"Return" to Abaco Island, Bahamas

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In July, my father, my son, and I made a short three-day trip to Abaco island in the Bahamas. The trip was a personal one in that we had lived on the island (well, my son hadn't been born at the time) between 1969-1971. I wanted to revisit some of the old places we had lived at and also some of the places we used to visit.

The island arguably hasn't grown in population since our years there, but I don't know for sure. There are no industries on the island and the economy is said to subsist on second homes owned by Americans. The homes are built (employing Bahamians and Haitian immigrants,) then they hire a landscaper to clear the brush, and inevitably a caretaker is needed to look after the place when the owners are back in the States. This along with tourism keeps most people employed on the island. Abaco is a narrow island but it is 107 miles long. It is surrounded by little cays.

There is revenue from tourism and such infrastructure exists on some of the cays (i.e. little islands) off Abaco, such as Elbow Cay and Man O War cay. Walker Cay (of ESPN fishing fame) is on the Northern edge of Abaco. The Southern part of the island is virtually undeveloped.

My trip story has nothing to do with tourism. We didn't go to any of those sites. First, I have to give a little personal history, for we didn't come from the islands. This involves a little recent history of Abaco island.

My father was a sugar cane engineer working in a factory in Jamaica, where I was born. He discovered that an American company by the name of Owens-Illinois was looking for sugar cane experts for a new project to be built on Abaco island in the Bahamas. Owens Illinois through its forest products division had been cutting down trees on several Bahamian islands to be used for pulp. The Bahamian government, which at that time was still a British colony, had agreed to lease land on Grand Bahama island, Andros island, and Abaco island to this large American company. In exchange, the company would hire Bahamians and it would build roads and docks on these undeveloped lands. By the end of the 1960s, the islands had been pretty much denuded of its trees; but the loggers were careful to leave one tree standing at specified distances so the forests could regenerate every 20 years.

Here's a quote from the history of Owens-Illinois:

The company involved itself in such far-removed fields as sugar cane farming in the Bahamas and phosphate rock mining in Florida.

Basically, the company decided to grow sugar cane on Abaco island, since they had already built roads, docks, schools, and houses for their supervisory staff and employees. The idea was destined to fail and it eventually did. The limestone rock was not conducive to any high yielding crop of sugar cane.

Here's a quote from the Abaconian newspaper regarding O-I's infrastructural contributions:

The inhabitants of Abaco continued to live barely at subsistence levels until after the Second World War, when the Owens-Illinois Corporation revived the lumber business, built roads and introduced cars. An airport was built at Marsh Harbour and banks arrived. When the pulpwood operation ended in the 1960s sugar replaced it but was short lived.

This large American company even managed to lobby a 10,000-ton per year sugar quota for the Bahamas from the US Congress. Their goal was to produce 50,000 tons of sugar from the operation. A state-of-the-art factory was built and experts in the field were hired from Louisiana and Florida. My father came over as one of three shift engineers to run the plant. They dropped tons of fertilizers in the fields and managed to produce 10,000 tons their first year in 1969. The following year in 1970, they increased production to 19,000 tons, but the operation was already losing vast amounts of money. (Source: History of the Bahamas by Michael Craton.)

The company decided to shut it all down and the third year's crop went unharvested. One retired O-I employee told me that the overall loss came to $42 million (Dad's figures say $34 million.) The 200 or so employees would all have to find new jobs, and my father was put in charge of mothballing the equipment. They were hoping to be able to sell this modern factory and its equipment as a going concern, but were unable to find any serious buyers. If a large company couldn't make it work, then who could?

The Bahamas obtained independence from Britain the following year and they agreed to buy back the land formerly owned by this large American corporation. An island historian told me that the new and fledgling government accepted O-I's asking price without any counteroffer. They didn't know how to deal with a large foreign business entity and preferred to expedite their departure from the island.

No one bought the sugar mill. My father went back in 1974 to show it to some Canadian investors but there wasn't enough interest. The new Bahamian government took it over. Eventually, they sold off some of the machinery to a Columbian company, who according to island rumors sailed off with the machinery only to dump it in the ocean and return for another load. These rumor mongers believed the Columbians were just using it as a front from a major drug operation. I don't know if I believe that story.

