Blaze Consumes Large Portion of Fantasy Island Resort

Wilmer Guerrero, Roatan’s fire chief, said getting water to Ezekiel Cay, where the hotel is located, was difficult because the wooden bridge leading there could not support heavy water trucks. The hotel opened in 1989, and the 250-foot wooden bridge could not support the 50,000-pound weight of a fire truck carrying 3,000 gallons of water.

At the time of the fire, Fantasy Island was hosting about 60 guests. While guests were safely evacuated to nearby hotels, some lost personal items and documents.

The fire spread because of the high heat and the highly flammable wooden structure of the hotel resort. The buildings formed one continuous structure that allowed the fire to spread with little impediment.

Almost half of the resort was destroyed.

The wind blew from east to west, engulfing the hotel’s wooden structure. The recently renovated lobby, reception area, dining area, kitchen, convention center and discotheque were all consumed by the fire. Also, 36 of the 108 rooms at Fantasy Island were destroyed. In the end, almost half of the resort was destroyed.

The eastern wing of the hotel was spared thanks to heavy machinery. A heavy digger demolished part of the hotel, creating space between the building already on fire and the hotel rooms to the east.

According to Elvin Canales, chief of Fire Department Company B in Dixon Cove, about 900 meters of 2.5-inch water hose was connected to cisterns on the main island. The hotel used two excavators to destroy part of the building so the fire would not spread to the eastern side of the hotel. “Airport firefighters provided the hoses,” Canales said.

The firefighters also placed their only floating water pump, a Kawasaki FJ180V, inside the Fantasy Island swimming pool. Pumping at a rate of 260 gallons of water per minute, the pump was eventually damaged by the intense heat generated by the fire.

There were several devastating fires on Roatan in the past three years. According to Canales, the Fantasy Island fire, alongside the 2024 Roatan Public Hospital fire, are the largest structure fires in Roatan in the 21st century. The French Harbour Hill neighborhood suffered a fire that destroyed 25 to 30 homes in 1990. The Agua Azul packing plant also was destroyed by two fires.

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.

Robert McNab, along with his wife, Margret Crawford, immigrated to Cape Gracias a Dios on the northeast coast of Honduras. They arrived in 1835 from Edinburgh, Scotland. The English had a settlement on the cape, and there was a fort manned by British soldiers. A few settlers also tried to make a living there.

While there, Robert McNab heard about the Bay Islands to the west and decided to relocate there. The archipelago was beginning to attract British subjects from the Cayman Islands and beyond. When his party reached Roatan, they settled on one of the three cays inside the French Harbour channel.

There is an interesting account of the McNabs from a few years later. In 1840, an Englishman named Thomas Young, an employee of the British Central America Land Company, was on his way to Black River. His objective was to establish an English colony on the Mosquito Coast of Honduras. En route to Black River, Mr. Young’s schooner encountered a problem with the rudder and had to seek help in French Harbour.

Thus the town of French Harbour was started.

Mr. Young states in his writings that a Scotsman with a large family was the only person living there. The Scotsman that Mr. Young refers to in his writings can only be Robert McNab. Young describes the family as well-established in French Harbour. Since the Scotsman was a boat builder by trade, he repaired the schooner for Mr. Young. Mr. Young’s account states that the family was in the process of building a small schooner to trade with Belize, the Cayman Islands and other ports.

Around this time, the Jones family also settled in the town. The two island families began to marry into each other. Thus, the town of French Harbour was founded. Curiously, no one seems to know for sure why the town was called French Harbour, since it was settled by Scots. There is an old, commonly heard story that two Frenchmen were the first people to live there, and thus the place became known as French Harbour.

Robert and Margaret had a total of seven children: five boys and two girls. From 1840 to the present day, descendants of Robert McNab and Margaret Crawford have owned and operated all types of boats. They owned commercial fishing boats, such as shrimp trawlers, lobster boats, and conch boats, as well as general cargo vessels, freighters and, lastly, passenger ferries.

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.

