The Story of South Eleuthera

by Larry Smith

ROCK SOUND: Other than sun, sand and sea, South Eleuthera's attractions are rather modest - a landlocked ocean hole where you can feed the snappers, an 87-year-old fig tree spreading along the highway, and a historic Methodist manse.

The Mission House dates back two centuries, and has been meticulously restored as a museum and community centre. The work has been driven by Peter MacClean (a retired British helicopter pilot who looks every bit the part of a Methodist minister) and his wife Pat (who sold land on Eleuthera in the 1950s for Sir Sidney Oakes). A foundation, led by Chandra Sands (daughter of the late Rock Sound entrepeneur Albert Sands), has raised over half a million dollars to support the project.

Plans to operate this two-storey frame house on the waterfront are now being drafted with the help of the Antiquities Corporation. The Mission has seen a lot of history in its time, and among the items featured in its museum will be obsolete medical equipment. That's because in 1942 the building became a clinic, courtesy of American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis.

Davis was chairman of Alcoa, the world's biggest producer of aluminium. He was also one of the famous 'three tycoons' who triple-handedly created Eleuthera's 20th century economy. The other two were a New England clothmaker named Austin Levy, and Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe.

Looking to avoid taxes and enjoy warm winters, these three were part of a wave of wealthy migrants who swept into the islands from the 1930s onward. They included mining millionaire Sir Harry Oakes who built Nassau's first airport, and Canadian beer baron E P Taylor, who developed Lyford Cay.

In fact, the flow of money was so great that the Royal Bank of Canada was moved to set up a trust company (later known as RoyWest) that pioneered tax shelters, with Arthur Vining Davis as its first president. After Davis retired from active management of Alcoa in the late 1940s, he became a land developer. And before his death in 1962, he had acquired some 30,000 acres on Eleuthera.

With fond memories of the Bahamas from his honeymoon, Austin Levy set up a dairy and poultry farm in 1936 on thousands of acres at Hatchet Bay. He took the place of a group of retired British officers who had started the original Hatchet Bay Company a decade earlier with the idea of quarrying limestone building blocks. It was this company that cut the channel from the sea to an inland lagoon, creating Hatchet Bay's hurricane-proof harbour.

Levy imported cattle from his Sherman Stock Farm in Massachusetts and supplied milk, eggs and ice cream to the Nassau market for decades. Even after he died in 1951, his plantation continued to employ hundreds and provided much of the infrastructure for nearby Alice Town. In addition to agricultural facilities, the operation featured restaurants, stores, a yacht club and a power plant.

But Hatchet Bay Farm was taken over by the government in 1975 for political reasons. And it's much-lamented closure nine years later will forever be associated with former prime minister Sir Lynden Pindling's gloating remark that state ownership had made the farm "the greatest success story in Bahamian agricultural history".

Meanwhile, Davis had developed his own employment-generating Three Tree Farm at Rock Sound, as well as a second home estate for the wealthy called the Rock Sound Club. In 1952 he wanted to build a 300-room hotel at Half Sound, but the government turned him down. So he sold out to airline pioneer Juan Trippe, who set himself up in Davis' former estate.

Perhaps more than anyone, Trippe was responsible for the development of the commercial airline industry in the 1950s and 60s. And it was Trippe who transformed South Eleuthera into a destination of choice for the glitterati of North America and Europe.

As a young man he set up an air taxi service for well-heeled New Yorkers, before moving to Florida to launch Pan American Airways. Pan Am began flying from Key West to Havana in 1927 and from Miami to Nassau in 1929 (it went belly up in 1991). Trippe went on to persuade aircraft makers to build large passenger jets to bring the cost of air travel down. And he was instrumental in Boeing's decision to develop the 747 jumbo jet in the mid 60s.

After taking over Davis' holdings on South Eleuthera, Trippe built the Cotton Bay Club in 1959 as a private "cottage colony" for his wealthy friends. He also expanded the Rock Sound airport so Pan Am jets from New York and Miami could fly in daily - the most notable achievement in airlift to an out island in Bahamian history. In fact, the Rock Sound airport had US pre-clearance privileges even before Grand Bahama.

In 1970 Trippe acquired several thousand acres at Powell Point, some 15 miles from Rock Sound, for a new resort in partnership with a big Florida land company called GAC Properties. The $35 million Cape Eleuthera Resort would be focused around a marina dredged from a salt pond, and included a clubhouse, villas, golf course, airstrip and hundreds of fully serviced homesites starting at $8,000. It opened in 1973 amid much fanfare.

At the time, GAC chairman S Haywood Wills said Cape Eleuthera was "the most thoughtfully planned resort community of its kind." As evidence, he noted that a third of the development would be "parkland" while insecticides and weed killers would be sprayed on the golf course "with great care".

The resort sponsored a massive clean-up of nearby settlements. Hundreds of gallons of paint were distributed to residents who went on a decorating frenzy, and government bigwigs were on hand to declare a public holiday.

But the excitement was short-lived. Within five years the resort was $140 million in debt. Hardly any homes had been built, and there were reports that the Pindling government was putting the screws on the owners. The demise of Cape Eleuthera marked the end of an era.

Trippe died in 1981 and the resort passed to a Saudi developer named Abdul Bougary who ran it half-heartedly for two years before shutting it down. Cotton Bay also went on the chopping block. The government closed Hatchet Bay in 1984, and Winding Bay went out of business soon after. Things were so bad that the opposition called for South Eleuthera to be declared a disaster area.

