Bahama Pundit

The Once and Future Community of Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands

by Larry Smith

GREAT HARBOUR CAY, the Berry Islands -- "I call it the knowing. I know what's going to happen," 58-year-old Craig Wells confided to me from beneath a raggedy straw hat at the dilapidated beach bar here, just across from the airport terminal. 

"I knew someone was coming to meet me today because I saw the spider last night."

Craig is the son of one of the first real estate salesmen brought to the island by Great Harbour Cay developer Lou Chesler in the halcyon years of this once spectacular resort community. He arrived at the age of 16 with his father, a Long Islander who passed away in the 1980s - at about the same time that the development failed. But Craig never left.

When he is not spearfishing, or playing petanque at the beach bar, Craig whittles away the time at Harold Christie's original 1960s beach house, an appropriately rustic shack set in a grove of tall casuarinas that are spectacularly adorned with the flotsam and jetsam of years of eclectic beach combing.

It was arch realtor Christie who introduced Chesler to the Berry Islands after the Canadian entrepeneur fell out with Freeport founder Wallace Groves. In 1960 Chesler was a successful land developer brought in by Groves to spearhead resort activities on Grand Bahama. 

But according to architect Peter Barratt, Freeport's retired town planner, Groves and Chesler didn't get on, and in the mid-1960s Chesler received a $17 million payout and began searching for other opportunities.

"I remember him storming out of a meeting with Groves late one Saturday morning after they had a falling out," Barratt told me. "Chesler made a packet in Freeport and with the spare cash decided to invest it back in the islands."

Meanwhile, Christie had been busily acquiring property ever since the 1930s, becoming the most successful land promoter in the country. In fact, he was at least partly responsible for almost every major development that took place in the Bahamas until his death in 1973 on a European promotional tour.

The Berry Islands had been sparsely settled by freed slaves after 1835. Great Harbour Cay is the most northerly and the largest of these cays, and Christie had acquired most of it by the time Chesler was looking for something to do with his money.

Aside from the tiny Bullock's Harbour settlement there was nothing on the seven-mile-long island when Chesler bought it, except an airstrip that Christie had built to fly in prospects. Chesler master-planned the entire resort community - golf course, clubhouse, airport, marina, beach and sailing club, villas, home lots, roads and utilities.

Lighthouse Point and the History of South Eleuthera

by Larry Smith

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

The Methodist Mission House dates back two centuries, and has been meticulously restored as a museum and community centre. A foundation, led by Chandra Sands (daughter of the late Rock Sound entrepeneur Albert Sands), raised over half a million dollars to support the project.

The Mission has seen a lot of history in its time. Among the items featured in its museum are obsolete medical equipment. That's because in 1942 the building became a community clinic, courtesy of American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis.

According to Albert Sands, in a 2002 speech, Eleuthera survived on small-scale farming and fishing before 1939 "when Arthur Vining Davis stepped onto the scene, introduced to the island by Sir Harold Christie. He bought all the land there was, and our forefathers went to work for him."

Christie’s Oil Slick

by Simon

Referring to their twin island-nation’s oil wealth, some Trinidadians and Tobagonians liked to brag, “Oil don’t spoil.”  It may not spoil in the ground.  But the potential to spoil rotten, some politicians, public officials and others is legend.

Speaking ahead of the gambling referendum In January, Bahamas Faith Ministries International President Dr. Myles Munroe sounded this dire warning:

“Any government pressured by a small lobby group such as the gaming bosses will inevitably produce corruption.  And if this referendum goes through we will never have a pure government again.” 

Bahamaislandsinfo.com further reported: “He [Dr. Munroe] also stated that the motivation of the referendum of the governing authority seems to be the surrender to the powers with money.  In other words he said that the government cannot rightly govern because they will owe allegiance to the few and not to the citizenry or the people of The Bahamas.”