Mrs. Anita’s Tough Life Full of Struggle

Her parents moved to Oak Ridge and that is where Mrs. Anita went to five grades of school. Mrs. Anita spoke Spanish at her home, but even today she still prefers speaking Spanish and her English is burdened with a heavy accent.

When she was 18 she met her future husband – Mr. William Nixon. “We met at a dance in French Harbour,” remembers Mrs. Anita. A year later the couple had a wedding. There were cookie and candies and Mrs. Anita had a glass of wine to toast. That was the only alcohol she had in her life.

Mrs. Anita life included many people addicted to alcohol and nicotine. Her husband worked hard doing carpentry, farming and fishing, but he also drunk quite a bit. This made getting ahead for the family difficult. It also created a poor example for some of their children. These addictions have fallowed the family through generations and she had seen her children and grandchildren succumb to vices. It has not been an easy life for Mrs. Anita or her family.

We met at a dance in French Harbour.

Mrs. Anita’s family moved three times in her life. These were big, life changing events, more memorable for her than hurricanes that battered French Harbour. In 1971 Mrs. Anita moved with her 12 children to a French Harbor house close to the cemetery. Yet again, in 1993 she and her six grown children moved to a lot in Los Fuertes.

Mrs. Anita lives on a modest compound that has several wooden houses that belong to her children and grand children. At 96 she is the oldest person in Los Fuertes. Mrs. Anita dresses and washes herself; she walks to her plastic chair to see the people walking in front of her property.

She is a religious lady and above her bed there is a picture of Sacred Heart of Jesus. Mrs. Anita is Catholic and used to go to church well into her 90s. Now her wheelchair doesn’t allow her such a trip but the Catholic nuns, Franciscan Sisters of Immaculate Conception, have a convent in Los Fuertes and check on Mrs. Anita form time to time.

Today four of Mrs. Anita’s 12 children survive. She has seven grand children and 13 great grand children. Her advocate in the family compound is her granddaughter Rosita Janet Nixon. Mrs. Rosita was brought up by her grandmother and thinks of Mrs. Anita as her mother.

Allan finished high school in Orlando, Florida first and studied engineering from Caterpillar in Tampa. The young Allan returned home to Roatan to work with his dad in his growing business. They built a bigger boat in 1958 and named her M/V Judy. The boat was built to run coconuts from the Bay Islands to the USA.

Allan’s uncle, Hersel Elwin, also had a boat, which he later turned control over to Allan to operate. Allan named this boat the Altear and put it to work running coconuts to Miami. On one of his trips picking up coconuts in Bonacca, he saw a beautiful girl named Yvette Kirkconnell. He decided it was time for him to get a wife – not long thereafter, couple were married.

At that time, the first shrimp boats had arrived from the USA and were operating out of Bonacca. Allan saw this as a new business opportunity, and in June 1963 he brought the first Roatan shrimp boat named Lady E to French Harbour.

Two years later, the three Hyde brothers purchased a second boat named Mr. B. The three brothers purchased a few more shrimp boats, and Allan decided it was time to build their seafood packing plant. They broke ground in 1968, and the building was due to open for operations in September 1969.

His strength was not only physical but was from within.

Unfortunately, a few days before the scheduled opening, Hurricane Francelia hit the Bay Islands on September 1, 1969, and destroyed the nearly- ready packing plant. The day after the hurricane, I accompanied Allan as he walked around and assessed the wreckage that was left. With tears in his eyes, he said to me: “Truman, the only thing I can do is to start all over again and rebuild.” As I looked at him, I realized that his strength was not only physical but was from within, the strength of determination and resilience. The seafood packing plant was rebuilt, and a year later, in 1970, it opened. At the height of the seafood industry in Roatan, he employed about three hundred people.

Allan Hyde was the pioneer who started the seafood business in Roatan. The industry was our largest employer for many years.

Allan’s accomplishments spanned a broad range. The Hyde family brought the first refrigerated ship to the Bay Islands to transport frozen seafood to the USA. This was the beginning of what is now Hybur and Hyde Shipping. Today, the companies operate a fleet of container ships that sail from Florida to four countries in the Western Caribbean.

