques to allow the divers to go deeper without having to pause to equalize. At the height of the freediving subculture in the mid-1980s, successful freedivers were capable of diving to depths of 12 to 14 fathoms, with ‘fathom’ being the popular term used by Helenians to gauge depth.

Islanders would dive on Honduran banks or reefs such as Alligator Reef, Coxcomb Reef and the Hobbies, and farther away in Colombian waters. These were magical places, days away from Helene, such as Quita Sueño, Serranilla and Serrana banks, and farther south into Sandinista waters to the Martínez Reefs.

A smaller group stayed behind in Punta Gorda, where they remain to this day a thriving, dynamic community.

Gradually, the Garifuna diaspora spread all over the Central American coast of the western Caribbean, from Livingston in Guatemala to Puerto Limón in Costa Rica. Here on Roatan, Punta Gorda remains a compelling place to visit with unique foods, dancing and their unique language, which contains some French and English words. Until recently, most houses in PG, as it is popularly known, were wattle and daub with palmetto thatch. The Garifuna culture revolves around fishing using handmade dugout canoes with a small amount of subsistence agriculture, but with the recent influx of visitors, most of the economy revolves more around tourism.

The second most important permanent settlements were of enslaved people and slave owners who originated mostly from Cayman and Belize, beginning in the 1830s, mainly after 1834, when slavery officially ended in the Cayman Islands. The Bay Islands population rose exponentially every year and peaked in 1844.

In 1838, with the overwhelming influx of English-speaking settlers, the Spanish authorities declared that all settlers should apply for residence with the authorities in Trujillo. This created some dissatisfaction, at which the settlers appealed to the Superintendent of British Honduras (Belize), Col. Alexander McDonald.

Bay Islands were a center for agriculture in the western Caribbean.

Claiming harassment by the Spaniards, McDonald, a fervent patriot itching for a chance to mix it up with the Spaniards, preceded to Roatan, where at Port Royal, he landed and proceeded to lower the Central American flag and raise the Union Jack. No sooner had he sailed away than the Spanish Commandant, Juan Bautista Loustrelet, lowered the Union Flag and hoisted the Central American flag again. This act so infuriated McDonald that he returned, clapped the Spaniards in irons and sailed them to Trujillo, where he abandoned them on the beach and warned them never to return.

The English settlers enjoyed this protection and were helped in part by the fact that the newly independent Honduras had its own problems of nation-building on the mainland. The islands flourished and even had their own local government set up by the English authorities from Belize. Settlements were formed coastwise around the islands in Utila and Guanaja and on Roatan in Flowers Bay, West End and Jobs Bight, with the main center of population gradually becoming Coxen’s Hole, while Port Royal became less popular and eventually abandoned until the 1960s with the arrival of the first group of expatriate Americans and English.

In 1852, the Bay Islands were recognized as a Crown Colony, and the population under British protection thrived with communities popping up everywhere. By 1858, their numbers reached nearly 2,000. The Bay Islands were a center for agriculture in the western Caribbean and the mainland; boat building began as a Bay Island industry. Sadly, or tragically if you ask a modern-day Bay Islander, pressure was mounting from the U.S. Congress, who claimed that Britain’s incorporation of the Bay Islands as a Crown Colony was in direct infringement of the Monroe Doctrine and by default the Clayton-Bulwer non-colonization treaty.

Britain was forced to cede the Bay Islands back to the Republic of Honduras, an island whose languages and culture were English and Garifuna, not Spanish. Although disappointing, this didn’t really impact the Bay Islanders, who kept flourishing with little interference from an indifferent, incapable central Honduran government.

The island economy diversified from agriculture to shipbuilding and commercial fishing. Growing up around the sea, islanders were excellent seafarers, and beginning in the 1930s, many “shipped out,” taking well-paying jobs on merchant ships, later oil field supply vessels and river-going tugs around the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Some of these adventurous seamen stayed off on the Gulf Coast and learned about shrimping and came back in the 1960s to start up what was to be the largest fishing fleet in the Caribbean. This initiative and tenacity eventually led to the beginning of the dive industry in the Bay Islands.

