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.

Ninety Years Old and Vibrant as Ever

Miss Vida was born in Port Royal on July 30, 1929 and raised on Calabash Bight Cay, with her parents and four other siblings. Her father, Mr. Haldane Greenwood, married her mother Nina Ebanks of Oak Ridge Cay and worked as a captain on a boat that ran between Roatan and Belize.

The family did not have much, but her dad made sure there was food in the kitchen. “Dad would bring home sacks of flour and other foods, but what we liked most was the jars of stewed plums,” remembers Miss Vida.

She did not do much playing but had fun none the less. “We would all bathe in the sea on Saturdays, after we finished our chores,” she remembers. “Mother would take us to cake sales where there was live music with someone playing the accordion and another playing the guitar.”

Miss Vida remembers Christmas with fond memories: “My dad would put some rapadura (block off brown sugar cane) and pine skin in a drum and let it sit for a week before it was ready; that was our Christmas drink. Each of us got a glassful, and Christmas was done,” she said. Her father passed away when she was eight: “My mother washed and sewed clothes to take care of usand the family helped with whatever they could.”

After the birth of her first child, Miss Greenwood went to work as a housekeeper and cook on Oak Ridge Point making 20 Lempiras a month. “I had to paddle from Calabash Bight Cay to Oak Ridge Point to get to work,” she says, “The wind would be so strong sometimes that it would take the paddle out of my hands.”

‘I lived this long because I was an obedient child’

In all, Miss Vida had seven children and has outlived two of her three daughters and one of her four sons. While Miss Vida moved to Lucy Point 11 years ago after her home in Calabash Bight burned down, her children moved away to Bonnaca and La Ceiba. She still prefers the quietness of the place that saw her grew-up. “I don’t like living here, it’s too noisy,” she protested with a frown and a chuckle.

On most days she gets up at 5 am, washes her clothes, cooks and sweeps her yard. By 7pm she is ready for bed. “I don’t need anyone to mind me, maybe someone to help me clean the house and do the dishes but that’s it,” Miss Vida said emphatically.

Miss Vida was baptized in the 80s and is a member of the Oak Ridge Chapel Church on Oak Ridge Cay. “The Bible says that baptism doesn’t save you, it makes the world see that you are not the person you used to be,” she says with assurance.

“I lived this long because I was an obedient child, the Bible also says that. If mama told us we could not go somewhere, we could not go,” she says. “Kids now a day are not obedient. If you tell them not to do something, they do it anyway.”

The grandmother of 27 and great-grandmother of 46 seems to be in good health with her only complaints being her declining eyesight, periodic bouts of weak spells and headaches.

Miss Greenwood never married and has no regrets. “Life is what you make of it, sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, but you keep on living and doing what it is you do,” she says in a calm and gentle voice.

Roatan started out as a self-sufficient island around 5,000-7,000 BC. There were no industries to speak of and the Paya Indians grew their own food and had enough fish to never worry about hunger. The Mayan traders would sail in their canoes to bring them cacao beans and some metal tools to trade for dried fish, shells, and pottery.

Then in the 1580s the island become a hub of the ‘pillage industry.’ Hundreds of pirates lived here and careened their boats in preparation for raids on the Spanish ships carrying silver and goods from nearby Trujillo and Puerto Bello. That industry came crashing down in 1650, and the Paya were deported by the Spanish to Rio Dulce, leaving the island unpopulated for almost a century-and-a-half.

As slavery was abolished in the British Empire, hundreds of Cayman islanders came to Roatan to begin their lives anew. It took another 140 years of quiet, self-sustaining life before the coconut and banana fruit industry motivated islanders to plant thousands of trees and to sell the fruit to Standard Fruit company ships visiting the island. As that banana boom wound down in the 1960s, the shrimp and lobster industry arrived on Roatan. There were lucrative contracts with Red Lobster plenty of jobs and stressful shrimp-boat loans from Honduran banks to pay.