Nothing is left at the old factory site except for some rusted cane cars (which could have been sold for some decent $) and the remains of the old office building. Here are pics of the cane cars and another one of the old office building. The road to the site was unmarked, but Dad showed me how to get there in our rented vehicle.

I can only show one pic at a time, so next post...

Edited August 12, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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Here's the old office building. Time and hurricanes and neglect have done its damage.

So that is basically all that is left of the $11 million operation.

The company had also built roads, schools, houses and a dock. Many of the roads had been used for logging, but they also built new roads for the sugar factory. They built houses for employees on two main areas: 1. Snake Cay and 2. Casuarina Point.

We lived on Snake Cay for one year (1969), whose houses had been used for the families of the loggers and we moved to Casuarina Pt which was a newer settlement built for the sugar people. Here's a pic of Casuarina Point today. The beach is still nice, and it's got a bunch of new homes. Pic is on next post.

Edited August 1, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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I've been to Abaco, Treasure Cay, Green Turtle Cay, Great Guana Cay, Hope Town, etc. a couple of times. We know a bassist/cabbie there named Lucky. He'll pick us up at the airport and take us to the package store first thing. My brother and I, along with he and his friends drink Guinness Stout out of bottles out front. They say it makes you "strong like bull... makes you fuck all night."

Interesting that you were born there. I'd be interested to hear more if you're willing to keep typing.

[connoisseur series500]

Casuarina Point, where supervisory families lived in company-owned homes. These are all new buildings. I couldn't identify any of the original homes. The beach looks the same. I swam there just about every day. It appears empty today because people were likely at work. We had the beach to ourselves on this last visit.

[connoisseur series500]

I've been to Abaco, Treasure Cay, Green Turtle Cay, Great Guana Cay, Hope Town, etc. a couple of times. We know a bassist/cabbie there named Lucky. He'll pick us up at the airport and take us to the package store first thing. My brother and I, along with he and his friends drink Guinness Stout out of bottles out front. They say it makes you "strong like bull... makes you fuck all night."

Interesting that you were born there. I'd be interested to hear more if you're willing to keep typing.

Wasn't born there (as mentioned in the first post.) Only lived there as a kid from 1969-71. I was between the age of 9-11.

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This is an interesting phenomenon typical of the Casuarina Point beach: the shore land is uneven so when the tide goes out there is an uneven elevation in the sea floor. Sandbars appear at low tide, but they are often surrounded by water, which can reach near 10 feet deep. But you can walk out to them from shore.

When the tide rushes in, the sandbars are the last to be deluged and if you are out on one farting around (like I did as a kid,) you could often find yourself "stranded" out there. You'd have to swim back in some deep water to get back to shore. As the tide completely comes in, all sandbars go underwater.

I once got trapped out on one as I was having fun and wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings. There was a large moving shadow in a channel separating me from shore. It was a shark--likely a harmless nurse shark. I waited for it to pass then dove into the deep to swim to the next sandbar.

Here's a pic taken from shore. You can see a sandbar in the distance with two people on it. This is close to the spot where I got stranded, but I think the topography has changed somewhat over the past 36 years.

Edited August 2, 2007 by connoisseur series500

[connoisseur series500]

O-I built a dock on each of the islands where they had logging operations. They owned a tug which would bring in the barge which would be loaded with logs. The barge would sail to a terminus in North Florida and unload. They built their dock on an island which was connected to Abaco by a causeway (built by the company.) They also built houses there and a school. I went to the school as a kid, and lived in one of the houses for a year before moving to Casuarina Pt.

My return to Snake Cay was a shocker. I was told that it was devastated by a hurricane in 2004, but time had wrought its share of damage as well. The houses were in neglect and fell easy prey to the hurricane. The dock still exists but is in bad shape. I'll include some pictures in another post.

I found Snake Cay to be entirely derelict. Only one house remains standing (and it was ours!) A squatter(?) now lives there and there is no power. In the heat of the day, he leaves the front door open. He was away when I first visited, and the place was empty aside from a gravid dog, which you can see to the side of the picture. On a subsequent visit, I saw him sitting in a chair to the side of the house. He shot me an expression you would likely get from one of the characters in the movie, "Deliverance." He lives alone on the island and obviously wants to keep it that way. What's a man doing driving a rental car down the unkempt road at Snake Cay?