This later led to the construction of the first cruise ship terminals, which became the catalyst for the development boom in the late 1990s, bringing with it newfound opportunities, industries and prosperity. Many of the descendants of those English and Scottish immigrants or freed slaves with names like McNab, Elwin or Bodden are building your houses or checking you in for your flight back; maybe a smiling young Garifuna lady is taking your order at a seafood restaurant. This is where they have come from.

And what of the old nemesis, the mainland Spaniard, once the foe of the English? They are now here to stay, completely integrated into our melting pot of a community.

With the beginning of development in the 1990s and demand for skilled labor, mainlanders came to the islands in droves and planted roots, much like the 1830s settlers. They thrived, and the second generation of these settlers are now born islanders who speak English and make up around 60 percent of the population.

I jumped at the chance to write about Bay Islands history, of course, when Chas Watkins asked me to write a foreword to his latest book. Besides writing, I derive great pleasure from researching and sharing my findings. Many academic papers have been written about our anthropology and geology, but much remains unknown or unsolved thus far.

We don’t know exactly when the Bonacca Ridge was formed, and we still don’t know if the Paya Indians were indeed the only Indians to have lived here. Besides being a longtime resident for the past 17 years, Chas shares my curiosity about our history, among other things. Having lived here since the relative beginnings of the development boom, he has seen much change and has a lot to share from his experiences and local knowledge.

The original inhabitants prior to the Europeans were most likely the Paya Indians. This is a conclusion disputed by many archeologists during the 10 known expeditions to the islands since 1924. There is evidence of the presence of Maya, Lenca and Jicaque aborigines in the Bay Islands; however, the strongest evidence points to the Payas, specifically a group originating south of Trujillo.

Evidence unearthed by Islanders in recent history points mostly to residential sites, but also to offertory, burial and some ceremonial sites (interestingly, the largest and most significant being a 40-acre site on Utila and a several-acre site in Plan Grande, Guanaja). “Yaba Ding Dings” (Indian artifacts) being a common find throughout the Bay Islands drew amateur archeologists as well as looters to the aboriginal sites. Sadly, the first Bay Islander’s idyllic lifestyle of fishing, farming and turtling started its decline with the arrival of the first Europeans and with Christopher Columbus’ fourth voyage in 1504.

Augusta in Port Royal was part of this ‘Royalization’.

Slowly, the Spaniards began to take control of the Indians’ lives, and they were subject to the same treatment as other indigenous peoples in accessible locations the world over for around 136 years, first being raided and enslaved, Christianized and then exploited as laborers.

Their legacy today are the old pieces of pottery jars strewn around the hills of the Islands. There are a few interesting monoliths in Guanaja and their names, which could be where the three island names originated: Wa-nak-ka (Guanaja), the modern Payan word for ‘cloud’; Arroa or Roata (Roatan), modern Payan for ‘Pine’; and Uu-tia (Utila), meaning ‘sand-water.’ It was not until 1638 that another European Imperial power, the English, challenged Spanish control of the region.

It was when the Puritan settlement of the Providence Company under William Claiborne and a group of English and Scots emigrants from Virginia and Maryland settled in what is Old Port Royal today. The colony, however, was short-lived. It lasted just four years, and besides Claiborne’s cousin, Captain Butler, making a nuisance of himself by burning down the four Indian towns in the islands and creating strife with them, England was in the midst of a civil war, and as a result, there was no protection available in the Caribbean.

By the end of 1642, most of the settlers were evicted, and the islands remained sparsely populated, with the only inhabitants being the few remaining Paya who had not died, run away to the continent or had been enslaved. A few English settlers who had remained turned to darker ways and joined in the wave of piracy that was sweeping the Caribbean, filling the power vacuum left by the Spanish and English.

Nelson was stationed in Port Royal.

There is much commercialization of the fact that the Bay Islands were once frequented by buccaneers. The name of the infamous Henry Morgan is used frequently, but it is disputed that the Bay Islands were his base of operations. It is more likely he just passed through to collect water or victuals or careen his vessels on more than one occasion.

