Before Polish Captain Wladek Wagner died, he and his English wife Mabel had intended to write “his” and “her” versions of their story. So she drew on his large trove of documents to write her book Lest I Forget: The Wagner Family, Pioneers of Trellis Bay, Beef Island, BVI. She had virtually completed it by 2007, 15 years after his death.
However, she could only afford to have 1,000 copies printed when she eventually published it in 2012, after the excitement of the first Wagner Sailing Rally here in the Virgin Islands.
She died in Florida on Feb. 24, 2022, at age 96.
My main reasons for writing these commentaries are to make the book better known and to verify the accuracy of events portrayed in it, particularly Ms. Wagner’s references to individuals and dates.
I assume that Mr. Wagner’s logbooks were her main memory aids for the earliest events, as storage space on their yacht Rubicon would have been very limited.
Letters, business records and the other documents would most likely date from late January 1950, after he envisioned building a yacht haven at Trellis Bay (see my commentary “More Trellis Bay history shared” from Nov. 1, 2023).
After buying Bellamy Cay on Feb. 4, 1954, he announced his proposal to build an airstrip on Beef Island (see “Trellis history continues with account of house build” from Jan. 31, 2024).
Towle book
Judith Towle’s 2023 book, A Caribbean Awakening – The Dawn of an Environmental Movement in a Sea of Small Islands, independently validates Ms. Wagner’s dating of her husband’s encounters with certain people earlier in their lives.
For example, Mr. Wagner’s unnamed benefactor at Caneel Bay appears in Ms. Towle’s book as Euan P. MacFarlane, an “environmental hero” who helped to establish this territory’s National Parks Trust and who received an honorary belongership (see part 12 of this series, published on March 6, 2024.)
For another example, Ms. Wagner recalls that in summer 1950, the Paiewonsky brothers welcomed meeting Mr. Wagner as he was from Poland bordering Ukraine, their ancestral homeland. Ms. Towle says that Ralph Paiewonsky (by then the United States VI’s governor) and his brother Isador gave most of Hassel Island to the US National Park Service (see part 13 of this series, published on March 21, 2024).
Pontoon
Continuing our story, Ms. Wagner writes that the director of Countryman Films paid Mr. Wagner $1,000 to construct a pontoon similar to the one he had made for the launch of the Beef Island ferry, on which heavy, bulky filming equipment could be towed between locations (as recounted in part 29 of this series on Feb. 6).
Despite his new commitments to the film company, Mr. Wagner still had to run the boatyard. Once Stacy Lloyd’s yacht Barnabus from St. Croix was up on the railway, its crew and their own men were able to clean and paint it without needing his supervision, so he sailed Rubicon over to St. Thomas to place an identical order for the timber to build the new pontoon as he had done for the one for the airstrip ferry.
Bulldozer
Meanwhile, his business partner Herbert Lee was trying to ship a T-9 bulldozer he had bought in Boston to St. Thomas for use on some land he had purchased in the VI. The boat was scheduled to leave New York on Aug. 12, 1957, but the city’s Highway Permit Department would not let him drive it over the public road until he had paid a $2 fee by postal order, as its blade was 10 feet wide — two feet over the legal limit.
The delay led to the bulldozer missing the boat, but when it eventually arrived at the West India Dock, Mr. Wagner towed the new pontoon behind Rubicon so he could take it back to Trellis Bay with the bulldozer on top. However, the waters outside St. Thomas harbour were too choppy to tow it safely, so the West India Dock agreed to transport the bulldozer overland to Red Hook, where the water was calmer.
Mishap
Unfortunately, the driver moving the bulldozer onto the pontoon misjudged the task and drove it over the end of the pontoon and into the water. He was unharmed, but it was too late in the day to get any help, so the bulldozer stayed partially submerged in shallow water until the next morning, when Mr. Wagner arranged for West India Company to send a heavy truck to pull the machine out of the water.
Mechanics checked the condition of the engine and by late afternoon had it running again, so Mr. Wagner settled the West India Company’s bill and cautiously loaded the bulldozer onto the pontoon, tying it closely to the beach for safety, its fore-end touching the sandy bottom to steady it and a heavy beam across the other end to stop it overshooting again.
Mr. Wagner towed the pontoon behind Rubicon from Red Hook with the bulldozer firmly tied down on top, by the shortest, calmest route to Trellis Bay possible. He arrived safely by dawn the next day, then drove the bulldozer into the warehouse to await a thorough wash down and cleansing of salt spray.
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