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 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.

He was my first cousin and closest friend. I was five years older than him and recall visiting Dudley as a newborn with my mother. We came up to a small little wooden house with a lamp light burning in the room; the belief back then is that a well lit room was not good for the infant’s eyes.

My nephew Rodney Jones was born in November 1950, and these two little boys were like little brothers to me. We would often go fishing in a paddling dory. Rodney had an air rifle, and they were always shooting at crabs. I would judge who the best marksman was. They both turned out to be pretty good. Tyson McNab, the commandant in French Harbour, would hoist the Honduran flag in honor of president Carías’s birthday on March 15. Mr. Tyson McNab loved to pick DV up as a little boy. DV would stand at attention as Mr. Tyson hoisted the flag and saluted. They would take turns marching around the flag. This routine would continue for several years; DV told me this story many times laughing. He said that uncle Ty would wear him out marching then take him back home.

He was interested in carpentry work from a young age. He went to work with his uncle Homer Woods, who was the top carpenter. In 1969, I took him with me on the Mr. B to fish for lobsters. By the end of the trip, he had adapted to the lifestyle and the worked well. He was very good at it. DV could have continued to work with me to become captain on a fishing boat, but the family were more so tied to the construction business. DV decided to continue working under his Uncle Homer.

His first job as a young man was in construction of the French Harbour Yacht Club. In 1971, finished a cement house for Kern Hyde. In 1972 he built Captain Bob’s house, and then in ‘73 he built mine. These houses were the first three modern cement homes in French Harbour. DV used to call my house his model home, and would bring customers over to see it. Some of his biggest projects included Casa Warren, Fantasy Island Resort, Albert Jackson mansion (located at Fantasy Island), and Captain Mead Hyde’s Mansion. He continued to build across the island. He was known for his attention to detail and producing fine quality homes.

DV had many hobbies − shooting, volleyball, and especially fishing. He attended many fishing tournaments, the first being at Fantasy Island. He participated in most of them at West End, Utila, and Omoa. He won several of them and he was very proud of these accomplishments. In his professional life, DV went on to open a hardware store, a lumber yard, and a construction company.

His first job as a young man was in construction of the French Harbour Yacht Club.

He eventually built himself a mansion of his own. The master bedroom was bigger than the house he was born in. Rufus told me a story once where he was talking to my father about a young lady he was wanting to court. He wanted to visit her a few times to make sure he really liked her. My father (Archie) responded with − “Bullshit, if you like her, you will know it when you see her.” My father believed that you know it when you see it − love at first sight.

A few years later, Rufus was building a house in Bonacca. He was working on the roof when he looked down at the road and saw a pretty girl walking by. “A feeling hit me,” Rufus once told me. He climbed down the roof and asked his client who that girl was. By the time the sun went down, he was at her house. When he returned to French Harbour to visit he told me, “Uncle Archie really knows what he’s talking about. I am going to marry that girl primo!”

When he was ready to marry, he asked me if I could take him to get married the old fashion way − by boat to Coxen Hole. For this occasion, I obtained flags on the Hybur ship from all over the world and decorated the Miss Vangie Marilynn.

When we arrived at the dock in Coxen Hole, the comandante and a few soldiers met us there. He wanted to know what was happening, as he was new to the Island and hadn’t seen something like this before. I explained to him that this is an old Island tradition when someone gets married. We then invited him to join us for a cold beer, and became friends from that day forth. Towards the end of the night, they had a band-dance at the French Harbour Yacht Club, a party that would last all night.

Rufus had his wedding suit tailor made to fit. This wouldn’t be the last time he would wear this suit. He would continue to wear this suit for special occasions for many years. He would often brag that he is the only island man who could still fit in his wedding suit, 20 years later.

Follow the pick-up truck that is heading into French Harbour a mid-May morning in the early 1990s. Its flatbed filled with large, rolled mounds of freshly tarred shrimping nets. The pungent smell of the tar wafts through the air behind the truck as it passes Eldon’s grocery store to the right and then the Yacht Club to the left. Then at the rise just beyond, with a hill now to your left and the FUSEP office on the right, there is a clear view of the harbor below and beyond, the keys lined up to the left beyond the entrance.

The harbor is dominated by steel-hulled shrimpers docked side-by-side at wharfs lining the shore, outriggers reaching to the sky and stabilizers hanging at the tips. They are all being repaired and outfitted for the approaching shrimping season.

The shrimping industry has waned significantly in the past few decades. At its height from the late 1970s to early 1990s it dominated the island’s economy with up to 200 active vessels and six processing plants throughout the Bay Islands. And just as today the Roatan hospitality industry can trace its origins to the 1970s with establishments such as the Buccaneer Inn, the French Harbour Yacht Club, Romeo’s Restaurant, the Reef House Resort, Anthony’s Key Resort and Foster’s, so can the Roatan shrimping industry trace its origins to the early 1960s with vessels such as the ‘Lady E’, the ‘Mr. B’ and the ‘Three Brothers’.

Roatan shrimping industry traces its origins to the early 1960s.

The Lady E, named after a Ms. Estelle from Florida, was a second-hand wood hull brought down from Miami in 1962 by the Hyde family and the first shrimper in French Harbour. This family was already long active in exporting coconuts and coconut copra from Roatan to the United States on the island-built wood hull freighter the ‘Judy’, under the supervision of their patriarch Mr. Myrl Hyde.

Following on was the wood-hull Mr. B, which arrived in mid-1965. The Mr. B was named after a Mr. Burdick, and like Ms. Estelle, a Florida acquaintance of the Hyde family. Outfitted with a 43 Caterpillar engine, the Mr. B was custom-built by DESCO Marine in St. Augustine making her the first ‘brand new’ shrimper to arrive in French Harbor.

Having first hand witnessed the fledgling shrimping business that had even earlier sprung up in Bonacca – a story for another time – one of Captain Myrl’s sons, Mr. Allan Hyde, was instrumental in this means of a livelihood coming to Roatan. He eventually spent time captaining each of these two shrimpers.

The Three Brothers arrived from Tampa later in 1965. A second-hand boat, she had also been built by DESCO Marine with her previous name being the “Old Glory”. She was owned by members of the McNab family who brought her down out of Tampa and was named after Mr. Delmar McNab’s three sons: Delmar Jr., Carl and Bob McNab.

Mr. Delmar, among other enterprises, was the proprietor of the ‘McNab Store’ on French Harbour Point. The Three Brothers docked at the wharf behind the store, with Mr. Bob captaining her initially.

Special thanks to Mr. Truman Jones and Mr. Irwin Dixon of French Harbour for their kindness and congeniality in sharing their knowledge of French Harbour and Roatan.