Two of the most notorious pirates who were known to have used the islands were Blackbeard (Edward Teach or Thatch), who would careen his vessel Queen Anne’s Revenge at a shallow bar east of the airport called Thatch Point, named after him. The other notoriously violent pirate who made Roatan his sanctuary was Edward “Ned” Lowe, whose ghastly cruelty was documented by Philip Ashton, who escaped Lowe on a victualing and water supply trip to Port Royal and was subsequently marooned, escaping certain death.

The young Ashton spent two years between islands until rescued, and his story is included in Edward Leslie’s, Lost Journeys, Abandoned Souls. Many other buccaneers were rumored to have passed through since the islands were ideally positioned as a refuge after attacking Spanish ships carrying Indian treasure looted by the conquistadors from the Spanish Mainland. Names like John Coxen (after whom Coxen’s Hole is named), Morris, Jackman, Van Horn, Uring and L’Ollonais, who fixed nets, made rope from Macoa and fished for turtles when not pillaging and creating havoc.

The Bay Islands were a no-man’s land at this stage in their history for around 100 years, no more than a victualing station and temporary base for pirates, log-cutters and the odd Paya Indian survivor. At the outbreak of war (the War of Jenkin’s Ear) in 1739, England was looking at bases in the region, and the Bay Islands was one such area.

In 1742, 250 soldiers and slaves landed in Port Royal and started to build fortifications. Later, families of the soldiers were brought in to populate the area, and records show that the population in 1744 stood at 1,000. The town of Augusta in Port Royal was part of this “royalization,” with farmland being cultivated and even a cooperage set up operations.

Some settlers found the red land and oak hills unsuitable for agriculture. With William Pitt’s (the first civilian superintendent and cousin of the future prime minister of England with the same name) blessing, they moved to the northwest coast of the island to Anthony’s Cay (today Key) and began to cultivate 100 acres of flatter, more fertile land.

This occupation ended in 1748 with the signing of the Aix-la-Chapelle peace treaty, and the last troops left in 1749. The island once again remained abandoned with no record of any permanent settlement until 1779 when war broke out again.

Colonel Dalrymple was ordered by Jamaica to once again occupy Roatan and the Bay Islands as part of a larger English strategy to dominate the region, which included attacking Fort San Juan with disastrous results. A young Horatio Nelson participated in this raid and nearly died of malaria. Nelson was stationed in Port Royal for half of 1778 and performed anti-piracy patrols of the Western Caribbean on his first command, HMS Badger.

Omoa on the mainland was also attacked and occupied by His Majesty’s forces for a brief time. English presence in the region was eventually weakened, and the last English stronghold at Port Royal was attacked by a combined force from Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua under the leadership of Guatemalan President Matías Gálvez, who attacked on March 16, 1782. The English, seeing that they were outmanned and outgunned, scuttled their only ship in the main channel to impede the Spaniard’s access to the harbor. The fighting went on for 48 hours, and despite a valiant effort, the Spaniards were victorious. The Spaniards made a few futile attempts to populate the islands after the battle, but were mostly unsuccessful.

Michell-Hedges lived on his boat, the Amigo, anchored off Rocky Point, Helene, for several years in the late 1920s. That was until one day, when his fellow explorer Dr. Ball, surveying on Bailey’s Cay, observed his compass needle spinning wildly. The duo dug down and discovered four chests loaded with doubloons and jewelry, which they re-crated as Indian artifacts and then fled the islands in haste. Once in America, it was purported that he sold all the booty for $6 million. Michell-Hedges also booked himself up on a speaking tour of the US, Canada, and Britain.

While on this speaking tour, the account of his amazing discoveries in the St. Helene and Barbarat brought the attention of professional archeologists, particularly of his claims that the artifacts were the remains of the lost city of Atlantis and some 25,000 years old. The first serious Archaeological trip was the Boekelman shell heap expedition of 1931, which focused on shell heaps or middens as an indication of population centers. The most fascinating and well-documented expedition was the Duncan Strong trip of April and May of 1933 to Utila (Roatan’s Dixon Hill site), Port Royal, St. Helene, Barbarat, Morat, and Bonacca.

