Links of Interest:
 Dockyard
Museum
Nelsons Dockyard
Antigua Nice Ltd.
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How did it happen? Well, you see my
father, the Commander, was in the Royal Navy and the family followed his appointments,
when feasible, to be near him. In wartime, it was possible to rent unfurnished houses, but
impossible to find furnished houses. So what did we do? Well, we bought a yacht, cheap - a
beautiful 70 ft schooner of 1903 vintage.
We didn't want the yacht, nobody
did in wartime, but this lovely one, the Mollihawk, was lying in a mud berth on the Dart
and she was FURNISHED! We bought the yacht just for the knives, forks and spoons, linen
and blankets - all the things that were impossible to find, for one needed ration books to
buy them in the shops if one could. So we bought the yacht to furnish a house near
Plymouth, Devon, England.
After the war, when we two lads came out of the
services, the Commander had already started refitting Mollihawk with an idea of going back
to the West Indies where he had once patrolled the islands during the war, just as Nelson
once did. At the time, Dad was based in Bermuda and we had braved the Battle of the
Atlantic to join him there. It was amongst those islands we learnt our first seamanship
when going shopping across the Sound.
The Commander had always wanted to return to the
West Indies because of the constant trade wind, saying it was possible to get to cocktail
parties on time to any island! I said "Come on, Dad, you're always talking and we
never do anything"! That was it! We soon set sail from Cork, where we happened to be,
and calling at Cascais, Gibraltar, Tangier, the Canaries, we arrived in Barbados seven
weeks later on January 1, 1949.
We then sailed up the islands to
Antigua arriving at St. John's on Feb 8th. Here we spent a month, my father interviewing
big time
businessmen hoping to find jobs for his sons. They were very pessimistic, as the sugar
industry had started to run down, the workers beginning to realise they were being
exploited too much. There was even a years series of strikes.
So on March 9th at 4:30 pm we first came to
alongside the inner wharf at the old 1745 Naval Dockyard, (Nelson's Dockyard, English
Harbour) little knowing we would be spending the rest of our lives there!
The first thing we did was a big
refit on the grassy deserted wharfs. Then we picked up shingles wind strewn over the
dockyard to fix the roof of the old Commissioner's Room & Paymaster's House in which
we squatted to make a shoreside home.
The people were very poor and later
at English Harbour Mrs. Nicholson gave bread to hungry children. She became very popular
and even to this day the Nicholson family are still thought well of in English Harbour. I
suppose also because we had created a new industry for Antigua, thus creating new jobs
after the demise of sugar.
One day, when refitting after the
ocean voyage alongside the deserted wharfs, where there were only goats grazing amongst
the ruins, a rich American from the newly established Mill Reef Club said "Gee, what
a lovely schooner, you wouldn't take us for a sail down islands, would you?"
Well, that's how it all started.
From then on, charters snowballed. First Dad and one son went along and left the
other to look after Mum in the Pay Office, then the day came when the sons went sailing
alone. All the time we kept in touch on 2527 kz with a surplus American tank transceiver,
with dials all marked in Russian, as they had been made to support "Aid for
Russia" during the war.
One day, a visiting American
yachtsman left his yacht with us to operate, and an Englishman sent an air ticket for me
to fetch the 84 ft schooner "Freelance" of 1908 vintage from the Mediterranean.
My crew consisted of five girls and two men. So after arrival each of us had a yacht to go
chartering on!
There were two hurricanes in 1950, so when the
Governor of the Leewards was visiting hurricane refugees in the Officer's Quarters, he saw
this lovely schooner lying alongside and he knew that she had been taking charters down
islands. Amongst all the destruction he saw a "small ray of hope amid the
despair". And so an idea was born... "Why should the old buildings not be used
again for sailing ships, though for yachts rather than men-'o-war? Why should the Dockyard
not become a memorial to the great deeds of the Royal Navy... and why should it not become
a tourist resort?"
Voluntarily the Commander became the first
restoration Supervisor for the Society of Friends of English Harbour, but contrary to
legend, the Nicholsons did not restore English Harbour, they simply made it come alive -
something that helped restoration.
I swallowed the anchor after I married my
charterer's daughter (1957) and my brother Rodney, married (1956) Julie, a
young lady off the brigantine (Irving Johnson's) "Yankee" that had just
circumnavigated. She'd been round the whole world and not seen a man like Rodney! And so
we got spliced, settled down.
continued... |
CARIBBEAN
CHARTERING 