After years of negotiation a Michigan company called Landquest International stepped in to buy the Cape property for $10 million. Owned by the DeVos family, founders of the multi-billion-dollar Amway Corporation, Landquest had developed a shore facility for passing cruise ships near Bannerman town and was interested in reviving the Cape.

But the company's original plan called for a high-rise hotel and casino, which proved impossible to achieve. The agreement was cancelled by the government in 1996 amid complaints from the developers that all pieces of the puzzle were not in place. Those pieces included major infrastructure works like roads, airlift, phones and power supply.

So the Cape remained derelict until 2004 when a new heads of agreement was finalised and construction finally got underway on a scaled down version almost identical to Trippe's original concept - villas, marina, homesites, golfing and a small inn. Tough Call enjoyed a relaxing stay there a week or so ago, recalling visits of 30 years past as a writer for the Bahamas News Bureau, but there have been only 90 paying guests so far.

The marina has been completely rebuilt, with room for 200 slips and facilities for mega yachts, and there are plans to restore the golf course and re-open the airstrip. A dozen of so new villas line the marina and phone, Internet and cable TV service are about to be installed. The total investment so far is put at $85 million.

Trippe's other holdings on South Eleuthera were eventually acquired by a company headed by Nassau businessman Franklyn Wilson. In the 1990s this group sold the old Cotton Bay estate to a Colombian billionaire banker named Luis Carlos Sarmiento. He uses the resort as his private hideaway but refuses to restore the property - much to the chagrin of the remaining wealthy homeowners.

Meanwhile, Wilson is developing a new 200-acre Cotton Bay Club with the usual villas, homesites, golf course and marina. A 26,000-square-foot clubhouse was slated to open last year, but is still only 70 per cent complete. Wilson says his company is moving at a pace that it considers prudent in view of US economic trends.

Eleuthera is where the Bahamas began some four centuries ago. And the Mission House at Rock Sound has lived through two centuries of that history. It remains to be seen whether its repurposing as a museum and community centre will coincide with the beginning of a new era of prosperity.

Comments

[Virginia Balance]

loved your column in today's Trib about Eleuthera. Its a case of history repeating itself....the hotel industry there has a history of boom and bust. I always thought it would be interesting to write a paper about that and try to understand why it happens over and over again.

[Ken Lam]

The original Cotton Bay Club is owned, as you say, by Sarmiento. He and his family spend time at the old Kaiser homestead on the property, but the hotel is not being used.

There are still about a dozen homes on the rise overlooking the ocean which are owned by the wealthy families of the original purchasers like H. G. Searle, the drug manufacturer.

Since about 1000 acres of the original estate of about 300 0acres was purchased from Eleuthera Properties, only the main house was refurbished and the golf course is just discernible - everything just sits.

It is surprising because one would have thought that there was a requirement for the foreign investor to have done a development by this time.

The remainder of the property is still owned by Eleuthera Properties who are developing a portion to the north. They also retain the right to use the name Cotton Bay.

[Perry Joseph]

Excellent piece on South Eleuthera. Linked to it on my site. Missed seeing the Mission House and will check it out. Thanks.

pj / www.eleuthera-map.com

[Kimberly]

Thanks for the memories ... have linked your story to the Briland Modem messageboard.

[JB]

Interesting history, will put a link to it on the "Eleuthera Websites" page of www.eleuthera.com.

jb

[George Major]

Nice job telling this story of Eleuthera. Great historical rendition. Brings back many of the memories of my childhood in Eleuthera. A pleasure to read and compile.

[Bob Knaus]

Interesting. Compare the outcome of Mr. Davis' real estate investments in Eleuthera with the ones he made in Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, Pinecrest, and Weston.

Infrastructure and institutions do matter. The Bahamas lacks these. Caveat Emptor.

[larry smith]

Here is an account of Eleuthera's historical woes from the late Albert Sands - excerpted from a speech he gave in June, 2002:

Prior to 1939 Eleuthera was virtually a mere fishing village where farming and fishing was the order of the day. But that did not mean that the people were lazy; the people were aggressive and very ambitious. In fact, everything that happened, there were all the entrepreneurs were local, there were packing houses virtually in every community.

1939: Arthur Vining Davis, an American entrepreneur, very wealthy, Alcoa owner, steps on the scene, brought to the island by Sir Harold Christie. Davis fell in love with Eleuthera...He bought all the land there was.

Our forefathers gave up their farms, they gave up what they were doing, and went to work for Arthur Vining Davis. That’s where I think our problems began, as far as entrepreneurship was concerned.

And so Trippe came with his group and he bought the holdings of Arthur Vining Davis. And everything was going well, we had two Pam Am flights a day, one originating in, um, New York, the other in Miami, and we thought that Eleuthera had arrived.

In the process of that ’67 came along, there was a change in government, the masses came into their rights for the first time.

And then, the period of the 80’s came. And America- the American economy really went into a tailspin. everything that we had going here was being funded from over there. Nothing here was making any money...Rock Sound and South Eleuthera is virtually back to where it was when I was a child.

From 1992 I went to (the FNM) government, and begged them—I didn’t beg for anything for me, I begged for the people of Eleuthera, for the Cotton Bay Club, I begged for the government to help with that, to help the 200 people be kept employed there. And they refused.

We must now put politics behind us. PLP and FNM is done. And it is now the people of Eleuthera. Are we bold enough to rise to an occasion to do something to work together as a comprehensive force to pool our ideas in essence to pool our resources and move to the next level?

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