March 31, 2013
What would a Bahamian island exploration be if there were no ruins to see? And, Cat Island did not disappoint. One thing that was very cool about the Cat Island ruins was that they were very easy to find, they were right next to the road, they were in relatively good shape, and both of them that we visited had a bit of history behind them. You didn’t have to walk for miles (an exaggeration, but just barely), and then wonder if you had actually found the ruin when you saw a pile of rocks. This had been our experience throughout Exuma.
Henry Hawkins Armbrister’s Great House was very close to one of the beaches that we used to land our dinghy. The house had been built in the 1760’s by a Scotsman. This was before the Loyalists arrived, with their slaves, and established about 40 cotton and cattle estates. The great house was burned by slaves during a revolt before the slave emancipation in 1834. Note that this was about 30 years before the slaves were freed in the states. As you can see, the walls are still standing, and you can still experience the great view that the Armbristers had of the bay.
The second plantation we visited was owned by Andrew Deveaux. In 1782, the Spanish invaded Nassau with 1500 soldiers and 3500 support personnel, and the English surrendered. With a great deal of imagination, Andrew Deveaux was able to overcome 600 Spanish solders using 220 men, only 150 of them armed, and retake Nassau for the British. The attack included having many more boats in the harbor than were needed to transport the soldiers and dividing the troops into divisions and spacing them apart, giving the illusion of more men. Also, two Indian chiefs, dressed in war regalia, were introduced to the Spanish governor, and they told him that their braves were on the warpath and ready for the order to scalp the Spaniards. Deveaux was then given a grant of land by the King, to reward him for returning Nassau to the crown. The great house overlooked the water, and there are still sheep that graze the property. I assume that the same thing can be said of these sheep as some that we saw in the Virgin Islands: “no one knows who owns them, but if you try to interfere with them, you find out quickly who the owner is”. You can see that nothing will stop nature, by seeing the tree that is growing up through the house.
Cemeteries are always interesting places to visit, and we visited one close to the Deveaux house. We found the gravesites interesting, several having designs resembling cobblestones and others having stones resembling heads at one end.
Cat Island, a very cool place to visit.
Joyce
Anchored New Bight
Cat Island, Bahamas
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