a sloop story

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A Sloop Story

A Sloop Story

A nAtive dAughter returns to discover her nAuticAl pAst And its precArious future

By BoBBi MisickPhotograPhy By

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Dad says Par (Grandpa in the Turks & Caicos; pronounced pah) had a sailboat named the Flying Arrow for as long as he could remem-ber, but I would never know it. In my count-less visits to my Grandparents’ home in North I never went sailing with him. Being one of the younger granddaughters, the option wasn’t even available to me. I wasn’t allowed beyond of the stretch between Mar and Par’s house and my Aunts’ Titter and Vernince’s homes, just down the road. Besides, by the time I came around Par had long since switched to motorboats. Even more regrettable was my oblivion to the lineage of sailors that my—and many other Turks Islanders’—family belong to. As a little girl, my father would tell me that we came from Bermudian sailors who settled in the Turks & Caicos Islands to cultivate the salt industry. I accepted the information and never inquired further. It wasn’t until a recent

trip to Bermuda, where I was frequently asked, “Are you related to so-and-so Misick on island?” that I made the connection. When I was in primary school in the late ’80s and ’90s, I regretfully learned more about England’s discovery of the “new world” in my social studies classes than I did of my own country’s culture. My story is not unique to those of many young Turks & Caicos Islanders now in their 20s, raised in a country quite dif-ferent from that of their parents, with electric-ity, and American television, in the height of new development. Consequently, we face the extinction of a tradition that dates back to the 17th Century. One perhaps we never com-pletely comprehended in the first place. “As early as 1690, a large number of Bermu-dian sloops were sold to the mainland colonies,” Herman Sadler, author of Turks Islands Landfall writes in his comprehensive account of TCI set-tlement and growth. “They went to the Turks

Islands for salt to carry to all the continental colo-nies, whence they returned to Bermuda with flour, corn and general merchandise.” Today, this history’s torch is being carried by the Turks & Caicos Maritime Heritage Fed-eration, an inclusive private organization, dedicated to the increased awareness of and participation in the nautical customs exhib-ited in the islands. With the establishment of the federation and the government’s financial commitments to its success, we have wit-nessed a reestablishment of sloop building and sailing culture in recent years. “Turks and Caicos Islanders are cognizant of the fact that we have lost a significant amount of our culture and we need to do something,” TCI Minister of Education, Sports, Youth and Culture, Hon. Carlton Mills says. “We really want some-thing we can identify with.” In efforts to increase cultural awareness in the classroom, the new “Turks and Caicos Islands focused” social studies program incorporates the history of sloop building and sailing into the curriculum Mills explains. “The government is making significant finan-cial contributions to the federation.” One explanation for this reinstatement of culture is the increased time for leisure and reflection that generally accompanies prosperity.

My grandfather wAs A fisherMAn from Bottle Creek, north cAicos.



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“Today, the approximately 21,000 resi-dents [of the Turks & Caicos] are enjoying a prosperous development boom, which has allotted them time to consider their history and aspire to promote the preservation of their traditions and culture,” H. E. Ross, founder of the Maritime Heritage Foundation explains. These aspirations—and some nagging from his eldest son, who wanted to build a sloop—led Maritime Heritage Federation member James Parker Junior, to build his first boat. Better knows as JJ, this grandson and son to recog-nized sloop builders, James Parker I and James Parker II, had limited boat-building experience. He admittedly didn’t inherit his precursor’s fondness for wood, but with the guidance of established builder Pastor Samuel Goldston Wil-liams a.k.a. Pastor Gold from Bottle Creek, JJ learned what his father had known years ago. “I never wanted to build a boat,” JJ admits. “But I went to Pastor Gold and I said ‘Pastor, my son wants to build a boat.’ Pastor said, ‘if you build this boat, I’ll help you. But I ain’t gon build it for you.” Gold created the boat’s stern and transom, the vertical surface of the stern (the rear of the boat) from a small cedar tree. “I kept seeing this tree at Crystal Bay road. It took me a while before I decided to cut it down,” JJ recalls. The boat has a counter-stern transom, meaning that the bottom of the transom does not sit in the water, instead the hull, the belly of the boat, reaches out of the water to meet the transom. Under Gold’s watchful eye, the boat is slowly constructed; the stern, the kheel, the curved ribs carved out from the bend in two pieces of plywood, and finally the sides of the boat are all painstakingly assembled. Unlike the vessels that took my grandfather and his fellow sailors to the South Caicos fishing grounds to gather conch for trade or to the docks of Haiti to exchange dried conch for fruits and vegetables, JJ’s sloop will be used recreationally for racing in the various regattas around the islands. The 2007 Provo Day Regatta saw 10 boats on the water in Blue Hills. “By the end of the year there will be about 20 boats,” says Goldray Ewing, a founding member of the Maritime Heritage Federation who grew up in Wheeland, the western neighborhood of Blue Hills, known for some of the Turks & Caicos’ most notable building families. “Culture is something that is alive, it evolves” Ewing says. “We’re not using boats to work anymore, we’re using boats to race and eventually boat building will evolve.” Ewing belongs to the group of TCI builders

