burden of their now dependent island possessions. Britain, which in North America had already proven its sensitivity in
managing a successful colonial policy, eliminated the separate governership of Anguilla and combined it with St. Kitts
and Nevis, governed from St. Kitts. The St. Kitts government was perfectly happy to completely ignore Anguilla, and
the island languished without any investment in roads or other infrastructure for well over a century.
In 1967, the British government unilaterally established the Associated State of St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla as an
autonomous state, independent of the mother country, just as a corporation would spin off a poorly performing
division. This decision was characteristically made without any consultation of the local populaces, it ignored social
and political realities, and it was made in spite of the avowed policy statement of St. Kitts’ Premier Bradshaw to “turn
Anguilla into a desert.”
It turns out, the British should have paid more attention to the advice of their national treasure, The Spice Girls ... "Tell
us what you want, what you really, really want." It turns out that all the Anguillans really wanted was to be left alone
and to remain a British protectorate. They rose up in protest. Led by James Ronald Webster, the “George
Washington of Anguilla,” armed rebels would open fire on the St. Kitts-manned police station at odd hours of the night
and day. After several days of unnerving (but not harming) the police in this fashion, a large crowd marched on the
station and escorted the entire force to the beaches to be ferried away. They blocked the runway with burning oil
drums to prevent reinforcements from arriving. Then, fearing a sea invasion from St. Kitts, the Anguillans decided to
make a pre-emptive strike and sent forth an expeditionary force to invade St. Kitts. The small boatload of invaders,
commanded by two American mercenaries, landed on St. Kitts, blew a hole in the ground near the police
headquarters, fired some shots, and then got themselves rounded up and taken into custody. There were no
casualties.
At that point, the Anguillans established their own island government, and the St. Kittsians decided they didn’t have
the stomach for an all-out frontal assault. Instead, Premier Bradshaw went to the Britain Colonial Office with stories
that the American Mafia was behind the rebellion and had established itself on the island, planning to launch from
there a new, Caribbean-wide crime empire. This, in itself, sounds like the plot of a DC comic book, but the always-
insightful British government was convinced to launch its own invasion to recapture Anguilla. In March, 1969, a
company of crack British marines waded ashore in a daring and successful, dawn amphibious landing, only to be met
by grazing goats, a handful of wide-eyed children, and a welcoming populace. In spite of exhaustive searching and the
convening of an independent investigatory panel, the British were unable to unearth any signs of gangsters with
nicknames like “Carib Carmine,” “Banana Fingers” or “Big Isle Louie,” nor were they able to find even one sharkskin
suit or black Cadillac on the entire island to justify the invasion.
One would think that, having been so thoroughly duped into sending forth invasion troops by this "Widespread
Mafioso Danger" hoax, the British should have been more credulous rather than blindly buying into a certain more
recent WMD fantasy ... but, as has been said, "those that fail to study history are bound to repeat it."
(Here we are, deep into the Caribbean, without our handy Bartlett's, and we can remember neither the source nor the
exact wording of this quote. We would very much appreciate it if one of our faithful readers could email this information
to us at dakotarose@skymate.com)
With the British flair for turning embarrassment into blood pudding with a resounding cry of “We meant to do that!,”
they stayed on in Anguilla, gradually replaced the occupying troops with Bobbies, built the Anguillans a road and a
decent airport and a power plant, and turned Anguilla back into a British colony. Today, Anguillans hold regular British
passports, travel freely to and within the Commonwealth and EU, pay no taxes, and are enjoying an inflow of tourist
investment capital from the U.S. The independent country of St. Kitts and Nevis doesn’t share those benefits.
How Anguilla Got its Name
“Anguilla” means “eel” in Spanish. Nobody seems to be able to tell us where that name came from. Maybe it’s in the
same tradition of the “Fat Virgin” name, when some hungry Spanish sailor spotted the island having just broken yet
another scurvy-weakened tooth on a piece of wormy hard-tack and was fantasizing about a nice, soft, no-need-to-
chew meal of pickled or stewed eel.
Anguilla Itself …
… is about 16 miles long, six miles wide, and shelters the northern coast of St. Martin across the 7-mile-wide Anguilla
Channel. The main harbor is the uncrowded Road Bay on the north coast, where we anchored in 10 feet of clear
water after an easy afternoon sail. Unlike most of the other Caribbean islands we’ve been to, Anguilla isn’t
mountainous; once you ascend the steep slopes from the water you’re on a long, flat plateau. The island is not as
developed as St. Maarten. There are a few upscale hotels and restaurants. The main town is The Valley, and there
are a few other settlements scattered about.