Strong’s notebook is quite a delight to read, with some beautiful sketches of flora and fauna as well as artifacts found at the sites. It is a delightful combination of Natural History and Archaeology. Strong’s expedition had a distinct advantage in that he used the same MV Amigo with the wooden legged Captain Frank Boynton, and with it the same crew – Gerald Bodden and Joe Solórzano – that had accompanied Mitchell-Hedges a few years prior. On Roatan, he explored a site on a hill East of French Harbour on Dixon land, accompanied by Ogilvy Dixon, which he called Dixon Hill.

Strong’s book—the result of his 1933 expedition, “Archaeological Investigations in the Bay Islands, Spanish Honduras”— is still considered the starting point for any archaeological or anthropological study of the Bay Islands’ pre-Columbian history. More significantly, Strong was not only an academic with a Ph.D. but also an Americanist through and through.

He is widely credited with introducing modern archaeology to Columbia University, where he served for many years as chairman of the Department of Anthropology. An assiduous field worker and influential theorist —not a showman like Mitchell-Hedges— his journal and book provided a trove of information on Bay Islands history that formed the basis for two subsequent expeditions in 1938 and 1939.

At about the same time that Duncan Strong was exploring the hills and caves of the Bay Islands, Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, completed his purchase of the SS Dieppe and refitted it as a diesel-powered private yacht, which he named MY Rosaura.

Guinness was a soldier, businessman, and conservative politician renowned for building the Guinness brewing empire in Dublin —a venture originally started by his grandfather. In addition, he was a close friend of Winston Churchill, who, along with his wife Clementine, was among the first guests aboard the Rosaura during a summer 1934 trip to Greece and Beirut.

Later that year, the Prince of Wales, the abdicated King Edward VIII, and Wallis Simpson also became his guests. Wallis later wrote that it was during their voyage together on the Rosaura in the Mediterranean that she grew to love Edward.

Lord Moyne began his political career at the age of 27, and over 37 years he advanced from Member of Parliament to the House of Lords while holding five cabinet positions—primarily during Churchill’s wartime leadership. His political journey eventually brought him to the Caribbean when Neville Chamberlain appointed him Chairman of the West Indies Royal Commission in 1938.

There had been widespread labor unrest in the British Caribbean, and Moyne was appointed to spearhead reforms in the region. As an explorer and artifact collector, it was natural for him to travel aboard his boat, MY Rosaura. He made one trip to the Bay Islands in 1938 and another in 1939. He had been inspired by Strong’s Journal and by Mitchell-Hedges’ Land of Wonder and Fear. Notably, prominent archaeologist Eric Thompson commented on Mitchell-Hedges’ work, stating, “To me the wonder was how he could write such nonsense and the fear of how much taller the next yarn would be.”

Michell-Hedges lived on his boat, anchored off Rocky Point, Helene.

Captain Frank Boynton, who had accompanied Mitchell-Hedges as his pilot, was assisted by two men: ‘Spanish Joe’ Savas Solórzano and Gerald Bodden. Both men hailed from Diamond Rock as crew of the Moyne expedition of 1938. They didn’t spend much time on Utila or Roatan and made it straight to Helene. There they met Thomas and Herbert Forbes, who were instrumental in revictualing the Rosaura and served as guides on Helene and Morat, alongside Cleveland Bodden and his two sons, Marwick “Butterfly” Bodden and Telford Bodden. I should mention that I knew “Uncle” Butterfly during the last few years of his life and learned much about Helene’s history from him.

The sites that Moyne and his group excavated extensively were on the three peaks of Indian Hill on Helene. Over a thousand pieces were removed from this area and now sit in the British Museum (and can be viewed on their website). Some quite uniquely painted ollas with tripod legs – typical of artifacts found in the Ulúa valley – tell of a distinct link between the Bay Islands Payan Indians and the settlements in Ulúa.

