This series of commentaries — begun on July 20, 2023, to celebrate the inauguration of direct flights between Miami and Beef Island — is based on Mabel Wagner’s 2015 book Lest I Forget: The Wagner Family, Pioneers of Trellis Bay, Beef Island. The memoir tells the story of her husband Captain Wladek Wagner, the Polish sailor who built the original airstrip on the island.
Immediately following the Virgin Islands’ restoration of representative government, official records were poorly kept, and no newspapers were published. But some valuable information unavailable elsewhere can be found in the 1991 memoirs of H.R. Penn, a cousin of my future father-in-law. They are titled, A Personal Account of the Politics and History of the British Virgin Islands in the 20th Century.
Contradictions?
In part 30 of this series, published on Feb. 27, I questioned the motives of former governor Sir Kenneth Blackburne in apparently misleading VI legislators by telling them he had hired Mr. Wagner to build the airstrip. My query was based on a statement by Mr. Penn, who claims that his own interest in its construction stemmed from his election to the Executive Council (then the VI’s governing body) in 1954 as the member for trade and production.
Mr. Penn recalls that Mr. Blackburne had secured funding for the construction of a motorable road from Road Town to East End (as I recounted in part 25 of this series on Oct. 3, 2024). He might have found it hard to raise funds for another major project, but Ms. Wagner described her husband’s agreement to extend credit to the VI government to build the airstrip so he could start the project (as I recounted in part 24 on Oct. 24, 2024).
St. Croix jobs
Mr. Penn describes a chance meeting in Jamaica in 1952 with Gordon Skeoch, president of the VI Company, which was established in 1934 under the New Deal to produce sugar and rum in the United States VI. Mr. Penn was thus enabled to secure legal employment in St. Croix’s sugar industry for many British Virgin Islanders at a time when a significant number had been deported from the USVI, usually for overstaying their work permits.
One man brought back a truck, which he converted into a bus and used to start the first public transport service along the rugged, recently built road between East End and Road Town that later became known as the Blackburne Road.
More information can be found in the 2004 book Life Notes: Reflections of a Virgin Islander, by Joseph Reynold “JR” O’Neal, a fellow legislator and long-time friend of Mr. Penn. The book is prefaced with commendations by a remarkable range of notables, but in the introduction Cyril Romney cautions that it is not a historical text.
Air Force pilot
To Ms. Wagner, Mr. O’Neal was simply a Road Town merchant (as I recounted in part five on Oct. 11, 2023), but he writes that in January 1952 he was appointed the VI agent for petroleum for Shell (which later switched to Esso and built the fuel tanks at Baughers Bay). In the same year, he states, Mr. Blackburne invited Sir Alan Cobham, a distinguished Royal Air Force pilot belonging to a commercial aviation company, to the VI.
Mr. O’Neal formed a partnership with the aviator to import petroleum, and he writes that it was his business partner who had hacked around the bush on Beef Island and then proposed the site for an airport and runway — a plan which the VI government had accepted. However, Ms. Wagner writes that Mr. Wagner had hacked around the bush to test Mr. Cobham’s proposed site for the runway and found it seriously deficient.
Mr. O’Neal comments, rather dismissively, that at first there was no bridge across the channel — just a do-it-yourself pontoon. But Ms. Wagner describes their difficulties in communicating with the outside world before Mr. Wagner constructed the ferry. Even important letters had to await the availability of men to row across the 300-foot channel between Beef Island and East End (as I recounted in part 17 on June 20, 2024).
Princess’s visit
According to Mr. Penn, he and then-administrator Henry Howard attended Princess Margaret’s visit to Antigua, where he presented her with nylon slippers crocheted by women at the Gustave Slipper Factory in Road Town — for which both he and Mr. Howard received a letter of thanks from the princess’s secretary. I might have expected them to discuss their shared interest in building an airstrip, but Mr. Penn does not mention it.
Mr. Penn describes the tenure of the legislature that followed the VI’s third general election, in 1957, as being marked by struggles between the elected members of the Executive Council and the administrator, concerning Mr. Wagner’s development of Beef Island (as I recounted in part 35 on June 5). Road Town merchants complained that Mr. Wagner brought in fuel for the airfield from St. Thomas that should have been purchased locally.
Unfair competition?
According to Ms. Wagner, Mr. Wagner had viewed Bellamy Cay as the ideal site on which to build his clubhouse in 1951, but his protracted negotiations with the administrator were not completed until Feb. 4, 1954. She comments that by July 25, 1956, the main building still lacked the electric cable for the power plant, which would have cost far too much locally (as I recounted in part 18 on July 4, 2024).
The merchants accused Mr. Wagner of unfair competition in undercutting their prices by buying fuel and materials for the airfield in St. Thomas and taking advantage of his contract to buy them for his family business as well. They also criticised Mr. Howard’s successor, Geoffrey Allsebrook, for supporting him.