The pastor’s warning is noteworthy.  The nature and role of leadership have been central themes of Dr. Munroe’s ministry.  The quality of leadership at various levels of society will be pivotal in the debate on oil exploration.  

On Taxes, Education and Government Waste

April is tax return month in the US - and here in the Bahamas we have just embarked on the road to the proposed introduction of a value-added tax on goods and services before the next general election. This will begin a process of raising government revenue from around 19 per cent of GDP to some 23 per cent.

Most people who think about these things accept that the country could do with more revenue to invest in essentials like infrastructure development, training, and healthcare. But they also see a big problem with demanding more taxes while we continue on our present course. 

The danger is that those extra taxes will go down the same monstrous drain hole of political boondoggles like Bahamasair, ZNS and BEC, as well as pay for extra perks and benefits for the political class and their cronies. And in the end, we will be left no better off than we are now.

To make the point crystal clear (for those unfamiliar with the term), a boondoggle is a project that is considered a useless waste of time and money, yet is often continued for external political reasons. And a boondoggle can exist for a very long time, either because the failure is not widely recognised or because those responsible have ulterior motives.

The fear of government waste and boondoggles is hardly misplaced. The three state corporations alone, mentioned earlier, offer more than enough evidence over many decades.

Agriculture and BS in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Opening the newspaper this week I was confronted with a huge load of BS.

American food store operator Sandy Schaefer (who closed his loss-making Robin Hood outlet on Harrold Road just a year ago), is now on a mission to re-open in the same location under a new name.

That in itself would be curious enough, but there's more. Schaeffer says his new store will be able to cut food prices by 20 to 60 per cent, due to his new purchasing contacts in the US combined with "vertical control" of his supply chain.

What does the latter mean? Well, Schaeffer is pursuing a $1.5 billion agricultural development on Andros, that he says will make the Bahamas self-sufficient in an entire range of foodstuffs, including meat. The project will supposedly generate $2 billion in revenue and employ some 10,000 people.

This is reminiscent of a 2008 proposal by developer Tony Joudi to grow corn on hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the Bahamas. He wanted to clear our remaining forests so we could make ethanol to run our sport utility vehicles on our over-congested roads.

And you may recall the proposal three years ago to hand over 5,000 acres of prime land on Abaco to the Chinese to grow vegetables, fruit and livestock while operating a cannery, processing plant and abattoir. A Chinese team actually visited the site back then, but nothing has come of it so far.

A few years earlier, someone suggested a cock-eyed scheme to grow rice in the brackish mangrove wetlands of Andros. And believe it or not, that idea has recently resurfaced - along with Cuban experts said to be working with the government to set up another farming school in the Big Yard.

Fishermen Confront Defence Force Over Poaching in Bahamian Waters

by Larry Smith

A Bahamian delegation returns to the Dominican Republic next week for more talks on a bilateral agreement to address illegal fishing. And the government is about to approve a $200 million investment in new patrol boats and port facilities for the Defence Force.

These were the two big take-aways from a meeting with fishermen held at the Coral Harbour Defence Force base last Friday.

Besides fishermen, wholesalers and marines, the attendees included National Security Minister Bernard Nottage, Marine Resources Director Michael Braynan, and Chet Neymour of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ministers Fred Mitchell and Alfred Gray failed to show up.

The meeting was the result of a growing fear among fishermen that poaching is out of control, with Bahamians risking violent confrontation with Dominican fishermen whenever they go to sea.

Hemingway Legacy Brings Bimini Into Focus

by Larry Smith

Later this month, Ernest Hemingway's grandson, John, a 52-year-old writer from Montreal, will take part in a fishing tournament sponsored by the Bimini Big Game Resort & Marina, 

Founded in 1955 by Bahamian entrepeneur Neville Stuart, the Big Game Club (as it was originally known) was NOT one of the places frequented by Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s when Bimini was his second home.

