This mix of whalers and pirates and castaways would ultimately teach the loyalist settlers the details of survival. It was these salty dogs that the loyalists would turn to.
Yann Martel writes in his fiction,
Butchering a turtle was hard work...It was its blood that tempted me, the "good, nutritious, salt-free drink" promised by the survival manual...I took hold of the turtle's shell and grappled with one of its back flippers. When I had a good grip, I turned it over in the water and attempted to pull it into the raft. The thing was thrashing violently...I held on to one of the turtle's back flippers with one hand and I pulled on the rope to the lifeboat with the other...I jerked the turtle in the air and brought it onto its back on the tarpaulin...{the survival manual} advised that a knife should be, "inserted into the neck" to sever the arteries and veins running through it…I jammed the knife just to the right of the turtles head, at an angle. The turtle retreated even further, favoring the side where the blade was, and suddenly shot its head forward, beak snapping at me viciously…the blood I managed to collect gave off no particular smell. I took a sip. It tasted warm and animal, if my memory is right. It’s hard to remember first impressions. I drank the blood to the last drop.
For the Abaco castaways, turtle meat was the first means to quenching hunger. The easiest thing to catch - and with some turtles weighing in at 2,000 pounds, they provided a bounty of protein. The castaways would later learn to hunt the local rodents – agoutis and hutias – big fat rat-like mammals, and to fish.
When the loyalists came, these castaway customs became their survival guide.
When the loyalists stepped foot on islands like Elbow Cay, they were shocked to find that the reports of a bountiful land of good harbors and fertile soil were completely false – they had been swindled into their lot in the Abacos. They were told that cotton grew with ease. It did, but only for a few years. The soil was such that in a few years - pests and erosion - it would quickly go bad.
Survival became a matter of tending subsistence vegetables in the shallow soil, and learning to cope with a new set of export commodities. Their first lunch - the green turtle - became prize meat, and would soon be exported to Florida and the Carolinas for its beautiful flesh.
Freshwater wells were scarce, and the loyalists figured they could build pools above their homes to collect rainwater.
That they tended to be laborers, and that their slaves were generationally tied to subtropical climates proved to be invaluable – they could build, they could repair, they could grow. They built boats and ships to compete with Boston and New York. They experimented with exporting pineapples. The same hardwoods they used for ships could be exported in their own right. They believed in cotton, but they sawed timber and picked sponges off the ocean floor.
One cup fresh lime juice, two cups simple syrup, three cups amber rum, four cups orange juice and four dashes bitters, and big brother is married. Celebrations and reunions are like beach fictions – they have a beginning and a happy end.
History, of course, like those true tales of castaways, never wraps up as neatly as the fiction it inspires, and I wanted to know more about the mysteries of early settlements of the Caribbean. The English and African American families who pitched soil here hardly left record enough to enlighten us. It’s a small history, but it’s also a colorful patchwork history with missing parts.
If only I could see for myself – if only there was a place that hasn’t changed since the eighteenth century. I guess that’s why I’m on a plane now, heading 2,000 miles south to the other side of the Caribbean Basin.
