While you and I would have a bit more noise to contend with than the narrator in picking up these sounds, thankfully there are quiet moments when we do. Quiet island moments when we hear what we otherwise would not. Imagine yourself on a wharf at the lagoon in French Harbour at dawn. What is that sound? Imagine wild pigeons cooing in the mangroves, their gentle calls carrying over the dark water.

Since you have taken the trouble to be at the wharf on the lagoon at dawn, listen some more. Hear that sound? That little racket compared to the pigeons? Those are the ching-chings, roosting in mangroves as well, fussing as they begin to take on the day. Then, in the pause between the ching-chings’ racket and the pigeons’ cooing, a sudden, violent splashing erupts in the middle of the lagoon—the sound of a school of mullet escaping a barracuda.

Before taking the pathway to the lagoon, walk along French Harbour Road up the point. In the quiet, you will hear little rippling waves silently and smoothly brushing the white sand just feet from the edge of the seaside road. You may not see them, but there will be small periwinkles clinging to rocks that are half in, half out of the water and green with thin moss. Shiny sharks, each only inches long and with oversized heads and mouths, lie motionless with their stomachs on the sand. They lie hidden between the moss-covered blades of turtle grass in the shallows.

The island abounded with wild hogs, pigeons, parrots and other wild birds.

As a child growing up in French Harbour in the 1970s, quiet could also be found in the middle of the day when the sun was high in the sky. While standing in the mangroves along the canal, you felt your feet gripping the mangrove roots as you steadied yourself, watching a man from the Hill clean a fresh catch of conchs. He had returned from the lagoon and the green and blue waters beyond and had tied his dory in the shade of the mangroves. There, he finished his work before paddling to his home only minutes away.

First, he uses the back end of a carpenter’s hammer to poke a hole at the top of a conch shell. Then, using a butter knife, he expertly pushes the conch from the shell. As he dresses the conch meat with a butcher’s knife, the man carefully checks each slippery, de-shelled conch. You are not certain why he is looking so closely at and poking the de-shelled conchs. Then it comes to you — he is looking for conch pearls. Having had no luck finding pearls, the man completes his work. He then throws the conch waste into the middle of the canal — five heaping mounds in his large, cupped hands. You watch the light-colored conch waste slowly descend in the dark canal water. Your stare intensifies. You know what will soon come.

Tarpon suddenly descend to eat the trash in frenzy. The canal water boils from their sudden turns beneath the surface. Water splashes as tarpon jump above the surface. A few large dog teeth snap, joining in the melee. The smaller and more timid fish eat the trash that settles on the muddy canal bottom.

Those are some of the sounds one hears on a quiet day in Roatan. I look forward to the next time I am in the Bay Islands. For one night, surely, I’ll go to sleep early just to be in French Harbour before dawn.

Beneath the photo were announcements for the time and place of the wake, the church service and the burial. Someone I had not seen in person or spoken to in more than a decade—but who figured prominently in my memory of what the Bay Islands were—was gone. In the following days, memories of the era when he and I moved in shrimping industry circles came to mind organically.

I returned from the United States to Roatan in the mid-1990s with my girlfriend, intending to live on the island for at least one year.
Within a week or two of arriving, we were able to rent a home on the eastern tip of a cay along Roatan’s south shore. On the day we moved in—having few belongings made this quick—we sat on the porch swing, feeling like we were finally settled into the house.

The first thing that enveloped us was a steady breeze coming off the grass bar. A sense of familiarity came over me—I was home. She sensed this satisfaction in me, and it pleased her. Before long, we saw a school of sprats, a gray mass against a large white area on the grass bar. The mass was eluding a barracuda that was on the hunt. The school of sprats seemed to feint the barracuda’s strikes as if it were a single being. After a time, the gray mass reached the channel and disappeared from our view.

Son sat on a wooden chair next to the open grave.

Yellow and red hibiscus flowers had opened along the narrow dirt paths of the cemetery grounds, with the leaves of the hibiscus plants still damp from overnight squalls. Gravestones—more recent ones fashioned by a stone worker from up The Point—stand sacred to the memory of islanders who passed long ago and more recently. A group of Black men, women and children from off The Hill had gathered for the funeral. Mr. Leonard stood tall among them—an uncommon sight, as he was without his wide-brimmed hat, left at home out of respect. While making their way along the paths to the freshly dug grave, the adults brushed the hibiscus leaves at their hips and thighs, the children at their shoulders and torsos. Their clothing was damp in those areas.