and sailors to adapt sloop building and sailing after its use for livelihood became obsolete. He built his first boat this year with speed and orig-inality in mind, only after being schooled by some more accomplished builders including Pastor Gold, Wing Dean—of the well-known Dean boat-building family also from Whee-land—and Albert Higgs from North Caicos. “I wanted to use the classic boat building principles, but I wanted my own style. So, I used Pastor Gold’s beautiful skills of the ribs and I used the lines from Wing’s and Albert Higgs boats. I tried to get everything that someone has on their boat and then something extra. So my stern is backwards. It’s the only boat on island with a backward stern, and the rudder is inside.” Also raised in Wheeland, Kevin “Bubba” Harvey shares a similar history to Goldray. Bubba built Sailing Paradise—a colorful beach-front plaza in Blue Hills that features island style cooking on one end and a gift shop and hair-braiding salon on the other—to commemorate his love of sailing. Anchored just off shore floats two 27-foot boats, smaller replicas of his grand-parents David and Cecilia Smith’s 36 foot vessels, the Evergreen and the Valley Stream. As children, Bubba and Goldray were accus-tomed to rowing (or scalling, as it’s termed in the islands) boats for the older fishermen heading to the West and South Caicos fishing grounds. “The only way I could go out with the bigger boats was if I would scall,” Goldray remembers. When it was time to come back we would heist a big bed sheet up with a pole. That’s how I learned about wind direction and current.” “One or two of us young boys would go on the boat to pull up the anchor while they dove for lobster and conch and we would get about $10 for that. We would also get money for packing the conch. We would have to jump on the bags to pack in the conchs,” Bubba laughs at the memory. When the young boys weren’t on the boats they were on the beach or in the fields. “If you grew up in Blue Hills you were bound to love the water,” Goldray says. “We had no television and that played a big role in the kids of yes-teryear enjoying things outdoors.” The introduction of cable TV to the Turks & Caicos Islands in the 80s—catalyzed by major developments in Provo—signified a major shift in the values and desires of the islands’ youth and by the time Bubba and Goldray graduated from high school in 1984, Provo had transformed dramatically. That same year, the all-inclusive resort Club Med

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you have to pay the export price,” explains Misick. “My daddy always told me there would be a time when we couldn’t afford conch and lobster anymore,” Gold remembers. However, back when mollusks were the poorman’s fare and electricity was non-exis-tent, islanders boiled their daily yield in their backyards on open fires. “I remember being in the field with my parents. We boiled cassava, potato and conch in one tin,” George Dean recalls. “We would get the sea grape leaves and put [the leaves] on top of the tin, and the grape leaves would keep in all the steam. When it was ready everybody got one fork and who didn’t have one fork got one sharp stick. We would stand around the pot and stick out our potato and conch.” Although many homeowners raised pigs and other livestock, meat was consumed only on special occasions, like boat launches, when entire neighborhoods would congregate in the various creeks and bays to drink, eat, and dance together. “If you were going to launch boats, what an excitement in the creek that would be,”

