Reef Bay, St. John

St. John has the distinction of having had two steam-powered sugar factories. One was located in the center of the island at Estate Adrian. The other was at Reef Bay.

Reef Bay is a large shallow V-shaped bay that is protected by a lot of reef, hence its name. This is a poor composite of three photos of mine. Yet still it gives a vague impression of what it looks and feels like.

Here's a better picture of it taken by Galen S. Swint.

There are three ways into Reef Bay: by boat, by hiking over the hill from Lamashur, which is on the other side of those white cliffs, or by picking up the trail-head on Center Line Road and walking down a three mile trail. It's a fabulous walk that takes you from lush tropic forest down to tropical desert. However the hike out is a brutal, long, never ending climb.

The first ruins along the trail are the remains of Josie Gut Plantation, built in the early 18th century. Farther down is Estate Par Force. Between 1721-24 it was parceled out into four separate estates, but by 1765 they had been combine into one estate called Par Force. Besides sugarcane, the rich valley was cultivated with coconut palms, bananas, fruit and citrus trees. Cattle and sheep grazed the hillsides.

In 1830, a new sugar factory was built near the beach and Par Force was abandoned. This is a picture of the ruins taken sometime after 1933. It's what my mother saw in1934 when she, her mother and one of her brothers hiked in. (As recorded in my grandmother's journal.)


This picture of mine was taken about ten years ago.

After the end of slavery in 1848 sugar production rapidly declined and in 1855 the Reef Bay factory was converted to steam power.

The steam engine was built in Glasgow, Scotland.

In 1908 a 15 year old boy was crushed in the machinery. After that it was hard to find people who would work there because they thought the factory was haunted.

In 1916 the Reef Bay factory shut down. It was the last sugar factory to closed, and brought to a final end the 200 year sugar plantation era on St. John.


For a more detailed account of the history of Reef Bay check out this excerpt from Off the Beaten Track by Gerald Singer. In it there are more pictures of the machinery used for crushing the cane and boiling the juice.

Catherineberg, St. John

Last Monday I mentioned the slave revolt of 1733. Besides the hardship of slavery there were several other causes for the up-rising. A drought was followed by a hurricane. Then came a plague of insects. These natural disasters destroyed food crops and caused famine. The slaves, hungry and restless, began running away to the bush. (They were called maroons.) In a vain attempt to keep them from running away the Danes imposed a severe slave code with punishments that included torture, branding, whipping and even death.

Among the slaves were a large group from the war-like nation of Akwamu in present day Guinea. It was they who organized the rebellion, using drums to communicate.  In the early morning hours of November 23rd,  they killed six of the seven soldiers garrisoned at the fort at Coral Bay. The one surviving soldier managed to escape to St. Thomas to spread the word.

From the fort they swept through the rest of Coral Bay and on into the interior of the island, killing whites as they went. They did not destroy the plantations as their ultimate goal was to operate them.

Which brings us, finally to Catherineberg. Built around 1718 it was one first sugar plantations on the island. It is here that the Akwamu warriors headquartered themselves.

This picture is by Sydney and Russell Poore. The rest are mine.

It's the only windmill on the island (that I know of) that has rooms beneath it.

A wonderful book that tells the full story of the revolt of 1733 is Night of the Silent Drum, by John Lorenzo Anderson. John and his wife Adrienne, first came to St. John on their honeymoon in 1935. They stayed at my grandmother's guest house at Trunk Bay. John was so taken by the history of the revolt that he spent the next 40 years researching it. He learned to read nine languages in 18th century handwriting and traveled widely to gain access to archival documents. He and Adrienne (a children's book illustrator) came to St. John every year and were close family friends. In fact, it was Adrienne who gave me my very first drawing lesson when I was about seven years old.