The deceased’s adult son sat on a wooden chair next to the open grave, with two lengths of strong rope with frayed ends curled at his feet. He was silent, his face streaked with tears as he watched his mother’s simple, unpainted pine casket. It was placed on top of a varnished mahogany table. Standing near the trunk of the trumpet tree, under whose branches the woman would be laid to rest, a local pastor delivered the sermon.

“Friends, we must tend to our many-colored garden in our dedication to our Christian will and our belief in God Almighty,” he began.

Beyond the gravel bars, the higher points of the coral reef were also above water. While the squabs waited for the tide to rise, they would have limited escape routes to the reef. We had some luck and had already caught two of the squabs, which were slapping around in the crocus sack being carried by Timothy. While slowly walking in the shallow where the turtle grass grows and trying to spot another squab to set upon and chase, we heard a girl’s voice calling, “Timothy,” from the shore.

The voice was Lorraine’s, who was standing at the water’s edge, waving her arms high and motioning us to come ashore. Next to her stood Holly, who wore a pair of sunglasses like a hair band to sweep her hair back from her face.

As we drew closer to the shore, we saw that Holly was holding a standard-issue blue school notebook, the same kind you buy from Aunt Sybil down the road at the McNab Store. “Aha,” said Timothy. “I know what’s going on.” “What?” asked Peter John. “Holly’s birthday party invitations,” Timothy replied. Our pace quickened. Holly opened up the notebook, which contained a list of some 25 to 30 boys and girls who were invited. “Next Saturday at 5 p.m?” Of course, we would be there. Our hands were wet, so she wrote the word “Yes” next to each of our names. The following week passed in typical ways, save for the anticipation of Holly’s birthday party.

A good dancer was always esteemed.

On the day of the party, the yard had been freshly raked, cleaned of dry weeds and almond tree leaves, and errant pieces of trash — Fiesta cheese puff wrappers, candy wrappers and the like. The lines from the garden rake were still visible in the sand in the yard. A piñata made to order up in French Cay, constructed with strong chicken wire lining, hung at the end of a lobster pot rope that had been thrown over a high almond tree limb. The other end of the black rope was tied off at the base of a post of the front yard picket fence.

A headless mop stick was at the ready, leaning against the trunk of the almond tree. The younger kids would be given first go, making limited headway with the strong Piñata. Eventually the older kids would open a gash in the wire frame, and the Piñata would come undone.

Kids also sat cross-legged and played ‘Spin the Bottle,’ and it seemed everyone got a sweet kiss. They stood in a circle holding hands and played ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’ and took turns pinning the tail on the donkey. All the while drinking red Kool-Aid and eating spaghetti in a homemade red sauce that included Vienna Sausages.

On the edge of each plastic plate of spaghetti was a stack of Saltine Crackers and a Jimmy Cake (cupcake) with pink, white or light green icing. The older kids also danced for hours on end, and proudly. A good dancer was always esteemed.

On the edge of each plastic plate of spaghetti was a stack of Saltine Crackers and a Jimmy Cake (cupcake) with pink, white or light green icing. The older kids also danced for hours on end, and proudly. A good dancer was always esteemed.

Holly’s family turntable and loudspeakers had been brought downstairs and set up beneath the house floor, powered with an extension cord hanging over the front porch railing. A steady stream of country and western, Spanish language and soft rock/disco songs were being played. The latter would have included hits in the United States that had carried all the way to the Bay Islands. “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” by Elton John and Kiki Dee and a 1970s cover of Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” are two I remember well. As were the entire soundtracks for “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever,” and anything else whatsoever from The Bee Gees.

A favored Spanish language singer was Camilo Sesto, whose slow love songs favored close dancing for the older kids. As for country music, any and all songs were fair game; from Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Marty Robbins to Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, and Freddy Fender and Buck Owens.

If I lived in Miami, Tampa, or New Orleans, however, the situation would be quite different. In those cities and their surrounding areas, there are many families who have a strong cultural link to either Bonacca, Roatan, or Utila, and to the Bay Islands generally. Some of them had lived there for generations.

While I am not a first-hand participant in any of the Bay Island ‘subcultures’ that have developed in these places, and in others, an important part of nurturing my sense of being from Roatan, and of being a Bay Islander, is through food. That is unsurprising, given the power of a particular taste to transport a person to another place and time.

