The chances are very good that captain and crew kept their feet on the shrimper that entire time. This characteristic can be displayed in the reaction I once heard from an islander to Nicole Kidman’s character in the movie “Dead Calm,” as she jumped off a sailboat for a pleasure swim in the middle of a deep blue. “What on earth is that woman doing, man?” he exclaimed, aghast and even a bit appalled. I dare say that there was no jumping off the shrimp boats. No taking of pleasant afternoon swims out on the shrimp grounds for our captain and his crew, no sir.

Something else that islanders have had a deep respect for is ghosts, or rather, “duppies.” Speak to any islander above a certain age and chances are quite good that she, or he will have a duppy story to tell you about. I grew up in French Harbour hearing about these duppies. The stories I’ve heard about more recently have a sort of time stamp on them. They seem to have taken hold of the island imagination up to and including the 1980s.

Of course, this is only my point of view and I’d be happy to be mistaken. One good friend said: “Duppy stories were common when there was little, or no electricity on Roatan. You just don’t hear new ones anymore. People saw things, and they just did not have an explanation for what they saw. More likely than not, they did not go and investigate any further what they had seen, either.”

Duppy stories were common when there was little, or no electricity.

Here are a few stories of Duppies that were circulated back in the day. There was a kind lady who lived in Oak Ridge, who from her front porch one day, in broad daylight, saw a headless man standing at the corner of her neighbor’s picket fence. The next day, while a friend was visiting her; the friend’s daughter came rushing into the house, looking for her mother and very upset and afraid. The friend’s daughter confirmed that she had seen the headless man as well.

Then there was the woman who would catch rides in passenger cars and buses between French Harbour and Coxen Hole in the 1970s. While en route one way, or the other, she would simply appear as a passenger. The driver would look back and, there she was, calmly claiming her seat.

In another duppy tale, sometime in the 1950s, two teenage sisters were paddling their dory back home to Oak Ridge after spending the day in Diamond Rock. At dusk they were nearing Fiddler’s Bight, not far from home. Suddenly, they saw a dark object hovering above the water top and coming in through the Fiddler’s Bight channel heading straight towards them.

There object did not have a discernible shape, though most near to a circle, and the sisters could hear voices coming from it but could not understand what was being said. They began paddling as fast as they could to shore, to “Uncle Emmet’s” house in Fiddler’s Bight. The object steadily gained on them and just as it was about to overtake their dory, vanished.

There is another Duppy story about a fellow who had passed out in his paddle dory and had drifted into this patch of mangroves late one night. Several islanders went to the man and rustled him awake. They brought him to a house and asked what had happened. “Well,” he said, coming slowly around, “I was paddling down the creek and this giant woman suddenly appears. She was standing with one foot on each side of the creek. She grabbed the paddle right out of my hand and beat me senseless over the head with it. My head still hurting, but thank God I’m still living.”

Sink boat at Tulum.

Dixon Cove Is Home To Two Most Photographs Wrecks In The Caribbean

Tulum rests in the channel entrance to Dixon Cove, the biggest tonnage harbor in Honduras, just a stone’s throw from Harris Stamp Cay, a hundred meters west of Mahogany Bay Cruise Ship Terminal, and two hundred meters from Galaxy Wave Ferry Terminal.

Tulum’s story goes back to 1979 when Roatan was a little known luscious green island.  Islander Luey McLaughlin was at work as one of the managers at Anthony’s Key Resort [AKR] when he spotted a vessel in distress. Tulum was on her way from Puerto Cortez to the Dominican Republic, she was loaded top to bottom with pine lumber and leaning heavy to her side. “The locals were jumping in, fishing out all the lumber that was floating,” says Julio Galindo, who was also an AKR manager at the time.

“I drove to Allan Hyde as he had a boat capable of towing such a big vessel,” said McLaughlin. There were no phones on the island and driving to deliver a message was the quickest way to communicate in a situation like this.

“She was leaning very heavy,” remembers Shawn Hyde who was a teenager at the time of the incident. Shawn is a son of Allan Hyde, who ended up salvaging Tulum. Capt. Denny Jones went out with one of Allan Hyde’s shrimp boats and towed Tulum to Coxen Hole harbor. There she remained for many months before being towed to French Harbour.

In the 1980s and 1990s most of the paint rusted away

Tulum’s cargo of Honduran pine lumber was unloaded in French Harbour and sold on the mainland. The money was put into an escrow account to pay for salvage and other claims. Some people say that the Tulum’s owners botched an insurance scam and that the captain just opened the wrong ballast valves.

“A bad storm was on its way and it was decided to tow Tulum to a safe harbor in Dixon Cove,” said McLaughlin. Back then Dixon Cove was a secluded place, filled with mangrove with almost no one living there. “There was nothing here, just mangroves.”  The towing operation got complicated and the boat drifted onto the reef. “The way she sunk caused no hazard as far as entrance to the harbor,” said McLaughlin. “The Honduran Naval came and discharged the bunker fuel in her tank.” Once the bunker fuel was drained the ship no longer caused a danger to the reef or waters.

A couple of years later, US Navy special forces came to see if it was worth it for them to practice salvage operations on Tulum. The early 1980s was the time of the Nicaraguan Contra war and the US military was running many covert operations out of Honduras. “The hull was already fractured and they decided against it,” said McLaughlin. Ultimately, the Navy Seals did  their training with a boat named Wendy that was floated from Coxen Hole and towed away into deep waters south of the island.

In the 1980s and 1990s most of the paint rusted away and by the early 2000s a hull was still visible and its metal crane still standing high. One could swim inside the hull like it was a gothic cathedral. The hull bent and collapsed under its own weight around 2006. “If people didn’t cut the hull up for scrap metal she would still be there,” said Shawn Hyde. A few times over the years locals boarded Tulum to salvage scrap metal for resale.

The strongest part of the ship, and the part most resistant to salt water, storms, and scavengers,  was the engine.  It remains intact, still visible to passengers entering Dixon Cove.