One of the main pastimes here is sailboat racing, in a class of boats built here on the island. The boats are about 25
feet long, completely open, built of heavily-timbered wood construction sheathed in fiberglass, with full keels. With tall
masts and booms that extend well aft of the transom, they carry immense amounts of sail for their size. We watched as
the various crews got their boats ready for a regatta. Each boat is stored on the sandy beach, well above the high
water line, propped up on sawhorses. At the appointed launch time, they drag the boat across the sand, down into the
water, where it wallows unstably until they ballast the boat by loading in rocks and chunks of concrete, passing them
out to the boat from hand-to-hand as in a bucket brigade. The rudder and mast are then stepped, the sails are
rigged, the crew climbs in, and the boat is ready to sail. They race with crews of 8 to 10, most of whom serve as
additional ballast and “rail meat.”
We were hoping to watch the race scheduled for the Monday we were there, but it was cancelled at the last minute
due to a storm that blew through. From what we’ve heard, the races tend toward the free-for-all, with boat damage
expected and taken in the spirit of fun. Sinkings are not unheard of … water over the rail easily swamps one of these
open craft … but easily remedied … all it takes is a few dives down to the submerged boat to unload the
rock/concrete ballast, and the boat floats back to the surface, ready to be bailed out and sailed again.
What We Did in Anguilla
The weather during our four days here remained mostly overcast and drizzly, with one day of strong showers. Maddy
rigged up a rain catcher and filled three five-liter drinking jugs with what Jay exclaimed was “first-class H2O!” We took
a disappointing two hour taxi tour of the island from a not-very-talkative cab driver, saw a lot but didn’t learn much.
Steve came down with the flu and spent most of his time on Dakota Rose, recovering. Jay got to swim with the
dolphins in the Dolphin Encounter, the same thing Maddy did back in Tortola. We listened to reggae until 3:00 am
blasting from the bar on the beach in our anchorage. Dianne and Maddy almost caught any number of fish. Jay
skimboarded on the beach. We anchored for a few hours off of the aptly-named Sandy Island, about a mile offshore,
for snorkeling and lunch on the beach before we set out for our return sail to St. Maarten.
Our anchorage remained uncrowded until our last day here, when the Moorings and Sunsail charter crowd moved in
and swarmed around us. Each new arrival was heralded by the sound and fury that accompanied their anchoring
process: “OK, drop-the-anchor-drop-the-anchor … full reverse, full reverse … let-out-the-chain-let-out-the-chain-let-
out-the-chain … are we set? … I think we’re set … are we dragging? …I think we might be dragging … are we
dragging? … we’re dragging! … watch out for that boat behind us! … more-chain-more-chain-more-chain-more-chain
… ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod … full forward, full forward … pull-in-the-chain-pull-in-the-chain-pull-in-the-
chain … watch out for that other boat … where’s the anchor, I can’t see where the anchor is, which way should I turn?
… OK, good job everyone, let’s try it again …” To be honest, we’ve all developed a bit of a superiority complex relative
to the bareboat charterers, sort of the same feelings we have towards the Zonies who infest Coronado in the summer.
We know that this is totally unwarranted and unfair, especially since we've put in our time on Moorings charter boats.
We have learned to be particularly wary when one of them anchors directly upwind of us. It’s particularly interesting to
listen to Jay and Maddy: “Look at that Moorings boat over there … look how sloppy their jib is, don’t they know how to
work their furler? … they haven’t even zipped their sail cover … look how many people they crammed into that dinghy,
all they have is FOUR HORSEPOWER!!”
managing a successful colonial policy, eliminated the separate governership of Anguilla and combined it with St. Kitts
and Nevis, governed from St. Kitts. The St. Kitts government was perfectly happy to completely ignore Anguilla, and
the island languished without any investment in roads or other infrastructure for well over a century.
In 1967, the British government unilaterally established the Associated State of St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla as an
autonomous state, independent of the mother country, just as a corporation would spin off a poorly performing
division. This decision was characteristically made without any consultation of the local populaces, it ignored social
and political realities, and it was made in spite of the avowed policy statement of St. Kitts’ Premier Bradshaw to “turn
Anguilla into a desert.”