One recent meal at my home – with the temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit outside – was a meatless ‘dummy’ tapado, replete with Cocos (malanga), Yucca, green bananas, and ripe plantains. Another, this while snow flurries were predicted later in the day, were the Honduran red beans, first soaked in water overnight and cooked from scratch, and white rice. As a side, there was a salad made of thinly sliced cabbage, diced tomatoes, rice vinegar, salt, and black pepper. Both meals you will agree were as simple as the day is long, but each – apart from being delicious – transported my thoughts back to Roatan and the Bay Islands.

Corn pastelitos with a filling of picked fish.

As I look back to my youth, I see a group of rowdy boys playing a pickup football match behind the Ruben Barahona public school in French Harbour. The Honduran-made leather football’s warped shape, combined with the unevenness of the gravelly field, makes a ground pass unpredictable. They could not care less. Most boys are barefoot and are a combination of boys who live on French Harbour Point and up on The Hill.

“Miss Jestane is here!” yelled one of the boys suddenly, and abruptly the game was disrupted. Miss Jestane is on her daily excursion (minus Sundays) through French Harbour. She is selling home-made baked goods. This day, she has pine cookies and pine tarts – my father’s and younger sister’s favorite – as well as square molasses cookies. No sugar-coated donuts this day, nor flour pastelitos. The sales are brisk, and Miss Jestane is soon on her way. The football match slowly begins anew, and some of the boys finish eating their snacks while chasing the warped football.

There were several other women in French Harbour who made traditional foods at home and which they sold in town door-to-door. Another would have been Miss Louise Bertram Wagner, who continues to do so even today.

These foods would have included the staples mentioned already. Others would have been corn pastelitos with a filling of picked fish cooked with onions, the fish having been caught out on the reef or in the harbour. Honduran-made hot sauces were an accompaniment for all pastelitos, with a brand name I recall being ‘Satanás’ (Satan). There would also have been freshly roasted peanuts and cashews, individual portions held in pieces of brown paper folded into cones. Then there was corn hominy – the eyes of the kernels removed individually – cooked in a thick and sweet milk base, with freshly pounded flakes of cinnamon throughout.

This was brought to the fore of my thoughts while eating a traditional island dish, all the while looking out at a northeastern winter.

Big French Cay and Little French Cay are situated off of the town of French Cay, to the east of French Harbour and to the west of Fantasy Island. They were once a favorite place for folks from French Harbour to swim and picnic on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. On those Saturdays entire families would settle in to enjoy the water, sun, and mounds of deviled ham sandwiches and potato salad, all washed down with an ice cold Coca Cola or a Tropical soft drink.

He fell asleep and floated away westward.

I vividly remember “Uncle” Bob McNab and “Uncle” Roy Woods racing their nearly identical motor dories from Ezekiel’s Cay (now Fantasy Island) to the bluff just west of French Cay town. Both dories were painted white, with Uncle Roy’s featuring a dark blue trim and Uncle Bob’s a dark buff trim. Another memory I have is that of ‘Chubby’ floating on a large, inflated rubber tube, so relaxed that he fell asleep and floated away westward without anyone really noticing. Before anyone came to realize it, including Chubby, he’d almost reached the French Cay channel. Uncle Roy sped his motor dory down to pick him up, circling Chubby widely a couple of times before he awoke.

In those days, an elderly couple, the Thompsons, lived on Big French Cay, with their house situated near its western edge. Most of their extended family resided in French Cay town, except for one member who lived in French Harbour. They had two sons who were my classmates and playmates.

Many a weekend the boys would spend with the elder Thompsons on Big French Cay, fishing to their hearts’ content for squabs, yellow tail snappers, and jacks. While I was certainly envious of their fishing stories, I wasn’t totally left out. On some Saturdays, my two older brothers and I would take our family’s speedboat – a green aluminum skiff with a 15 horsepower Johnson outboard engine – and pick up their good friend John Arch from French Cay town.

With hand-held lines, and homemade ‘yellow bait’ lures, we would troll from the French Cay channel to Ezekiel’s Cay, back and forth, for hours on end. After our fill of trolling, we would often beach the speedboat on Big French Cay and fish from the beach under the shade of a large tree, whose branches extended out to the water.

The online article included the method that was used by which to determine the ‘most relaxing beach in the world.’ I honestly found the methodology wanting, and quite random. In any case, I suspect that for many an islander, there is little that could outshine Big French Cay and Little French Cay as they were in the old days.

