History of Dominica

Dominica is not the same place as the Dominican Republic. Dominica (dah-mah-nee-kah) is an independent country made up of a single island, located in between the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The Dominican Republic (Doh-min-ick-an) shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, several hundred miles northwest of Dominica. Dominica is 290 square miles and has a population of 72,400. It features the highest mountains in the Eastern Caribbean. It has fertile soil and plenty of rainfall, making it the “bread basket” of the Caribbean.

The first inhabitants on the island are believed to be Continue reading

Nelson’s Dockyard Museum: Part 2

Continued from yesterday: The work was grueling, the conditions were extreme, and the sailors were paid almost nothing. If the crew didn’t move fast enough, they were severely punished. One of the more common punishments was being flogged (whipped). The whip they used was called “cat-o-nine-tails,” which had one handle with 9 cords. It was kept in a canvas bag. When the cat came out of the bag, someone was getting beaten, hence the term “don’t let the cat out of the bag.” Another method of punishment was making them hang on to the top of the mast for several hours. In bad weather and rough seas, this was horrible. Another was they would tie a man to a rope and dunk him repeatedly in the water. And yet another punishment was cleaning the head (toilet). All the punishments were always public and everyone had to watch except the skeleton crew needed to keep ship moving.

There was one ship surgeon on board, and no other medical staff. If you got hurt in battle, basically the only treatment available was Continue reading

Nelson’s Dockyard Museum

Once again, we started the day with a trip to Pigeon Beach. Interestingly enough, when we arrived, the famous sailing ship “The Maltese Falcon”, one of the largest private sailing vessels in the world, was anchored in the bay. Wow. It is huge. It has a unique sail rigging that makes it distinctly recognizable. After some sun and swimming, we headed back to the boat. John was leaving today, so he got ready to go.

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We had a few hours to kill before heading over to the airport, so we went to the museum here in Nelson’s Dockyard. It is small, but incredibly interesting. Most of the Continue reading

Snorkeling and a Concert in English Harbor

Christi started the morning by scrubbing the waterline. The starboard side had little growth, but the port side had a lot of growth. The growth was fairly thin at the bow and got progressively thicker the farther back on the boat. The port aft quarter of the waterline looks like a carpet. And it didn’t want to come off. She got all the growth off the starboard side and the front half of the port side and had tackled most of the aft half before she decided to take a break. She was tired and the current was picking up. She planned to finish the water line and tackle the metal at 1600, during slack tide.

After Christi had rested for an hour, we decided to go snorkeling. There are some rocks in the southeast corner of the harbor that are supposedly a good snorkeling spot. And since we are anchored so close, it is a short swim from Kosmos.

The ground underneath the anchorage area is mostly that Posidonia grass intermixed in with another thinner, greener type of grass. Near the rocks, the grass vanishes. The rocks have no substantial growth, just small patches of coral and sponges all around. It almost looks like a vibrant reef was completely washed away in a storm and is trying to grow back, except that there is no telltale dead coral around to support our theory. What is interesting is that while the growth patches are tiny, there are lots of different kinds of species. The first photo is of yellow tube sponge. In Deshaies, they were 4 feet tall and came in both yellow and purple. The second photo is also of sponges. We are not sure what this kind is called, nor whether the two different colors are different species.

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In addition to those, we also saw Continue reading

History of Antigua and Barbuda

The country of Antigua and Barbuda is made of two main islands, Antigua and Barbuda, located about 25 miles from each other. Barbuda is a low, flat island that is 62 square miles big, with a population of about 1250. Antigua is hilly, 108 square miles big, and home to 72,000 people. Antigua also has several little satellite islands surrounding it very close to the mainland.

Remains have been found on Antigua that indicate that a hunting/gathering Amerindian people group inhabited the islands prior to the Arawaks. These remains include tools made of shell and stone that are quite different than the typical Arawak tools. Once again, we get conflicting information on Continue reading