On board the Rosaura for the 1938 expedition was the renowned Zoologist, H W Parker CBE, keeper of Zoology of the British Museum. He is known for discovering and naming a new species of Gecko, the Bay Islands Least Gecko, or its latin name, Sphaerodactylus Rosaurae (in honour of the Rosaura ). Lord Moyne’s patronage and Parker’s association with the British Museum would explain why all of Moyne’s pieces from all over the world ended up here.

In the summer of 1939, R. W. ‘Dickie’ Feacham, an Archeologist who had accompanied Lord Moyne on a prior expedition to Greenland, had managed to arrange backing from the Royal Geographical Society and the Faculty of Archeology at Trinity College, Cambridge. The Rosaura was to be used with Lord Moyne tagging along from Jamaica, no doubt to clean up where he had left off with his looting of Indian Hill on Helene.

This was the summer of 1939, and war clouds were gathering in Europe. It was rumored that Moyne’s close friend Winston Churchill would replace Neville Chamberlain as Conservative leader, and would likely call upon him to serve in his cabinet. However, not only did impending war loom, but the sudden death of his wife, Lady Evelyn Stuart, on July 31, 1939, force Lord Moyne to depart for England on the Rosaura. Meanwhile, Feacham and his entourage continued aboard the Amigo—Capt. Frank Boynton’s vessel, which had been used by Mitchell-Hedges in 1927.

The expedition began in Utila, where they briefly retraced the steps of Junius Bird and William Waterhouse’s 1929 Smithsonian expedition. During their stay, they revisited the Indian Well, a stone causeway, and several urn burial sites with local guide Eddie Whitefield.

From Utila, they ventured west, roughly following Strong’s 1933 expedition trail, and stopped at Pollatilla and Punta Gorda. There, they observed that the village —with its thatched huts, cows, and pigs— resembling Wiltshire with palm trees. On Helene, accompanied by Cleveland Bodden and his sons, Butterfly and Telford, Feacham and his crew explored the same caves that Strong had examined in 1933. These caves bordered the mangrove canal where Mitchell Hedges had supposedly found the Crystal Skull.

A visit to the Indian Hill site revealed nothing except for shards of pottery left by Moyne the previous year. Further west on Barbarat, guided by plantation men Wesley and Brindley Cooper, they trekked up Pear Tree Gully to Indian Hill, where they found a few artifacts —most notably, a large egg-shaped vessel with three legs and a hole at the bottom. The expedition concluded at Bonacca, where they met Professor Colin Pinckney from Cambridge University, who, along with Derek Leaf, was surveying the walled site at Plan Grande.

Interesting things happened to Lord Moyne and MY Rosaura. In 1941, MY Rosaura was commissioned by His Majesty’s Navy as a boarding vessel and renamed HMS Rosaura. A few months later, on March 18, she struck a mine off Tobruk and sank, claiming the lives of 78 people.

Lord Moyne was appointed leader of the House of Lords in February 1941 and Secretary of State for the Colonies. In February 1942, Churchill named him British Minister Resident for the Middle East in Cairo, Egypt—a position he held until his assassination by members of the Jewish ‘Lehi’ terrorist group in November 1944, an attack that also claimed his driver’s life. This event marked the beginning of the end for British influence in Palestine, and for once, upon hearing of his friend’s death, Winston Churchill fell ill and was unable to address Parliament.

The Moyne Collection is still housed at the British Museum, and I suspect it would be well worth the effort to repatriate it to Roatan for display in a future museum. Meanwhile, the Rosaura now rests in 200 feet of water off Tobruk, and its namesake, the Sphaerodactylus Rosaurae, continues to roam the forests of Roatan, munching on insects.

The 1970’s and 80’s with the growth of the commercial fishing industry, and more significantly the mid 1990’s with the beginning of the development boom, attracted waves of settlers from mainland Honduras to the islands. The second and third generation of these settlers (those born here) now own property and businesses and speak English. The Bay Islands settlements of Barrio Los Fuertes and Colonia Policarpo Galindo are where the voters are, and for the first time in History we have a Governor who was not born on Roatan and whose native language is Spanish.

