The Tribune

By ERIC WIBERG 

“A bioligically impoverished, physically controlled environment” is how Walter Goldberg described Cay Sal Bank in his 1983 Smithsonian study. First discovered in 1511 and named “the rocks”, Ponce de Leon, claimed them for Spain, until the British in the 1700s, and then The Bahamas took over control.

In 1825, Alexander von Humboldt named them “Salt Cays”, and on that cay [a] lighthouse was built in 1839. The banks are roughly 1,500 square miles, and have been studied since 1894, when the noted Swiss-American observational scientist Louis Agassiz went there. Cay Sal is administered from Bimini, 100 miles north. Among the largest atolls in the world, it boasts just under 100 islets and cays, with names like Wreck Ledge, where in 1983 the ship Cork grounded, not living up to its name. Only Great Chagos Bank in the Indian Ocean is bigger.

Think of the bank as a huge triangle of shallow water surrounded in a few places by strings of cays, empty but shallow (30-50 feet) in the middle, tip-toeing the Tropic of Cancer at the base, off to the far west of Andros and almost in sight of Cuba, and scoured by the currents of the Gulf Stream, or Straits of Florida on the Florida Keys end, the Nicholas Channel on the bottom part facing northwest Cuba and the Santarem Channel feeding into the Old Bahama Channel towards Haiti to the southeast. And all three of these channels embrace and merge into one another around the banks – they form them, as it forms them. Like a long-lost relative, their exact ownership seems unclear: The Bahamas own them, the US patrols them, and others, from smugglers to fishermen to immigrants, traverse and trespass on them. Some even recently tried their hands at drilling for minerals and oil near them.

Then there are Deadman Cays, Death Cay, and Dangerous Shoals. There are few lights, and even fewer that work. One has a sense that a great deal of smuggling had gone on in the slim shadows of these cays. Sometimes, the contraband has a heartbeat: people transitting to the US, or fish and other sealife being poached. Early in 2021, three Cubans were rescued from an islet; one of them pregnant. They lived for over a month on conch, rats, and coconuts. It is the site of the only airship fatality endured by the Allies at the hands of a German submarine, or U-boat.

Going back, we learn that the Spanish ruled the banks from 1511 to 1718. An American ship named Globe narrowly avoided being wrecked there on April 4, 1854, with a cargo of deer hides. The New York ship under Captain Leavitt was pinned onto a lee shore on Dock Rocks until tenacity, good fortune, and the assistance of cargo ships and wreckers saved her. Ships named Ada, Helen, and the wrecking schooner Sarah towed her to Nassau from Gun Cay.

This massive triangle of virtually unclaimed aquatic real estate between Andros, Cuba, and the Florida Keys is rarely in the news featuring Bahamians. More often it is for poachers, trespassers, shipwreck survivors, and the men and women who rescue them and patrol the area. Named for the Salt Cay which anchors it to the northwest, undoubtedly has had more shipwrecks than we know of. On October 20, 1956, a leader of Her Majesty’s Police in Nassau landed on Cay Sal Bank to successfully repel a dozen Cubans nationalists from laying claim to it. Lieutenant Colonel EJH Colchester-Wemyss and eight police landed via Heron aircraft. Armed and ready, they accosted Cesar Vega of Havana and his dozen marauders.

Apparently, the tipsters were construction workers employed by US investor Clarence B Moosy of Miami, who had leased a cay to develop a unique fishing lodge for wealthy anglers. My only crossing of these banks a few years ago was remarkable for its quiet and sense of desolation, except that every few hours a lumbering and very large US Coast Guard aircraft circled over.

Now we look far away in the capital of Nassau, where in February of 1925 an 83-foot yacht with ten passengers on board was pounded to pieces off Hog Cay, now Paradise Island. In 1973, the diesel-powered Deliverance grounded at the base of the Paradise Island Light with a dozen persons. North of Delaport the motorised fishing vessel Echo Bahamas sank in deep water in 1977 after foundering, followed that year by Star Trader. Three years later in the same area the diesel ship Madomar followed. The motor ship Angela Beta sank in the Tongue of the Ocean in 1989 north of Paradise Island.

In 1828, the sailing vessel Margaret Highfield went down south-east of the capital, on the White Banks after her people abandoned the 178-ton brig. West of Nassau, off Goulding Cay, the ship Rosa sank on the reefs in 1840. Further south still, a clunky steel barge named Mobro grounded on Love Beach at the Stella Maris resort, Long Island. This US-flagged waste barge or lighter will take many years to completely break down. In 1976 the trading motorship Carib Express went ashore east of Grays Settlement in central Long Island. Built in 1948 and flagged to Cayman Islands, she was 954 tons. In 1934 the 30-year-old steam ship Seven Seas Trader wrecked on Long Island’s southeastern tip. The British ship was 3,332 tons.

Out in the wide reaches of the southern passages through The Bahamas the 81-ton American sailing vessel Rescue wrecked in 1879 on the dreaded Mira Por Vos rocks opposite Castle Island after running aground. These tragic cases of loss of ships and loss of life pepper our nation’s history and are the unfortunate consequences of so many thousands of square miles of shallow seas with hazards just beneath and storms just above, and perhaps crew exhausting at trying to run leaking vessels thousands of miles, day in night, and in weather fair and foul.