In her 2012 book Lest I Forget, former Trellis Bay resident Mabel Wagner mentions Leeward Islands Governor Sir Kenneth Blackburne visiting Tortola on July 1, 1956, before sending London his final report on the Beef Island airfield proposal. She knew at the time that Virgin Islands Commissioner H.A.C. Howard had left the VI and would be replaced by Geoffrey Allsebrook, the VI’s newly styled “administrator” (as I recounted in part 22 of this series on Sept. 12).

However, Ms. Wagner appears to have been unaware of the nature of the “unresolved issues regarding the airstrip” that the governor addressed during his visit. She was also unaware of any link between a Trade and Production Committee’s “Tourism in the BVI” pamphlet dated Feb. 17, 1953, mentioning a Beef Island airport and Howard Reynold Penn, often known as “H.R.,” a cousin of Carris Penn.

H.R. Penn

After surviving the great hurricane of 1916 in East End, H.R. Penn had been taken in at age 13 by Jane Abbott, his aunt in Road Town, and he later showed an early interest in civic matters. In 1950, he was elected to the restored Legislative Council and made chairman of the Agricultural and Trade Committee.

In the system that Governor Blackburne introduced under the Second VI Constitution, he was the member for trade and production and elevated to the Executive Council, then the VI’s governing body, with responsibilities for developing a tourism unlike the mass tourism in some neighbouring islands.

On page 34 of his 1990 memoirs, H.R. Penn writes, “Governor Blackburne agreed to having an airfield and took some of us to the proposed site. He had arranged for it to be laid out by a Mr. Wagner, a Pole with an English wife, who was knowledgeable in such matters.”

This misunderstanding of the role of Wladek Wagner, Mabel Wagner’s husband, led to distrust on both sides.

Credit extended

Ms. Wagner recounts that on Nov. 23, 1956, in a meeting with Mr. Allsebrook and the governor’s police chief from Antigua, Mr. Wagner readily agreed to extend credit to the government to build a police station with housing for a married corporal in order to get the airstrip started.

The administrator and the Wagners became close friends, and after Christmas that year, while relaxing at Tamarind House, they informally discussed the airstrip.

On Jan. 10, 1957, Mr. Wagner told his business partner, Herbert Lee, that the Public Works Department at first had provided only hand-held implements to clear the stony, hilly land, and even the bulldozer it provided later was inadequate. He planned to get a bulldozer and truck from Puerto Rico, but his do-it-yourself ferry would not be large enough to carry them across to Beef Island.

Authorisation

The VI government authorised Mr. Wagner to build the airstrip, a larger ferry, housing for an immigration and customs officer, and a terminal building, all initially funded by the Trellis Bay partnership.

He was to be responsible only to the administrator and official government supervisors checking the work’s progress, but on July 27, 1957, he complained to Mr. Allsebrook that the administrator’s office would not let him provide some supplies for the airfield that he urgently needed, according to Ms. Wagner’s book.

He had had to hire more workers to clear the field, so he suggested that in future the administration should send someone to prepare the pay sheets and pay the men, and perhaps he should notify Mr. Allsebrook if any supplies were needed.

By Ms. Wagner’s account, he felt embarrassed having to list each item and then await approval and payment. He had paid out $857.90 in wages and supplies during July on the government’s behalf, but his bill for June was still being checked.

He also wanted to meet Sir Alexander Williams, the governor of the Leeward Islands from 1957 to 1959, while he was in Road Town.

With other British islands working to form an independent Federation of the West Indies, the British government had agreed to the VI remaining a British colony because of its closer ties with the United States VI. In the meantime, though, its administrator reported to the governor of the Leewards.

Trellis Bay Club

When the Trellis Bay Club was formally established, Mr. Lee had an attractive, colourful logo added to Trellis Bay Yacht Station’s simple black-and-white letterhead. He and his friend Alan Hickock sometimes discussed additional land purchases while vacationing at the clubhouse with their wives.

Mr. Wagner had designed and built with similar care three cottages along the shoreline opposite the clubhouse between the old slipway and the Wagners’ favourite spot on the beach.

For example, running water for each unit was hand-pumped from an overhead tank, and its cistern was partitioned inside to strengthen its walls and facilitate cleaning — and surmounted by a concrete slab with a manhole covered with chicken wire and mosquito netting.

 

Footnote

On Dec. 18, 1957, Sir Kenneth was appointed the first (and last) captain general and governor-in-chief of Jamaica, before it became independent. The demise of the federation had been hastened by its rivalry with Trinidad.

 

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