I started this series of commentaries on July 20, 2023, after the inaugural American Airlines flight between Miami and Tortola, to celebrate the construction of the original airfield by Wladek Wagner, a Polish sea captain, as recorded in his English wife’s book Lest I Forget.
An English film company wanted to use the Wagners’ clubhouse at Trellis Bay as its operational base for making a film based on Robb White’s book Our Virgin Island about his early married life on Marina Cay. On Sept. 1, 1957, the company’s advance party arrived from London and a little later more guests arrived, including some overflow from Guana Island, until every room and cottage was taken.
Eighteen hundred feet of the airfield’s northeast section had already been completed by Sept. 3 of that year, when a single-engine plane circled Beef Island, came in low, landed on the unfinished airstrip, and stopped safely before reaching Conch Shell Beach. It was piloted by Jack Monsanto from St. Thomas, for whom using the licence he had gained during World War II had become his peacetime occupation.
Personal request
Mr. Monsanto had often flown over Trellis Bay when the boatyard was being built and used to drop important messages stuffed into bottles (without hitting anyone). He wanted to ask Mr. Wagner personally to speed up surfacing the runway. Opportunely, two inspectors from Jamaica were examining the airfield. He told them he needed 2,000 feet of runway to safely fly the film company in and out.
They agreed to his request, and told him that the Beef Island airstrip, being built for only $9,000, had a better foundation and layout than their own runway in Jamaica, but they didn’t say how much theirs had cost. Mr. Wagner found sufficient gravel to surface the remaining area up to the 2,000-foot mark.
However, his wife Mabel reports that none of the other Virgin Islands legislators repeated Charles Brudenell-Bruce’s praise of the cottage Mr. Wagner had built for the airport’s security officer. He heard through the island grapevine (perhaps from the administrator, in a friendly warning) that the Public Works Department was complaining about him in the legislature, saying things like “Wagner used a builder’s level for building the airstrip.”
She criticised their apparent ignorance, as he had used his ingenuity to use the level in place of proper, unaffordable surveyor’s equipment. Another complainant said Mr. Wagner brought in fuel for the airfield from St. Thomas that should have been purchased locally, ignoring the fact that it was far cheaper than in Tortola.
Mr. Wagner paid $13 a drum in St. Thomas against the $22-$23 he would have paid in Road Town.
According to Ms. Wagner, her husband wanted to keep down the fuel’s cost and charged the government for neither his time nor the use of his yacht Rubicon to haul it. She comments that his capabilities and resourcefulness, stemming from a very experienced background, could well have been difficult for some in the PWD to understand. They would have been given the job if they had been thought capable of doing it.
Closed hearing
Mr. Wagner really did not know who was creating the problem, but members of the Legislative Council were apparently resenting his friendship with the administrator, who was being put into an awkward position. It was possibly him who tipped off Mr. Wagner that the Administrative Council was going to meet for a closed hearing to which he was not invited.
Two legislators in particular were among Mr. Wagner’s most vocal critics, but rather than me naming them, it would be fairer to examine the minute books of Council meetings and try to verify the motives of former governor Sir Kenneth Blackburne in misleading them by saying he had hired Mr. Wagner to build the airfield and then persuaded him to advance the government the cost of building the policeman’s cottage (as described in part 23 of this series on Oct. 10, 2024).
According to his wife, Mr. Wagner felt he had enough to do at Trellis Bay without being attacked by people incapable of even understanding, let alone appreciating, his efforts on behalf of their island community. He was so disappointed at the legislature’s response that he no longer wanted to work for government. On Nov. 18, 1957, he handed the administrator his letter of resignation as the general contractor for the airport.
Mr. Wagner’s work was virtually finished by then. He had surfaced 2,400 feet of the runway, including 200 feet more than Mr. Monsanto requested, as a safety net. The final length of the runway was to be 3,400 feet by 400 feet, but the workers had become experienced enough to finish the rest themselves. He had also built the new ferry and ferry landings, plus the new road from the ferry to the pier at Trellis Bay.
The government had budgeted $10,000 to build the airstrip, but Mr. Wagner had constructed it for just under $9,000, plus another $1,000 for the ferry; $720 for the ferry landings; and $3,000 for the police cottage.
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