Annaberg, St. John

Between 1717 and 1718 the Danes colonized St. John and the first 20 planters began to grow sugarcane, cotton and other crops. By 1731, a mere 14 years later, Annaberg, which means Anna's Hill,  was under cultivation and there were over 100 other plantations on the island. There were approximately 200 whites and 1000 black slaves on the island. In 1733, there was a bloody revolt and the slaves held the island for six months. Rather than surrender, those who had not been captured, committed suicide.

By the 1800's Annaberg was one of St. John's largest producers of sugar.

Annaberg in the 1930's.

The windmill, used to crush sugarcane, is one of the tallest in the islands. It was built sometime in the 1820s or 30s. When I was kid, a family lived in it. They had built a second floor out of wood. Now-a-days the only things that live in it are the native wild honey bees.

During times when the wind was slack, they used the horse mill, which you can see in the older picture above. It is the large circular structure in the front left.

This is the boiling house, or factory building, where the sugarcane juice was boiled down.Sugar, molasses and rum were made from cane.

In the left foreground is an oven still used for demonstrations in baking bread.

See the hillside behind the building? Imagine it completely cleared and terraced. All the work, done by slaves.

The oven.

Inside the factory building were big iron vats where the juice was boiled. One of the vats is still in place. The fires beneath the vats were kept stoked from the other side of the wall.

This is where the fires were.

The sugar put into a cup of tea by a European lady, the molasses used by English cooks, the rum sipped by Aristocratic gentlemen, came from places like Annaberg.

One of the most interesting aspects of Annaberg is the little "dungeon." It's not a dark, dank hole, just a very small room built off behind the windmill. It has  a window through which a good breeze usually blows. But on its plastered walls, are etchings, probably carved into the plaster by slaves.

This one shows how Annaberg may once have looked. The buildings have wooden second stories.




                                                                                                                                                 

This barely visible etching, is of a sailing ship. Perhaps it's a trade ship, perhaps it's like one that brought slaves to the islands. It looks to me like that's a British Union Jack flying from the rigging.

What these drawings do for me is bring home with clarity that once a real live person was in that space.

In the 1950s a pair of manacles still hung from the wall. I saw them.

Below the horse mill, there are also remnants of slave huts. Besides working the plantation all day, slaves had to provide some portion of their own food on land set aside for them to cultivate.

It was thankless, back-breaking work.






Yet behind it all was the view of the ocean, the sky and the British Virgin Islands.

I have long wondered, sweating in the heat of a summer's day, if a slave did not look out across Sir Francis Drake Channel and breathe in the beauty.

When England freed its slaves, I just know, those still in bondage at Annaberg looked with longing across this channel at the island of Tortola.

Some left behind families and risked their lives to escape to freedom.


Happy Martin Luther King Day.

Hassel Island

What kind of history could a 135 acre island possible have? In this picture it's the little island at right center, in front of the other little island, which is Water Island. Doesn't look like much, does it? In fact, until 1865 it wasn't an island at all, but a peninsula. At that time the Danes cut through and dredged the low lying area called Haulover, which you can see at the far right, that connected it to St. Thomas thus improving water circulation in the harbor proper.

One source claims that in 1607, Captain John Smith, founder of Jamestown, stopped at St. Thomas to collect water, wood and turtles. But I can't confirm that.

In 1671 Denmark successfully colonized St. Thomas and by 1680 the port of Charlotte Amalie was a thriving free trade hub. During the American Revolution, powder, arms and shot were sent to the Continental Army by way of St. Thomas.

To protect the harbor, Prince Frederik's Battery was built in 1788. It sits right at the entrance to the harbor. During the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark was friends with the "Little General." St. Thomas was such an important port that the British occupied Hassel Island, once between 1801-02 and again between 1806-15. Both times they expanded or build new batteries and forts. During the British occupation, Prince Frederik's Battery, acquired its present name, Fort Willoughby.

Ft. Willoughby from the sea.












                                                                 
Ft. Willoughby looking towards the docks.

Iron rings, embedded in the stonework, were used to anchor cannons.