Allan brought the first well drilling equipment to Roatan to drill deep wells, enabling the island to have a more reliable water supply. Before that, the population relied on rainwater cisterns, shallow wells, and gullies for their water supply. After drilling some personal wells, he asked for donations to install windmills to operate the wells around the island. At the time, the road to Flowers Bay was so bad that he had to walk barefoot in knee-deep mud to get to the area where the well was to be drilled.

Allan donated free electricity for many years to operate the well for the town of French Harbour. He also owned a small bulldozer and maintained the road to French Harbour whenever it got washed out from heavy rains, ensuring that it always remained drivable.

For many years, he was instrumental in providing 24-hour electricity to the town of French Harbour. Later on, during the presidential term of Rafael Leonardo Callejas, he was instrumental in getting island-wide 24-hour electricity generated with the installation of RECO.

He went on to become mayor of Roatan, and a congressman for the Bay Islands. While serving in these roles, he tried hard to get many projects approved that would modernize the islands. This was key in bringing in the first cruise ships to Roatan. To accomplish this, he took several Honduran politicians to Cozumel, Mexico, and Grand Cayman at his own expense, aiming to impress upon them the need to develop the islands for tourism. He told me that if you asked a politician something, you might get it, but if you demonstrated it to them, you stood a better chance of getting it accomplished.

Allan was the driving force of the National Party in the Bay Islands, where he met all of the incoming presidents. It started with General Oswaldo López, and he continued lifelong relations with many of these men. These relationships had lead directly to getting a modern airport and cruise ship dock built in Roatan during the presidency of Leonardo Rafael Callejas.

One of Allan’s employees, Sammy Gayle, started calling Allan ‘The Colonel’ back in 1963. I asked Sammy why he called him that. Sammy replied that whatever Allan set out to do, he accomplished. I, along with many of his friends, continued to call Allan ‘The Colonel’ throughout his life.

Allan Hyde passed away in December 2023, and during his lifetime he was truly a patriot of Roatan. He accomplished many things that we enjoy and take for granted. He left some big shoes to fill, and I hope that in the future we will have many more Roatan patriots like him – men of vision and determination who work to make their lives and our communities a better place to live.

He ate some of the food she left out for him and went to his room to get his passport, but couldn’t find it. He began to search the room, and eventually found where his wife had hidden it. She did not want him to go.

When Mr. Cleary arrived in French Harbour, Mr. Jackson was still asleep. His companion Victoria Jones did not want Cleary to wake him up, as she did not want him to go on the trip either. Darwin had been up all-night drinking and was frustrated with the many delays he was experiencing Cleary Jones woke Darwin up anyway and they left and boarded the Night Hawk. By 5pm, the entire crew was present for departure: Darwin Jackson, Daniel Gómez, Cleary Jones, Roy Bodden, Felix Bodden, Dick Dixon, Sam Collins, Charles Hyde, Arlenton Godfrey, Nathan McKenzie and an American Scott Harris.

A Hybur ship sailed from French Harbor to Belize on Monday evening, December 20. When they arrived Tuesday morning, Captain Willie Elwin Inquired about the Night Hawk and was told she never docked. He called Captain Myrl Hyde in French Harbor to contact Albert Jackson and let him know that something was wrong. The Night Hawk was not in Belize. A search was organized, which included planes that flew between Roatan and the Belize Cays, but nothing was seen or found.

A few days later, some 50-gallon drums were found drifting ashore on Utila. One of the drums had the initials E.C., which stood for Evans Cooper. He owned a store in Oakridge and had sent drums to buy Kerosene in Belize on the Night Hawk. On inspection, you could see that the drums had been on fire. All kinds of rumors swirled around. One theory was that in the rush to sail, the stove fell into the sea while it was still connected. Perhaps the fuel line was not connected properly to the gasoline engine, and it either caused a fire or an explosion.