Turquoise opened its doors on Grace Bay, prompting the construction of large import docks and the Providenciales International Airport out of necessity. “Provo became more prominent as it became a port of entry. People from Provo didn’t have to go to Grand Turk and shop keepers on the other islands could import directly to Provo and then carry their goods over to North Caicos and other Caicos Islands (a much shorter distance than traveling to South or Grand Turk as was custom-ary),” says North Caicos native, former Chief Minister, C. Washington Misick. Prior to Provo’s growth boom, many young Turks & Caicos Islanders left the islands to seek employment in neighboring countries. “They went to the Bahamas to work in the tourism industry. They were the bartenders, the garden-ers, the kitchen help and the construction workers.” Misick says. Many Turks & Caicos Islanders with sailing experience navigated cargo boats, carrying goods around the Carib-bean and in some cases around the world. Pringle Dean, a prominent boat builder

from Wheeland, made deliveries in Venezu-ela, Peru, the United States, and the Bahamas as a boat captain. Pringle is Wing Dean’s older brother and son to esteemed sailor John Algeiron Dean. John Dean was the mail and goods carrier between Grand Turk and Provi-denciales for many years. After sailing around the Caribbean and South America, Pringle settled in the Bahamas, working as a captain in the water sports industry before returning to his native Turks & Caicos. Pastor Gold left North Caicos and set sail for work as well, transporting fuel around the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean for Shell Bahamas LTD. He eventually found himself sailing throughout Central America, the Mediteranean, and Asia working for the West India Shipping Company. By the time sailors like Pringle and Gold left home, the fishing trade had made the shift from a subsidiary level to an industrial one, driving the prices of seafood in the Turks & Caicos up dramatically. “Most fish and conch is caught for export—in order to buy it at home

“i wAnted to use the classic BoAt-Building principles, But i wAnted my own style.



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Pastor Gold remembers with enthusiasm. “There would be singing and rip-saw playing; that’s how we got that whole rake-and-scrape culture you know.” To launch the boats, the men created a pulley system, tying logs together and placing skids under the logs so that the boat could launch into the creek once it was close enough to the shore. “As they went down to the creek, people would be dancing to the natural rhythm of the logs and as the stern hit the skids, she’s launched into the water and they would announce the name while she’s in the air,” Pastor Gold recalls. “Back then the names weren’t painted on the sides like they are now.” In those days, Gold details, builders used whatever paints they could find at TIMCO, a wholesale supplier in Grand Turk, to paint their boats. “They would burn ants’ nests and take the ashes and mix it with the paint to putty the boat. And the sails would come from Haiti and we would have to sew them by hand,” he goes on. “Today sails are made in the United States. They come and you just put them on.” Back in Bottle Creek, Gold built his first boat after leaving primary school at 14. It was common for young men to leave primary school in search of a trade; high school was reserved for those who could afford to send their children to Grand Turk or abroad for schooling. “In those days none of the Caicos Islands had high schools and it was hard to send kids to Grand Turk to go to school,” he says. Gold always had an “inclina-tion to cut wood,” and he learned by apprentic-ing with his father’s cousin, Alfred Smith, sneaking out after his afternoon chores to hand “Cousin Alfred” his tools. “After school, we would have to get water from the well. We had to take the Ankle Express… that means we had to walk to the well. I would take two or three trips for water and after I was finished I used to slip out and go see Cousin Alfred. I built my first boat in my backyard,” Pastor Gold continues. “Anytime my daddy (who was a mason) would put down his saw and his hammer.” When Gold was a youngster, his family worked in the fields of a North Caicos settle-ment called Smith, north of Major Hill (pro-nounced like Madgie Hill by TC Islanders) with other local families. They not only used their boats to go fishing, but also to travel from the creek to Smith, as there were no motor vehicles or paved roads in North Caicos until the early 70s. Gold used his boat on these daily trips to Smith.