When I took the pic, I wasn't 100% sure that it was our old house. I mean, how could ours have been the only one left standing? What were the chances? But the croton plant in the front came from another generation that was planted by my mother, and there were a few telltale palm trees situated in the right places. My mother confirmed it was our house when I showed her the pic in Florida. The house was stationed on a hill next to a cliff. I think the cliff must have sheltered it from the hurricane. The occupant has a butane tank but there is no power on Snake Cay. Rough living in the heat....

Edited August 10, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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Here's an old pic of my class at school. There were only a total of six students in my class! I was the guy at the top right.

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Now here's the school today. It was shocking. Strange to see a part of your childhood in ruins.

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The dock is in terrible shape. As a boy, the dock was full of equipment and there would always be industrial vehicles parked on it--active during the day, and parked at night. It was great fishing from the dock, as the water had been dredged to allow a barge to enter. You could look from the dock into some "deep" ocean, so you could see species of fish you normally couldn't view from land. Now the dock is rusted and falling apart. There are trees now growing in the middle of the dock! I present dock photos in the next few posts.

Here you see a hole and the water rushes in. The elevation of the dock has dropped as evidenced by the ship tie (don't know the correct word.) at the center. The gravel has dropped or been washed away.

Edited August 1, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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The remains of the dock reach out like something from the grave. It was an emotional moment for me seeing the ruins. Time passes for me and for the place.

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Here I move to the edge of the rusted claws and take a side shot.

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Other side of the dock. Trees growing on the dock itself!

Edited August 6, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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Same side but looking towards sea.

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Shot from the same side of the dock but looking straight ahead to a channel. Those beaches are inaccessible by land; there are no roads. Dad said that he once went out on a boat on one of those beaches in 1969 and found an old shipwrecked barge. He said that the deck was approximately level with the ocean. He stepped onto the barge and checked it out. Too bad he never brought a camera.

I fancy I can see the remains of the barge in the far left of the picture. My own pics have more pixels and are larger.

Edited August 2, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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Owens-Illinois brought in a couple of railroad cars to serve as living quarters for some of the loggers who worked at Snake Cay. They sat on rails and I used to check them out as a kid. By then nobody lived in them anymore as houses had been built. Here are the train cars today at Snake Cay. The place is a graveyard!

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Old molasses vats on the dock.

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Ok, enough about that! The history of the island is intertwined with Owens-Illinois, but there are other parts of the island which have nothing to do with that history.

There was a wonderful beach to the South of the island with large waves and spectacular scenery. Whenever we visited, we were entirely alone amidst the splendor. We discovered that a developer has bought the land around the beach and plans to develop it at some point. We enquired about visiting it and were told to ignore the "keep out!" sign. The developer lives in Nassau and nobody is around. The place looks as deserted as back in our day.

There's a steep unpaved road going up to the beach, and my father started struggling in the mid-day heat. I told him to stay put as Albert and I walked on towards the beach. We seemed so alone within the vastness of the place and amidst the roaring surf. Here is a pic. of Albert walking towards the beach.

My picture doesn't do the beach justice in that it doesn't quite capture the full beauty of this place. There is a rocky island in the background and the visitor can easily see the waves beating upon it. It is breathtaking.

Edited October 9, 2008 by connoisseur series500

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Here's another shot as Albert walks farther towards the beach. There is a great sense of vastness.

And you are entirely alone amidst this vast beach.

Edited August 2, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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Right at the edge of the beach. The waves often reach 7-8ft and the shore is loud with the pounding. You can see the rocky island in the background. It's scary being alone on that beach. You wonder about the sharks or whatever, but you are scared mostly because you are a speck within this very dynamic vastness.

Once a big hotel gets planted there, folks, the magic will have disappeared. I wouldn't hold my breath though. It could take years before they start development.

Edited August 2, 2007 by connoisseur series500

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At the end of the day, we would return to our villa in Marsh Harbour, the island's capital. View from my deck chair:

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Me at the villa.

[7/4]

Enjoying the story, the photos...

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Inside the villa.

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Enjoying the story, the photos...

Thanks!