Some 50-gallon drums were found drifting ashore on Utila.

When the Night Hawk disappeared, I was in Nicaragua, shrimping at the time. When I got back home in April of 1972, the rumors about what happened were still the main topic of conversation in the small town of French Harbor. I decided to see what I could find out about what happened for myself.

I went to visit a friend, Mrs. Iva Whittaker, whom I had known since I was a child. Our families had been friends for generations. She lived on Big Bight on the North side of Roatan, on a hill with an unobstructed view of the ocean. As it got dark, she was in her yard making a fire to deter sandflies. She saw a flash on the horizon, and a fire that burned for a while. She was home alone, so no alarm was made. Big Bight was very isolated at that time, and I believed what she told me.

My theory is that when Ida saw the flash, around sunset, the men on the Night Hawk would have likely been making coffee. When they lit the stove, it exploded, causing the fire to spread very quickly. This spread instantly to the engine room, where the fuel lines and gasoline were located. This caused an even bigger explosion, which was the Flash that Ida saw, followed by the fire.

Other rumors were that they were hijacked, and the boat set ablaze. There were reports that the crew had been seen in Cuba. The Night Hawk and crew met their fate that night about ten miles north of Big Bight off the North side of Roatan.

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).

By Truman Jones

Captain Scott navigated numerous ports across the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, the Isles of Pines, Roatan, Havana, Key West, Tampa, Mobile, Cozumel, and Belize.

During his frequent visits to French Harbour, he crossed paths with Mary McNab, a descendant of one of the pioneering families in the area. Captain Scott gained recognition as one of the foremost schooner captains in the Caribbean during this era.

In 1903, Captain Scott and Mary McNab joined in matrimony. Then, on October 15, 1904, they welcomed their first child, a lovely, blonde-haired girl named Selma Hellen Scott, who would later become my mother. Captain Scott made a pivotal decision to establish French Harbour as his primary home port.

Within French Harbour, he undertook the construction of a three-story residence complete with a dock adjacent to the Harbour. The first floor served as storage for the cedar lumber he had transported all the way from Mobile, Alabama. Captain Scott, alongside Captain William C. Borden, earned recognition for their significant contributions in supplying the lumber that went into building many of the homes throughout the Bay Islands.

Tragedy struck the schooner Maggie G Williams.

In 1907, another girl was born, Leila May Scott. William C. Jones, a businessman in French Harbour, owned a store and a schooner. He offered Captain Scott a job on the schooner. By 1910, yet another girl was born, Edna P. Scott. It was at this point that Captain Scott decided to inform William to seek another captain, as he desired to stay closer to his family. Captain Scott, in collaboration with his cousin, acquired a schooner of their own in Mobile, Alabama.

Captain Scott assumed command of the newly acquired schooner in July 1911. Earlier, in February 1911, he had handed over the reins of the schooner Maggie G Williams to its new captain. However, due to illness from Malaria, the designated captain couldn’t embark on the voyage. The owner then sought out Captain Scott and requested him to undertake the favor of sailing the schooner on one final journey. Captain Scott accepted the task.

All went well in the beginning, but in May, tragedy struck the schooner Maggie G Williams. Departing from Key West with Captain Scott and ten other sailors aboard, they vanished without a trace. Captain Scott was just a few months shy of his 30th birthday.

In my opinion, as a captain myself, the weather in Florida during May contributed to the tragic incident. In May, these waters can be prone to sudden, monstrous storms that pop up out of nowhere. These storms can produce water spouts and tornadoes, and create winds upwards of 70 mph. I firmly believe it was a storm that claimed the lives of Maggie G. Williams, Captain Scott, and the ten sailors, consigning them to a sailor’s watery grave.

As I stood on the porch of my home in Brick Bay, I watched the ship carrying my grandfather’s headstone enter the French Harbour channel. The sun was shining her rays onto the ship from just above the horizon. I thought to myself: “Captain Scott, you finally made it back to your home port, on the other side of the sea that you sailed across so many times in 112 years.”

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.