For the first time, the majority of councilors on the city council are Hispanic, but they are Bay Islanders now and have the strongest voice in local government affairs. This, of course, is why the newer communities that are predominantly Spanish-speaking are developing at a quicker rate (roads paved, rural electrification, potable water); this disproportionate rate of development is compounded also by the indifference of the English descendants and the absence of social cohesion within predominantly Creole and English communities.

I have read quite extensively about the early English settlers on Roatan in particular, and the impression I get is that they were an extremely resourceful and resilient people, working hard at farming and trading and extremely God fearing. I get the distinct impression that they were very disciplined, respected authority, and were prudent about who they put in charge.

Their culture and habitat are rapidly disappearing.

In 1844, even prior to becoming a British Colony, Royal Naval officers visiting Roatan were surprised at how well land regulation among islanders was organized and how the islanders were respectful and considerate of each other. Statistics show us that the Bay Islands produced and exported to the United States 1.8 million bunches of plantains in 1855 and up to 3.6 million by 1859. By the turn of the century, 5% of the total national exports came from Bay Islands farms . And why did this come to an end? Much as most good things in the Bay Islands come undone, instigated by Tegucigalpa (ergo Central Government).

Lt. Colonel Juan Barahona (Tegucigalpa appointed Governor 1917-1919) put pressure on Bay islanders applying huge levies thereby forcing them to sell to the mainland for much less than what they were selling to the US for and eventually this, compounded by Hurricanes was the end of the era of Agricultural success of the Bay Islanders and the first successful attempt at Honduranizing the Bay Islands.

Bay Islanders need to wake up and realize that their culture and habitat are rapidly disappearing under their very noses, the environment is being stressed to the breaking point (we will soon be an eroded Haitian wasteland with no water resources) and the central government walking away with millions in tax revenue that we could use here for roads and waste to energy plants. Bay Islanders need to be inspired by those intrepid, brave, resourceful men and woman who came before them like Uwins Elwin, Joseph Cooper, the Haylocks and the Kirkconnells.

Independence is a pipe dream – it is unconstitutional and would not garner any international support. Let’s be realistic but autonomy is feasible and can be negotiated within the framework of Honduran and international law; but this requires leadership and the age old Islander ingredients of initiative, grit, and resourcefulness. The ZEDES debacle showed us that it was possible to work together towards a common end, Spanish and English Islanders alike. Bay islanders of all ethnicities need to take charge of their birthright once more and right the ship before it capsizes, we still have time.

Each year on this date, authorities meet in the park and give speeches in Spanish lauding the initiative of General José Santos Guardiola, who in fact was just doing as the Americans had told him.

I was saddened to see that no speeches were made in English that alluded to the recognition of the early British settlers from Belize, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. But this was no fault of the Central Government as much as it is the ever-increasing indifference of Bay Islanders to their own history, environment, and future. It’s an ominous sign of the almost complete Honduranization of the islands.

In 1989, I was accompanying British Historian and Professor Michael Duncan to St. Helene on a fact-finding mission while he was working on his paper for the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. He was a fascinating man who passed away shortly after his paper The Gentle Art of Cutting the painter was published in 1990. In this paper, he shared some prophetic and frankly quite alarming thought:

In regards tourism, I was told privately by an Honduran official that they have now discovered the Bay Islands to be a goose that can lay golden eggs, but by the time they get visitors, they may have destroyed its customs and much of what made it special. There is also, at the same time, a persistent feeling in some Honduran circles that the Bay Islands should, at last, be assimilated linguistically, culturally and commercially (ie: Honduranized).

They have now discovered the Bay Islands to be a goose that can lay golden eggs.

If you take this in context, it was written before the main road was paved from Oak Ridge to French Harbour, before the international airport was built, before RECO, way before cruise ships, and before the development boom (which began around 1995). There were only a handful of Hotels welcoming international visitors in the Bay Islands: Bayman Bay in Guanaja, CoCo view, and Anthony’s Key, to name a few.