Back then, Stuart was a fuel salesman for the West India Oil Refining Company, and Bimini was one of his preferred stopovers. It was Hemingway who persuaded him to acquire a Prohibition-era bar called the Fountain of Youth and offer accommodation to anglers. He called it the Anchors Aweigh Hotel.

After the Second World War, Stuart began organising fishing tournaments, and operated the island's iconic mailboat - the Bimini Gal, which sank in 1972. In 1955 he built the Big Game Club, whose marina was the sportfishing headquarters of the Bahamas for years.

After Stuart sold out to the Bacardi family in 1969, the property changed hands several times. Following major renovations, it re-opened two years ago as part of the Bimini Bay development. Stuart, often hailed as the "father of Bimini", died in 1987.

It is a measure of just how much Bimini has changed that Hemingway will share the fishing spotlight at the Big Game Resort this month with Playboy model Shawn Dillon - a blonde from Sarasota, Florida.

While Dillon poses for tacky pictures, Hemingway will write an online essay for Sport Fishing Magazine's website about the history of big-game fishing in Bimini, accompanied by photo galleries. It is something he is familiar with - having represented the family legacy in Bimini many times over the years.

Seven Reasons to Vote NO on Web Shops!

by Simon

There has been considerable confusion surrounding next week’s referendum, which was postponed from last year because of a lack of good and proper process.  Besides the confusion created by the incompetence associated with conducting the poll, there remain many questions of ethics and policy about the two questions.

There are various compelling reasons to Vote NO on the question of legalizing web shops, seven of which are offered in this week’s column, and which readers may wish to pass on to others. 

The overriding argument is that a national lottery is in the better interest of the Bahamian people, while legalizing web shops is not in the national interest.

Bahamians to Vote on Home-Grown Gambling Industry

by Larry Smith

For some, this whole gambling referendum controversy is a storm in a tea pot, a mountain from a molehill, a monumental waste of money, time and energy, and so much ado about nothing.

"No matter what you do in the Bahamas, people are gonna find something wrong with it," said one of those I surveyed. "This is a simple matter of individual choice - we should be able to do what we want, within reason. It's just like the nonsense they spouted about Sunday shopping.

"Maybe we shouldn't have let web shops proliferate, but we did and that's the reality now. Try to close them and they will set up a system where you can gamble on your phone. Their assets are outside the jurisdiction, and they are very sophisticated."

As for the question of public information and transparency, "Colorado recently voted to legalise marijuana, but are only now setting up a task force to figure out how to regulate it. Why spend time and effort on that in advance?"

The Bahamas Faces The Devil's Excrement

by Larry Smith

The Bahamas National Trust featured an unusual public presentation last week - on the subject of oil exploration and transportation. 

It is a theme that has all but vanished from public view in recent months, as we try to focus on the blurred gambling issues, but former College of The Bahamas geography lecturer Neil Sealey neatly brought it back into perspective.

A Bahamian who was born in the historic British naval town of Portsmouth, Sealey was an officer in the merchant marine from 1957 to 1964, working on cargo and passenger ships operated by the British India Steamship Navigation Company, once the world's largest merchant fleet. 

One of the vessels Sealey sailed on was the Ellenga, a 48,000-ton crude oil tanker chartered to British Petroleum. "Virtually all the tanker trade was from the Gulf to Mediterranean ports or the UK," Sealey told me after the presentation. "We did an occasional trip to the US, and sometimes picked up oil in the eastern Mediterranean - at Syrian or Lebanese ports."

After leaving the navy, Sealey completed a graduate course in geography at the University of London and began teaching, joining the COB in 1979. He has published several text books, and was part of the team that formulated the Bahamas General Certificate of Education curriculum in the early 1990s.

"Just like every other tanker back then," Sealey said, "the Ellenga's tanks were cleaned out regularly with high pressure hoses, and the oil, water and sludge was pumped over the stern. This produced most of the tar balls found on beaches around the world. It was not until the 1970s that new techniques were introduced and oil washings kept onboard to be discharged ashore at the next port."