The Tribune

By ERIC WIBERG

Captain Mike Burke is legendary for his bold innovations going back to the 1960s, in which he capitalised on the number of unused classic sailing vessels and tapped into a nostalgic need. He helped create a US-Caribbean market to sail on sentimental windjammers for weeks at a time "off the beaten track". Of course, all cannot be smooth sailing. Burke’s fleet included the 135-foot tall ship Polynesian – the second in the Windjammer Cruises fleet from Miami. In January 1966, it ran aground in the Biminis with 47 passengers. They were rescued by the US Coast Guard, which sent two helicopters, and the schooner survived being pulled from "hard aground on a reef" to sail another day.

In 1920, The Tribune carried an article advertising a boat used by Pilot 1, Captain JM Brown, sitting at Rawson Square, and a "desirable tract of land at Berry Island to the East of Lighthouse", clearly using Great Stirrup Light as a reference point. The light has arable land east of it – at least 50 acres – and Whale Point Light has no land east of it; rather, only ocean as far as Nassau.

Great Stirrup Light is the middle of three prominent lights – Great Isaac to the west and Hole in the Wall to the east. It has red-and-white stripes around its stone tower. Constructed amid greenery and set a bit back from the coast, it stands 82 feet above sea level. Though the island is now mostly a marine preserve, the northern end is used by a cruise ship conglomerate, as a consequence of which the beaches resemble a cross between Amarillo, Texas, cattle pens and Penn Station, New York, on a Friday afternoon – many of the bipeds have a red-and-white striping pattern similar to lighthouses.

Built in 1862, Great Stirrup Light’s tower is 56 feet tall and active as a navigational aid and landmark, witnessing thousands of vessels a year go past, from cruise ships to Nassau, oil tankers in and out of Freeport, fishermen, container ships, recreational sailors, and many more. The cay is 268 acres, peopled by Lucayans at Great Stirrup Cay specifically, and used as a base for pirates and wreckers. Settled starting in 1815, they left behind stone structures. Confederate ships anchored off the cay in the Civil War, and the US constructed a military base in the Cold War. Norwegian Cruise Line purchased Great Stirrup Cay nearly 50 years ago and has repurposed it with a deep-water dock and the amenities its passengers pay to expect.

Great Stirrup Cay and its medium-sized lighthouse have become one of the few authentic lights – along with Ocean Cay, Paradise Island, and Eleuthera’s southernmost cape light – to be surrounded and subsumed by mass tourism. The "captive economy canned tourism" cruise ship trade built its "private island" concept around those lights, whereas in Ocean Cay and Grand Bahama, they simply erected fake lights. The ships, dumping many thousands of sunburnt bodies at a time for a few highly regulated hours, describe the light thus: "this historic lighthouse has become a popular spot for cruise ship passengers". That’s because it’s just a short walk – and even easier to look at than to walk to – from the beach.

In 1888, a New York editorial touted how British lighthouses ended almost weekly wrecks in the islands. Some argued that "government meddled with the most flourishing industry in the colony" – wrecking. There was a lot printed which was highly uncharitable towards professional wreckers. Perhaps the tone was sharpened due to the proximity of large, well-funded American wreckers in the Florida Keys, keen for a larger share. As a consequence, it’s as difficult to confirm rumours of "moon-cussers" as of folks who damage lighthouse lights. Like the Bermuda Triangle, it's impossible to prove or disprove.

In December 1925, the steamer Orizaba rescued three men employed together from a skiff which drifted in a gale-swept ocean for four days. The skiff, owned by William Brush, was hoisted aboard the ship, and they were taken to New York from north of the Bahamas. Florida’s Indian River Press in September 1972 published an article entitled "Trimaran Shipwreck". The story is of a Vero Beach cook named Don Zook, his wife Lucille and three daughters, as well as their pet dog, cat, and even a turtle. They set off for the Bahamas aboard their 24-foot trimaran sailboat Tri-Me. Disabled, adrift, and lost after many days, lost fishermen took them ashore at Walker's Cay – the northernmost of the archipelago. Then, a USCG cutter, Cape Shoalwater, took the family back across the Gulf Stream to Fort Lauderdale.

In 1956, a message from a bottle launched in Allen’s Cay, Exuma, was found at Andros and sent to the Chalmers boy who had sent it. It was discovered at the Joulter Cays by a fisherman who thought it might have whisky. This was a happy connection for them to have made. In 1965, the Miami papers reported on how six persons were rescued on a Bahamian Cay along with a wooden dog as a pet. Hurricane Betsy shipwrecked them on their boat while the Florida physician, Dr. Robert McFall, his spouse, children, and their guest were on an ill-fated cruise. Fortunately, US Coast Guard helicopters rescued them after they were stranded on Joulter Cays, 10 miles between Andros and the Berry Islands.

In 1935, twenty Bahamians, six of them women, were plucked from the passenger boat Onward by a ship named SS Seatrain. They had drifted for a perilously long two weeks after the Onward's engine broke. Towed to Miami by a rescue boat, they were then regrettably detained. The British freighter Domira wrecked off Abaco at Great Guana Cay, after which the crew were rescued when the gale abated in September 1929. A Louisiana paper in June 1920 wrote of SS Monterey rescuing the Pauline M. Cummins, whose logwood cargo and people were taken off after the ship wrecked in the Bahamas.

In 1907, a massive schooner named Thomas W. Lawson with seven masts ran aground on the Great Bahama Bank. She had a cargo of oil. Tugs were working on getting the ship spun around and off the reef. Thomas W. Lawson was the largest sailboat afloat, had a steel hull, and was on charter to Standard Oil.

The Boston Globe of 1872 spoke of wrecks in the Bahamas of the Adelaide Baker of Britain, from which 2,500 bales of cotton were salvaged; a barque named Rhea Sylva, wrecked at Mucaras Reef in the southern Bahamas; and the schooner Bethel, which was freed from the reefs and sailed to Havana with her cargo. Fast forward to 1997, and a UK-flagged ship named Merchant Patriot was 250 miles off Canaveral and north of Grand Bahama. There, the crew were rescued by a helicopter and landed at Great Abaco.

In December 1966, a baby was born just before Christmas on remote Rum Cay, whose population was barely a few dozen. Baby Boy Smith was born under a flashlight and sailcloth. A sailor's knife was used by his skipper father to cut the umbilical cord. Captain Smith had been a legal man in the US Navy when he met his wife Ytta in Denmark. She was 27 and 11 years his junior. Together they were sailing on a 116-ton sailing brigantine named Laila. After wrecking with two companions, they grabbed what food they could, and because of Ytta’s condition, had to stay put ten miles from Port Nelson. Cans of beans and rice are all they had. After five days, the child was born. They managed to boil the last gallon of water to sterilise the birth and cut the cord. Then, 24 hours later, a BASRA unit managed to find and rescue them.