Cruising Marinique

You could probably spend several months cruising Martinique, but even in the six weeks or so that we were there, you could get quite a bit of exploration in. My list of excuses for only getting to a handful of places was that we spent so long catching our breath after the crossing, plus we had to organize quite a few repairs, and then there's the heat, which tends to sap your energy. However there were a couple of things that we weren't going to miss.

The first of these is Diamond rock. There's a phrase in our cruising guide that appealed to me, which goes something like "back in the days when Europeans used to go around in wooden boats taking pot shots at each other ....", written by an American I presume. Anyway, back in those days some bright spark on the British side figured out that this rock, just around the corner from the current capital Fort de France, was a good place to station a ship. Rather than going to the hassle of building a ship and sailing it all the way over, they decided to commission the rock as a ship in the Royal Navy. So they loaded it up with canons and men and whatever else they needed and made a real nuisance of themselves to the French going about their business.

Now the fellah in charge of France at the time was not one bit pleased. Aside from the fact that all his nice ships were getting turned into match sticks, Martinique, indeed an estate in the near vicinity of Diamond rock, was home to a certain lady friend of his by the name of Josephine. Now this chap, Napolean, was renowned as one of the most proficient soldiers of his time, but unfortunately for him, naval matters were not his forte. He sent his naval head honcho, Admiral Villeneuve, off to boot the Brits off the rock, and destroy all their boats while he was at it. This latter was a tad optimistic, seeing as how the Brits had more ships and bigger ships and knew how to use them.

So Villeneuve set off, sneaked passed Nelson's ships, took back Diamond rock, and went home. Not good enough for Napoleon who wouldn't buy the "I didn't catch that other bit boss", and Villeneuve was re-dispatched to complete part 2. He met up with Nelson at a place called Trafalgar, which is down near Cadiz, and promptly got his backside kicked. However Villeneuve survived the battle, Nelson didn't.

There's not much to see these days on Diamond rock, it's a pretty steep cone shaped thing a few hundred feet tall. We sailed by pretty close to it and took a few pictures. Those above show the rock from up close, and the distance shot from the small town of St Annes across the mouth of Le Marin bay.

The second thing in Martinique that I didn't want to miss was the former capitol, St Pierre, situated temptingly at the foot of an active volcano. We were lucky when we there that the volcano top was not covered in cloud, we were told it usually is, see picture.

Now the Caribbean gets its name from the Caribe Indians, who were the people that lived there before the Europeans arrived and were fierce and noble warriors. The story goes that rather than let themselves be enslaved they fought virtually to the last man, and the final few threw themselves into volcano. Before they did they cursed the invaders calling on the mountain to erupt and destroy them. That was 1658.

Now everyone in the Caribbean takes their time, and Mt Pelée is no exception. Just shy of 250 years later, on the 8th May 1902, at 8:02 a.m. to be precise, it didn't so much erupt as explode. It wasn't as if the locals didn't get any warning. Streams of molten lava flowed down the mountain for a month or so beforehand, and seeing more than a few of their neighbours killed, about a thousand of the town's residents thought it a good idea to get out of Dodge. Amazingly, the bulk of the population, about 30,000 people, stayed put. You see, some of the merchants in town figured evacuation would be bad for business, also there was an election coming up, the Governor was fairly new to the job, and moving everyone out was going to be a real pain. So they formed a committee and let them worry about it.

Depending on whose report you read there were either one or two survivors. By all accounts Cyparis was one. Apparently he was in prison for murder, and was in a stone cell in the basement of the town gaol. He lived out his days working as a freak show for Barnum's circus in the US showing off his burn scars, presumably having been released for lack of witnesses!

The other survivor according to some accounts was a cobbler called Leon Leandre, who happened to be in his cellar.

Twelve ships anchored off the town were destroyed, one managed to get away with a few survivors. The town itself was leveled, with barely a few walls left standing.

Today St Pierre is a town of about 5,000 people, there is a museum that commemorates the tragedy with pictures before and after the eruption, and some interesting artifacts. A large brass bell, contorted, ripped and twisted takes centre stage, there are also perfect rectangles of nails and screws welded into the shape of their container by the time it was incinerated.

We also visited the capitol Fort de France where we met an interesting Kiwi called Richard and his dog Trouble. Richard had arrived in the Caribbean seven years ago crewing for "a mad Norwegian" (his words), found himself an old 9 metre steel boat, patched it up and has been living a kind of Crocodile Dundee lifestyle since, trading with the Indian natives up the Oronoco river in Venezuela, and selling on their wares to tourist shops while cruising the Caribbean. He took us through the city on a hunting/gathering mission looking for coconuts and mangos. I suppose that's just gathering really. We had better success with the mangos, finding a half dozen or so windfalls at the edge of a park. We didn't do so well at the coconuts as the park keepers had been out clearing up the area he'd previously found. Eventually we found one that wasn't rotten or previously part eaten by local wildlife on a pathway through some apartments, it had to have been a very fresh windfall, as it wasn't there when we'd passed that way fifteen minutes before. Richard then produced a machete and proceeded to chop it open for its milk. The machete was a bit on the blunt side, and the operation took quite a bit of hacking, much to the amusement of the apartments' residents watching us from their balconies. Eventually we shared first the milk, then the meat of the coconut.

We made a last visit to Le Marin for some final provisions before leaving Martinique for St Lucia. It is now early May, and coming to the end of the season in which 'urricanes 'ardly hever 'appen, it's time to get south of the hurricane zone.