Let us dig a little deeper into the subject of island food, for now putting aside other favorites such as stewed pine cookies and duff (a desert of bread dough boiled in a sweet, thick milk-based broth), chicharrón con yuca, mutton pepper bottles, red beans and white rice, as well as stewed liver and onions served with fried green plantains. Let’s put those aside and talk about blue land crabs.

A blue land crab boil is an event that brings friends and families together. It is late in the year and it is rainy season, so the crabs are on the run. Undoubtedly a land crab boil has lately taken place somewhere on Roatan, or one soon will take place. One that sticks in my memory was held sometime in the 1970s at Mr. Harry Dixon’s home on French Harbour Point. That house, which is long gone, stood atop tall stilts not far from where the red-roofed Catholic church stands today. The front of Mr. Harry’s house had a clear view of the reef and the Honduras mainland, and the back of the house faced a line of tall mangroves behind which is the French Harbour Lagoon.

Crab boil is an event that brings friends and families together.

A small dory wharf made of guava tree posts and 1’ x 12’ planks of wood went through the mangroves and over the swamp mud, leading out to the Lagoon.

A 55-gallon drum with the top half cut away was nearly filled with salt water hauled in from inside the reef in 5-gallon buckets. The drum sat atop dried reef rocks in Mr. Harry’s yard of compacted white sand. The drum, which was burnt black from previous crab boils, had a newly kindled fire beneath it to bring the water to a boil. With the sun soon setting, the salt water would be boiling in time for when the crab hunters were expected to return. Adults were casually socializing on Mr. Harry’s front porch, while others mingled here and there in the yard. Boys and girls were running to and fro, collecting firewood and stacking it onto a pile near the drum. Two whole bunches of green bananas that were to be boiled along with the crabs were laid against the base of a coconut tree in the yard, where Frank Lowell stood smoking a Royal cigarette and watching the fire build. As someone cursed at the sand flies that were then starting to come out, and as the Dixon’s family dog Cheleko sauntered over to say hello to Frank, the dipping sauce was being made up stairs in the house’s kitchen by Ms. Orella. A typical recipe, which could vary from town to town or from family to family, would have been Naturas ketchup, vinegar, lime juice, diced onions, thinly sliced mutton peppers and salt.

Against this backdrop, the voice of a boy carried from the wharf towards and up through the house and across the whole yard: “They’re coming! They’re coming!” He had spotted two paddle dories coming West down the Lagoon, just after they had turned at the Point. Each dory had two men, the designated hunters for the crab boil.

As you cross the bridge connecting Roatan proper to Fantasy Island, two bags of sliced Coleman Bakery sandwich loaves sit on the passenger seat of your pickup truck, a white motor dory is approaching from the West. A single figure is on board, and you give a friendly honk of the truck horn. This he returns with a casual wave as the motor dory goes beneath the bridge. The wake spreads evenly behind him in the calm water; the dory soon slows as it approaches a wall of mangroves just beyond the key where Coco View is situated.

Suddenly the engine is cut, and the figure stands. With a hand-made paddle he eases the now quiet and gliding dory to the smallest clearing at the base of the mangroves, with your eyes squinted, you can distinguish a small and unpainted wharf.

Depending on which islander you might ask, this man was going to tend his “planting grounds”, or “plantation”, or “grounds”, which was located “up in the bush”. While it is anyone’s guess exactly what he was tending, it could have been a selection of any of the following: rows of sucker trees of plantains, bananas or apple bananas, patches of watermelons or pumpkins, cassava (yuca), sweet or Irish potatoes, taroo (malanga), or mutton peppers. He might also own a good number of cattle, which he would butcher periodically and sell in town.

Wake spreads evenly behind him in the calm water.

As to which islanders farmed their property, the answer would vary according to when the question was asked. “Back in the day, it seemed almost everyone had a piece of land up in the bush that they planted. Some had big grounds, and others small grounds.” A snapshot from French Harbour in the 1970s would include those who accessed their property either by paddle or motor dory, as well as by truck or motorcycle, if you owned one then there were those who would walk from town, an empty crocus sack and a machete across their shoulder, accessing their planting grounds from an entrance to the barbed wire fences along the dirt highway.