My friend, Margaret, waving. Hi Margaret!

I love the brick and stone work.



















The British built the Garrison House which was also used for storing munitions. It's construction is unique.














It's the only building I know of whose wooden windows are covered in copper.

Margaret and me in front of the Garrison House.









Between 1840-70, The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, selected St. Thomas as its hub of operations and Hassle Island was the main office. Today that would be very like Atlanta being the hub for Delta. Coal was shipped to St. Thomas and steamships plying the waters between Europe, the United States, and South America had a convenient place to stop and refuel. Coal was also distributed to the U. S. from here.

Hassel Island also became a place where ships could be refit, serviced and otherwise overhauled. By 1844 St. Thomas Marine opened. In later years it was sold and became the Creque Marine Slipway. Ships were pulled out of the water using one of the longest steam-rail systems in the world.

A lot of hard work has gone into stabilizing and clearing away the brush from marina buildings.














Between 1915-32 the U. S. Navy used the island as a navel station. They also leased the marina and used it to service minesweepers and barges.

When I was growing up, there was a small hotel on the island called The Royal Mail Inn. It made for a pleasant evening to be ferried across the harbor and dine on the terrace with a view of the twinkling lights of the city reflected on the water. Royal Mail Inn is thought to be the inspiration for Herman Wouk's very funny novel, Don't Stop the Carnival, which he wrote during the time that he lived on St. Thomas.

In 1978 the National Park bought most of the island. Though the building were neglected for many long years, there is now a very concerted effort to preserve the history of this tiny speck of land.

If you are interested in further information or looking at other pictures, check out the St. Thomas Historical Trust.

A Rocky Island Picture Show - Part One

I believe I can trace my love of rocks directly to our move to St. John when I was five years old.

The rocks in the islands are beautiful. They are mostly volcanic in origin, which means they are very hard. In fact the islands are made up of some of the hardest rock in the world. It's so hard diamond drill bits break. It's so hard they call it, ahem...blue bitch. It's so hard that houses are sometimes built around boulders that cannot be blasted away. As in this picture.


At our guest house at Lille Maho there was a three foot tall somewhat triangular shaped rock around which was build our back porch. It stood defiantly between the bedrooms and bathrooms and was the cause of many night-time bruised shins and busted toes, not to mention choice curse words.

The rocks in the islands are filled with different colors, textures. They can be various shades of blue, which is where blue bitch gets its name. They can be veined with quartz. They can be rusty orange, evidence of iron in their blood. They can be grey or black. Each has its own shape.

This is a typical stacked stone wall. It is several hundred years old, built during the slave days.


















Here's the windmill at Annaberg on St. John. When I was little a family actually lived in it. There was second floor made wood.

This is the outside wall of boiling house at Annaberg, where sugar cane juice was boiled down to make sugar. Side products were molasses and rum. You can see yellow and orange brick. They came from Europe as ballast on the sailing ships. The arched "holes" are where the fires were built.


This is inside the boiling house. That round thing in the center is one of the iron boiling pots. Under it is one of those holes where the fires were. Look at all those rocks! Each one placed there by the hands of slaves.

The next three pictures are taken at the Pissarro Building on St. Thomas. I like to imagine Camille as boy running through this particular alleyway, seeing these colors, which later translated and his wonderful ability to capture color and light in his paintings. I like to think it all started here, with these rocks and bricks. Truth be told, the walls were probably plastered when he was a kid in the 1830s and 40s.

This last picture was taken at the Old Stone Farm House, now a restaurant. Through the window you can see my sister being served by a waiter. Originally is was a dairy farm. Cows were milked where she is sitting. This dairy farm goes back to Danish times and was still in operation when I was growing up. My sister went to school with the owner's daughter. They were classmates. The building is several hundred years old.

I have many pictures of stone buildings. These are just a few examples.

My next post will be about particular rocks, rocks that have names, rocks that have stories.