It turns out, the British should have paid more attention to the advice of their national treasure, The Spice Girls ... "Tell
us what you want, what you really, really want." It turns out that all the Anguillans really wanted was to be left alone
and to remain a British protectorate. They rose up in protest. Led by James Ronald Webster, the “George
Washington of Anguilla,” armed rebels would open fire on the St. Kitts-manned police station at odd hours of the night
and day. After several days of unnerving (but not harming) the police in this fashion, a large crowd marched on the
station and escorted the entire force to the beaches to be ferried away. They blocked the runway with burning oil
drums to prevent reinforcements from arriving. Then, fearing a sea invasion from St. Kitts, the Anguillans decided to
make a pre-emptive strike and sent forth an expeditionary force to invade St. Kitts. The small boatload of invaders,
commanded by two American mercenaries, landed on St. Kitts, blew a hole in the ground near the police
headquarters, fired some shots, and then got themselves rounded up and taken into custody. There were no
casualties.
At that point, the Anguillans established their own island government, and the St. Kittsians decided they didn’t have
the stomach for an all-out frontal assault. Instead, Premier Bradshaw went to the Britain Colonial Office with stories
that the American Mafia was behind the rebellion and had established itself on the island, planning to launch from
there a new, Caribbean-wide crime empire. This, in itself, sounds like the plot of a DC comic book, but the always-
insightful British government was convinced to launch its own invasion to recapture Anguilla. In March, 1969, a
company of crack British marines waded ashore in a daring and successful, dawn amphibious landing, only to be met
by grazing goats, a handful of wide-eyed children, and a welcoming populace. In spite of exhaustive searching and the
convening of an independent investigatory panel, the British were unable to unearth any signs of gangsters with
nicknames like “Carib Carmine,” “Banana Fingers” or “Big Isle Louie,” nor were they able to find even one sharkskin
suit or black Cadillac on the entire island to justify the invasion.
One would think that, having been so thoroughly duped into sending forth invasion troops by this "Widespread
Mafioso Danger" hoax, the British should have been more credulous rather than blindly buying into a certain more
recent WMD fantasy ... but, as has been said, "those that fail to study history are bound to repeat it."
(Here we are, deep into the Caribbean, without our handy Bartlett's, and we can remember neither the source nor the
exact wording of this quote. We would very much appreciate it if one of our faithful readers could email this information
to us at dakotarose@skymate.com)
With the British flair for turning embarrassment into blood pudding with a resounding cry of “We meant to do that!,”
they stayed on in Anguilla, gradually replaced the occupying troops with Bobbies, built the Anguillans a road and a
decent airport and a power plant, and turned Anguilla back into a British colony. Today, Anguillans hold regular British
passports, travel freely to and within the Commonwealth and EU, pay no taxes, and are enjoying an inflow of tourist
investment capital from the U.S. The independent country of St. Kitts and Nevis doesn’t share those benefits.
How Anguilla Got its Name
“Anguilla” means “eel” in Spanish. Nobody seems to be able to tell us where that name came from. Maybe it’s in the
same tradition of the “Fat Virgin” name, when some hungry Spanish sailor spotted the island having just broken yet
another scurvy-weakened tooth on a piece of wormy hard-tack and was fantasizing about a nice, soft, no-need-to-
chew meal of pickled or stewed eel.
Anguilla Itself …
… is about 16 miles long, six miles wide, and shelters the northern coast of St. Martin across the 7-mile-wide Anguilla
Channel. The main harbor is the uncrowded Road Bay on the north coast, where we anchored in 10 feet of clear
water after an easy afternoon sail. Unlike most of the other Caribbean islands we’ve been to, Anguilla isn’t
mountainous; once you ascend the steep slopes from the water you’re on a long, flat plateau. The island is not as
developed as St. Maarten. There are a few upscale hotels and restaurants. The main town is The Valley, and there
are a few other settlements scattered about.
One of the main pastimes here is sailboat racing, in a class of boats built here on the island. The boats are about 25
feet long, completely open, built of heavily-timbered wood construction sheathed in fiberglass, with full keels. With tall
masts and booms that extend well aft of the transom, they carry immense amounts of sail for their size. We watched as
the various crews got their boats ready for a regatta. Each boat is stored on the sandy beach, well above the high
water line, propped up on sawhorses. At the appointed launch time, they drag the boat across the sand, down into the
water, where it wallows unstably until they ballast the boat by loading in rocks and chunks of concrete, passing them
out to the boat from hand-to-hand as in a bucket brigade. The rudder and mast are then stepped, the sails are
rigged, the crew climbs in, and the boat is ready to sail. They race with crews of 8 to 10, most of whom serve as
additional ballast and “rail meat.”