That fishing industry lasted until about the early 2010s when cheaper, farmed raised shrimp drove down the price of wild shrimp and the lobsters “got smaller” and harder to catch.

The tourism industry on the island began with dive resorts such as Anthony’s Key Resort and Coco View springing up in the 1970s. The sailing industry, created courtesy to Reagan era tax shelters, discovered the island in 1980s. Brick Bay Resort or CSY (Caribbean Sailing Yacht) was hopping and bopping with beautiful sailing vessels. The tax shelters went away and so did the sailboats.

Drug smuggling industry had discovered Roatan in early 1980’s.

The construction industry has been a growing employer on the island since the first bulldozer was shipped to the island in 1970s. There are now a dozen construction companies tearing down hills, filling in gullies, and constructing metal and cement buildings all over the island. The construction industry is perhaps the main driver of migration to the island form mainland Honduras. If you have a heart beat and two hands you can get a job on a Roatan construction site.

The drug smuggling industry had discovered Roatan in early 1980s, just as the Iran Contra cocaine smuggling operation was winding up to the deep state kabaal dispatched CIA Et al to move cocaine to the waterfront condos of Miami and street corners of south LA. The industry brought employment, money, addiction and violence to Roatan.

The smuggling spiked in 2009 right after the coup against president Mel Zelaya. While the ‘War on drugs’ continues, so do the smuggling operations that supply millions of US and Canadian cocaine addicts. At least Roatan’s international airport has gotten too busy to bring in drug planes as it did six or seven years ago.

After the first cruise ship visited Roatan on September 5, 1989, there was no turning back. The Ocean Spirit was the biggest cruise ship in the world: it was nearly 500 feet long, weighed 20,000 tons and brought in 360 passengers, a fraction of the 7,000 passenger behemoths that are bound for Roatan visits currently. On the horizon there is the possibility of a third cruise ship dock in Port Royal.

There is yet another industry player eyeing the island: all-inclusive hotels, much less focused on diving. Sandals, Wyndham, Hilton, and Inter Continental are all said to be exploring possibilities on the island and development is inevitable. This growth will likely require expansion of the Roatan’s international airport leading to additional filling in of the reef. Roatan appears to be, yet again, meeting the supply for others’ addictions at its own expense: European addiction to gold, American addiction to cocaine, and American addiction to cheap, all-you can-eat, holidaying.

Eastern Wind

Roatan is a perfect place to practice wind sports: sailing, windsurfing and kiteboarding and Paya Bay is now a small Mecca for kiteboarders. After a July 23 session at the Kiteboard Roatan launched in 2013: Dave Stanko, Ryan Stanko, Grandma, Selina Solorzano, Vikkie Collins, Randal Hernandez, Nessa Pandy, Brian Stanko, guests. (Photo by Chris Berg)

Boxing Pros

Roatanians are natural boxers, but while there is plenty of talent, until recently there were few ways of tapping into it. The shining stars of Roatan boxing made their debut at West Bay’s Paradise Beach Villas events center on July 7 against Alexis Arguello boxing school and Rufo Telles Boxing school from Masaya, Nicaragua. After the main event: Phillip Schneider, Toni Grayson, Danny Ewing, Jaden Ewing, Clement Heath, guest, Carlos Santos, Orlen Forbes.

More than Mango Creek

Some out the islands best kept treasures are on the east side… weay east. On June 19 a group of Texans headed to Port Royal to explore the Mango Creek Lodge and environs. After a delicious Mexican themed lunch, walking a suspended bridge and playing in the freshwater creek the gang headed out back west. Ready to board the Mango Creek Express: Jenny Khan, Sara Khan, Dr. Fareed Khan, Oswaldo Khan, Asad Khan, Tanya Khan, Dr. Rubina Khan, Janie McVicker, Geri Ortiz, Tita Medina, Ellen Johnson, Autie McVicker, Jimbo, Manny Quiroz.