The population of the entire Bay Islands was 25,000, and the economy at this time was still based entirely on commercial fishing and Remittances from Islanders working as merchant seamen overseas. If someone was to suggest publicly at the time that Bay Islanders would have their culture slowly replaced after it dwindled away, and that favorite family recreational areas like the Pigeon Cays destroyed beyond repair, it would be considered dystopian. As a matter of fact, Michael Duncan’s words and the unnamed official’s prediction have eerily become our reality.

It is true we live in the most prosperous time in Bay Islands History, due to development and tourism, but we should ask ourselves if it is sustainable How long will it take before the hillsides, reefs, and water resources collapse, without adequate environmental oversight and impartial enforcement of the environmental laws? How long will it be before Anglo-Caribbean and Creole cultures drift into the past and are forgotten? Federal environmental laws are in place, however those hired to implement them are mainlanders with no vested interest in long-term environmental management and sustainability. The same applies with the police force who are all mainlanders and have no interest nor dedication to solving crimes or keeping the laws, because it is not their home and they are rotated out regularly.

On the 8th of December at Port Royal in Jamaica,1778 Lieutenant Horatio Nelson was made Master and Commander of the Brig, HMS Badger. His first orders were to provide protection to settlements of log cutters and shipping in British Honduras, the Mosquito Shore and Rattan Island from American and French privateers.

The fair haired, slight, 5’6” tall teenage Captain seemed inexperienced to most of the 90 men on board, but his self confidence, courage and skill soon earned him their respect, after some initial setbacks. Low morale was affecting the Royal Navy as a whole at that time and the crew of HMS Badger was no exception, in all,, 21 of the crew deserted during Nelson’s six months at the helm. The defectors even included a midshipman, Henry Lee who fled at Rattan in March, 1779 a day before Horatio set sail on the HMS Badger’s return to Jamaica via St. George’s Cay in Belize.

In 1779, the epicenter of life on Rattan was at Port Royal. A garrison of Navy and Royal Marines were stationed there between Fort Frederick right on the bluff where Anne Jennings’ house was located in the 1970’s and George’s Cay (Fort George Cay) named after King George the Third, then reigning British monarch. There were eight cannons positioned in a semi-circle around the Bluff at Fort Frederick and 17 on Fort George Cay positioned defensively facing westwards towards Fort George Cay Channel.

The epicenter of life on Rattan was at Port Royal.

There were civilian settlements at Augusta, a site situated on the high ground 500 yards from where Erick Anderson’s house is today. There was the Litchfield settlement 100 yards west of Augusta and a Cooperage in the Bight, situated where the old Port Royal Lodge once stood in the 1960’s to early 1980’s.

Due to the abundance of freshwater in Port Royal , the young Captain Nelson was very likely to have had HMS Badger’s water storage barrels built and repaired at this same cooperage. More significantly was the wide shallow bar east of Fort George Cay adjacent to Careening Cay, so named on Henry Barnsley’s 1742 chart, and known to all today as Cay Comfort. The wreck of The Rambler salvage vessel is located west of this cay. It is noted in the Badger’s log and muster records that prior to his departure for Jamaica her 14 guns were hoisted out and she was careened on this bar; algae, barnacles and ship worm was scraped away and perhaps a layer of sulphur, tar and tallow applied to prevent leakage.

One hundred and fifty civilians in Port Royal scratched a living from logging (mostly centered around the Lignin Vitae variety which was indigenous to the east of the island and much sought after by boat builders for its extreme hardness used in boat stems and sterns), farming and green turtle fishing. It was very likely that among these settlers that the young deserter, midshipman Henry Lee would have laid low in the hours before HMS Badger set sail for Jamaica in March, 1779.

This was not the last that the western Caribbean and The Mosquitia had seen of the future British Icon , he was to return to the Nicaraguan Mosquitia as commander of a small Royal Navy fleet of several vessels seeking to join the Atlantic to the Pacific via the San Juan river and Lake Nicaragua ( the ill-fated plan of Major General Sir John Dalling , then Governor of Jamaica ) . Horatio Nelson was aboard his new command at this time, the frigate HMS Hinchingbrooke a larger vessel with 200 on board.