We were hoping to watch the race scheduled for the Monday we were there, but it was cancelled at the last minute
due to a storm that blew through. From what we’ve heard, the races tend toward the free-for-all, with boat damage
expected and taken in the spirit of fun. Sinkings are not unheard of … water over the rail easily swamps one of these
open craft … but easily remedied … all it takes is a few dives down to the submerged boat to unload the
rock/concrete ballast, and the boat floats back to the surface, ready to be bailed out and sailed again.
What We Did in Anguilla
The weather during our four days here remained mostly overcast and drizzly, with one day of strong showers. Maddy
rigged up a rain catcher and filled three five-liter drinking jugs with what Jay exclaimed was “first-class H2O!” We took
a disappointing two hour taxi tour of the island from a not-very-talkative cab driver, saw a lot but didn’t learn much.
Steve came down with the flu and spent most of his time on Dakota Rose, recovering. Jay got to swim with the
dolphins in the Dolphin Encounter, the same thing Maddy did back in Tortola. We listened to reggae until 3:00 am
blasting from the bar on the beach in our anchorage. Dianne and Maddy almost caught any number of fish. Jay
skimboarded on the beach. We anchored for a few hours off of the aptly-named Sandy Island, about a mile offshore,
for snorkeling and lunch on the beach before we set out for our return sail to St. Maarten.
Our anchorage remained uncrowded until our last day here, when the Moorings and Sunsail charter crowd moved in
and swarmed around us. Each new arrival was heralded by the sound and fury that accompanied their anchoring
process: “OK, drop-the-anchor-drop-the-anchor … full reverse, full reverse … let-out-the-chain-let-out-the-chain-let-
out-the-chain … are we set? … I think we’re set … are we dragging? …I think we might be dragging … are we
dragging? … we’re dragging! … watch out for that boat behind us! … more-chain-more-chain-more-chain-more-chain
… ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod-ohmigod … full forward, full forward … pull-in-the-chain-pull-in-the-chain-pull-in-the-
chain … watch out for that other boat … where’s the anchor, I can’t see where the anchor is, which way should I turn?
… OK, good job everyone, let’s try it again …” To be honest, we’ve all developed a bit of a superiority complex relative
to the bareboat charterers, sort of the same feelings we have towards the Zonies who infest Coronado in the summer.
We know that this is totally unwarranted and unfair, especially since we've put in our time on Moorings charter boats.
We have learned to be particularly wary when one of them anchors directly upwind of us. It’s particularly interesting to
listen to Jay and Maddy: “Look at that Moorings boat over there … look how sloppy their jib is, don’t they know how to
work their furler? … they haven’t even zipped their sail cover … look how many people they crammed into that dinghy,
all they have is FOUR HORSEPOWER!!”
Anguilla
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
May 30th is Anguilla Day, this year marking the 38th
anniversary of the Glorious Anguillan Revolution of
1967. It is perhaps indicative of the unique Anguillan
character that this revolution was carried out with no
deaths, few casualties, and was fought to avoid, rather
than gain, independence.
Or, perhaps it’s not, but it’s still a good story, and a
parable for modern times.
The Story of the Anguillan Revolution …
… had its roots almost 150 years earlier. After three
centuries of ruthless exploitation of, and armed conflict
over, the Caribbean islands by the various European
powers, the economic engine of cane sugar cultivation
(with its necessary partner, Black African slavery) had
petered out by the early 1800s. The colonial powers
were casting about for ways to reduce the economic
anniversary of the Glorious Anguillan Revolution of
1967. It is perhaps indicative of the unique Anguillan
character that this revolution was carried out with no
deaths, few casualties, and was fought to avoid, rather
than gain, independence.
Or, perhaps it’s not, but it’s still a good story, and a
parable for modern times.
The Story of the Anguillan Revolution …
… had its roots almost 150 years earlier. After three
centuries of ruthless exploitation of, and armed conflict
over, the Caribbean islands by the various European
powers, the economic engine of cane sugar cultivation
(with its necessary partner, Black African slavery) had
petered out by the early 1800s. The colonial powers
were casting about for ways to reduce the economic