“My little boat was faster than my daddy’s boat—I used to take it out to the field so I could race him. One day we were coming back to the creek and my sisters saw the boat and named it ‘The Strange Mosquito’, because that’s what it looked like.” Around the same time, George Dean and his brother Shadrack were sailing with their father John, scalling the boat to South and West Caicos to catch conch and lobster using what George calls a “bucket glass” to see their quarry. In lieu of the modern mask, a bucket glass is a small wooden pail with glass at the bottom for divers to look through. “We would go to West Caicos for a week at a time and spend all day catching conch, beating conch, shucking conch, and placing conch on metal scaffolds. The next day we would bruise the conch and string it up to dry.” But sometimes external factors would interfere with the catch of the day. “I remember one day we went back to the scaffold and the laughing birds (seagulls) ate all the conch! That was a whole day’s work gone,” George laughs. While George and Shadrack did travel with their father to Grand Turk to trade dried conch for groceries, they never left the country on the boat to trade with Haiti—an understandable exclusion. JJ Parker remembers, “One time I went from here to Haiti and I didn’t want to go again that ocean was rude out there.” The trip to and from Haiti could take up to seven days depending on who you talk to. When the boats returned they would be laden with mangoes, pears, plantains, oranges, red peas, red and yellow corn and sweet treats. “When they were coming back from Haiti, they’d announce it on the radio [when the boats reached Grand Turk] and it was only about a day’s trip [from Grand Turk to Provo] and you would see all the local families lined up on the beach,” Bubba Harvey, a relative of the Dean’s, narrates. “When they would go to Haiti your whole life used to stop because you had no food.” “It was an experience back in those days—things were tough but we could go through the tough times. I always tell my children, ‘you come in the good days, when they got lots of food, lots of clothes and lots of shoes’,” Harvey explains. Indeed, we are living in “the good days.” In recent years, the Turks & Caicos Islands have seen a rapid growth in the tourism industry. Grace Bay Beach is now lined with resorts and upcoming condo-tels; West Caicos, uninhabited for quite some time, is the location for a new Ritz Carleton Resort; and the privately owned

”

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Dellis Cay has attracted the renowned Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the creativity of famed architects like Zaha Hadid and Shigeru Ban. Unfortunately, not unlike many other emergent Caribbean countries, the risk of losing distinc-tive components of our nation’s culture grows with the increase of an international presence. “With all the major development that has taken place, people have re-focused,” Hon. Carlton Mills explains. And in speaking with the sloop builders of the islands, one comment continued to surface. “Sailing is a part of our culture and I’m afraid it’s going to die,” says Pastor Gold. “It would be a shame to see us allow the tradition to end. It’s fading away and when this (mid-aged) generation goes it might be lost,” Pringle Dean reiterates. Turks & Caicos Islanders have long depended on oral tradition to pass down recipes from making Johnny Cakes to building sailboats. This poses a definite threat of extinction to cultures that cannot conform to the new order. There are no text books to instruct a younger generation just how to build a customary Middle Caicos

Sloop when the Forbes of Bambarra, Middle Caicos are no longer with us, or how to craft the impeccable lines perfected by North Caicos’ Albert Higgs. “It’s a privilege to have a culture as rich as ours,” Goldray Ewing emphasizes. But culture is a delicate chain, loose a link and you could be in deep water. The weakest link is young adults like me, raised with no true understanding of how rich our culture really is. Luckily, when re-structuring society, a counter-culture almost always arises—one that reminds us to hold on to the ways of the past and carry them into our future. With the support of the gov-ernment, the Maritime Heritage Foundation has taken on this responsibility, sensitizing the primary school students of the tradition through classroom visits and fieldtrips. “Most of the kids enjoy the sailing program,” Goldray says, with only two noted dissenters out of the more than 400 students they have taken to sea. “I would like to see a Junior Program like a Junior Regatta though that can sail in the morning before the regular Regat-

tas like in the Bahamas,” Bubba adds. In the midst of this cultural conversation, Herman Ross from the Federation is working on a manuscript about the Turks & Caicos Islands’ sloop building and sailing tradition. There is also an increased effort to establish boat racing as the national sport of the Turks & Caicos Islands, in an effort to extend competi-tion to the international circuit with hopes of racing the Bahamas in January 2008. These endeavors are being made in the hope that tradition will prosper, however with much different ends than 40 years ago. The desire to thrive has supplanted the need to survive. At its best, this tradition will lure tourists to explore beyond their resorts, instill sportsman-ship among the islands’ young sailors, draw a sense of pride for local craftsmanship, and rein-force the buoyant relationship between man and the local seas that was once so common. Our living sailors remind us of this bond. “I’ve been on sailboats most of my life,” Pringle Dean says. His brother George chimes in. “The sun, the water and the boat, that’s all I know.”



“i wAnted to use the classic BoAt-Building principles, But i wAnted my own style.

a sloop story

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