.

The Most Bods Aboard
and the Least

The vessel with the most people aboard arrived from the Canary Islands in 1949. This was the 36 ft. trading sloop RUEBEN that had 56 people stuffed aboard in all stages of life, old, mature, children and pregnant women. One lady gave birth in the Dockyard's Pay Office amongst the goat excrement soon after arrival. Other lovely senoritas joyously danced flamencos accompanied by guitar music. These people were refugees from Franco's Spanish regime, and were bound for Venezuela. For their last four days there had been no food or water left. English Harbour villagers, so impoverished at the time, showed great sympathy and brought fruits and vegetables upon their heads for them. Syrians also brought clothes from their St. John's dry goods stores. Yachtsmen gave charts, but the captain
couldn't navigate so he just ticked off the islands as he sailed south!  Now for the yacht that arrived in Antigua without ANYBODY ABOARD AT ALL!

That was the 25 ft. STELLA MARIS. In 1966 she sailed from Bermuda with
John Pflieger, aged 68, ex-President of the Slocum Society aboard. He was bound, single-handed, for retirement in St. Maarten. "Stellar Maris" had hit tropical storm 'Celia' according to our calculations from the positions we saw marked on a wind chart found aboard. The staysail alone was set, with a trysail bent over the main. A guard rail that had been originally fixed to the smashed gallows was found trailing overboard, so the theory was that he may have lurched for a non-existent line, and fallen overboard.
The spooky thing is that the yacht fetched up on a reef off a house of that same name, "Stella Maris", at Hodges Bay! Later I sailed the ship round to English Harbour. The owner's son soon arrived and sold her to a yachtsman in St. Kitts.

Return to Contents