Many a time while traveling the highway one would come across a truck or motorcycle parked along the side, abandoned while its owner worked his property. I can still picture Banegas going down the road on his motorcycle, headed to his ground, his eight or nine-year old son sitting behind him with one hand firmly around Banegas’ stomach and the other holding a green and white can of Baygon insect repellent.

There was also the islander who owned no property to tend, with Mr. Cleveland Tennyson of Pandy Town in Oak Ridge coming to mind. “Uncle Cle”, who weighed in the palms of his hands the tomatoes he sold from his paddle dory, leased a large piece of property up behind Oak Ridge Point know as Reynolds Flat. Challenges that this resourceful gentleman dealt with included salt spray coming in from the reef during windy and rough weather. The spray one year killed a considerable part of his crop that was planted too close to the shoreline. And being near town, Uncle Cle’s watermelon patch would often be raided. Having had enough of these raids, he began holding nighttime watches with a borrowed shotgun until the night the watermelon thieves again showed up. He emerged from his hiding place as the thieves, mere teenage boys, settled in to enjoy themselves. “Don’t kill us, Uncle Cle!” Far be it from him to have hurt anyone, but Uncle Cle made each of the boys eat an entire watermelon selected from the very largest in the patch. Rind, skin, seeds and all.

The shrimping season [La temporada] typically opened on the first day of July. Though some departed at dawn, other shrimp boats began leaving at midnight, one after the other. Their hulls were painted in patterns unique to the owners, colors not easily discernible in the night, But their back decks, all painted white, were ablaze in light with their outriggers spread wide.

Once passing the reef breakers to the port and starboard and with a course set at 110 to 115 degrees, the captains opened up the shrimpers’ throttles and the Cummins and Caterpillar engines roared. There was the Gulf Wave, Silver Seas, Captain Dale-O, Active, Thunderbird, Lady Val, and Lady Barbara, the last two being wood hulls. There was the Captain Carl, Three Brothers, Miss Verna, Sheena Mc and Geechee Boy, the last being a fiberglass hull. And there were so many others, with each becoming a world on to its own for the next three months, the standard length of the first trip of a shrimping season.

In the 1980s, there were some 75 to 80 shrimpers.

On board a shrimper, in addition to the captain, there are the winchman, the cook, and the regular crew. Given the large hauls of shrimp at the start of the season, the regular crew can comprise eight to ten men. At the start of the season, many boats work around the clock, fishing offshore at night and along the beaches during daytime, with the captain holding the 6 a.m. to noon and 6 p.m. to midnight watches, while the winchman holds the other two. The winchman is responsible for the maintenance of the nets and a myriad of other duties. The cook is paramount, preparing two meals per day.

The shrimping grounds are vast and are nowhere near the Bay Islands. Depending on where a captain wishes to spend his first night shrimping, his boat could be running continuously for twelve hours or more before the nets are put down for the first time. On a given night, well into a season, some shrimpers can be dragging the grounds off of Punta Castilla, while others are off of Punta Patuca or Caratasca. Still others are at the same time working up near Cabo Gracias a Dios, or the big open grounds west of Bogus Keys (Cayos Vivorillos) or in the vicinity of The Hobbies (Cayos Cojones).

The names of certain individuals, female and male, tended to spread across all of the islands. While others were admired and known best only close to home. A small sampling of my own list, albeit Roatan-centric, would include Captain Myrl Hyde, Mister Cleveland Tennyson, Doctor Sturdy Woods, Miss Edith McNab, Miss America De La Cruz, Miss Francis Arch, and Captain James Ray McNab. Some of their names would have been more widely known, while not so with others. Of these, I had the privilege to know the first six personally, to varying degrees, whether meeting them first as a child or as an adult. I never met Captain Ray, who passed away in 1959 at the age of 42 from cirrhosis of the liver. I was told about him from an early age and to this day still talk about him.

James Ray McNab was born in French Harbour on 12 April 1917. He was known to everyone as Ray, a common practice being to call someone by their middle name. As I understand, his mother gave birth to twins. The other was still born while Ray’s right arm was crippled in some way. In each full-body photo I have seen of him, his right hand is placed deep in his pant pocket or is otherwise hidden from the camera. A black and white photo of he and his first wife, Nona, comes to mind. They are both young and smiling, he dressed in khakis and she in a summer dress, standing on the seaside in French Harbour with tall coconut trees rising behind. Ray is holding Nona tightly with his hidden right arm.

Ray lost Nona in April 1944 when she was 26 years old, in a boating accident off of Brick Bay. He was then 27 and became a single father of two young girls and a four-year-old boy named Scott. Some years later, after Ray had remarried, he hand crafted a sailboat for Scott that was outfitted with cloth sails. Once, the sailboat took a few quick strong gusts of wind down in the Wash, behind where the Buccaneer Inn was later built. It crossed the reef line, kept heading South and was soon out of Scott’s sight. The following day, a ‘Carib Craft’ arrived in French Harbour to sell fresh bread kind: bunches of green bananas and plantains, cassava, cocoas, breadfruit. The sailboat was placed in the bow of the massive, unpainted dory; the Carib fellows had happen on it somewhere between Roatan and Hog Islands. The Carib Craft itself had come out of one of the Garifuna towns to the East of La Ceiba.

Ray was a farmer who worked grounds “up in the bush”. There is a story of his finding someone he knew stealing a bunch of plantains from his ground. This friend had not been doing well and that day went home with the bunch of plantains as well as a half-sack of freshly dug cassava. He was also a preacher, who traveled on horseback along footpaths to preach to congregants in settlements on the North Side of Roatan that were too small to have full time preachers. He named his favorite horse “Trigger”. Through it all, Ray was a seaman. In the 1950s he Captained the Roatan-built wood hull the “Edith Mc”, a cargo boat perhaps 60 feet in length. A long-standing run of the Edith Mc would be French Harbour to Oak Ridge and Coxen Hole before heading over to La Ceiba. The return trip would visit the same island ports, concluding in French Harbour, its home port. On one of these return trips from La Ceiba, off of Utila on a Friday afternoon, the Edith Mc came across a man paddling a dory towards Roatan. Ray and the crew knew the man, who was from Utila. When within earshot of him, Ray yelled where he was headed. “Captain Ray”, the man hollered back, “I’m headed to Coxen Hole to listen to ‘Bye Bye Love”. Word was spreading that the Everly Brothers’ song had made its way to the juke box that was in the capital of the Bay Islands.

Dark clouds loom over French Cay, threatening a squall as they move westward toward French Harbour. Walking west on the coral marl street parallel to the reef line, you notice the road occasionally meanders before gradually curving to the right near The Hill. As you continue, the impending squall begins to envelop your hometown from the east. Just before the street starts its curve, the squall overtakes you.

You dash for the nearest shelter – beneath Ms. Vera McLaughlin’s house, which is perched on short stilts. From this vantage point, you gain a clearer view and hear the commotion across the street, a scene that had piqued your interest just before the squall sent you running for cover.

The front yard of the house across the street is blanketed with halved coconuts – hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, each neatly split and mostly facing the sun. In a frantic rush, three adults and two children, all familiar faces, are flipping the coconuts to protect the white meat from the rain. You realize they could use some help, especially the two children from The Hill, who were likely enlisted by the adults simply because they were nearby.

The coconut meat was dried to create copra.

If you had been noticed earlier, you’d already be turning coconuts. But since you weren’t, you find yourself torn: return to the rain to help, or stay comfortably sheltered. Just then, Ms. Vera’s dog, Blanco, starts growling menacingly from her front porch above you. Sensing your presence, Blanco has made the decision for you. Off you go to turn coconuts.

The coconut meat was dried to create copra. Once it had lost all its moisture, shriveled, and turned a purplish color, the meat was scooped out of the shell and placed into large crocus sacks. These filled sacks were then stored in a dry location, typically a specialized ‘copra house,’ to await shipment.

Copra typically made its way to the United States, where it was processed into various products. It was shipped directly to the U.S. via large freighters operating out of La Ceiba. Copra from Roatan would be transported to La Ceiba on one of the small freight boats that regularly traveled to and from the mainland.

Two or three of these ‘copra operations’ were located in French Harbour, with additional facilities in some of the towns on Roatan’s south shore. Local harvesters would husk the coconuts and transport them by dory directly to the processing locations. In French Harbour, coconuts were primarily harvested from the ‘coconut walks’ on the Cays west of the town, including areas along the Lagoon, French Cay, and Ezekiel’s Cay—the latter of which has been the site of the Fantasy Island Beach Resort since the 1980s.

At times, for one of the French Harbour operations, coconuts were also collected at designated points around Roatan by a small motorboat making regular stops. The enduring image of this boat anchored off West Bay Beach, as locals paddled their dories out to it with coconuts to sell, has stayed with me for years.