I remarked in part 38 of this series (which was published on Aug. 5), that I wanted to test the accuracy of Mabel Wagner’s description of events in Lest I Forget, her 2015 book about her husband Wladek Wagner’s development of Trellis Bay and construction of the original Beef Island airfield. But according to the Virgin Islands’ Archives and Records Management Unit, record-keeping was not a priority for the government following the VI’s restoration of representative government.
No newspaper was yet being published in the colony, but two eyewitness accounts — Howard Reynold Penn’s 1991 Memoirs and Joseph R. O’Neal’s 2004 Life Notes — reflect VI merchants’ resentment of Mr. Wagner’s purchases in St. Thomas of supplies which they considered should have been ordered from them. The accounts also accuse Mr. Wagner of building the airfield to benefit his own project.
Mr. Penn observed that this conflict resulted in power struggles between the Legislative Council’s elected members and then-administrator Geoffrey Allsebrook. Ms. Wagner reported that her husband was incensed by the suggestion in a public record that he only wanted to build the airfield to benefit himself and pointed out in a letter to Mr. Allsebrook that the whole colony needed to be connected with the outside world — including the hotels on Guana and Buck islands and in Road Town.
Keel sold
In part seven of this series (published on Nov. 29, 2023), I mentioned that Mr. Wagner realised that they could not finance their dream from chartering alone. The only thing of value they owned was their ketch Rubicon’s ten-ton solid lead keel, part of the vessel since her launch in 1898.
The only shipyard around that could replace it was the Puerto Rico dry dock in San Juan harbour.
Ms. Wagner reports that on Jan. 16, 1952, with Henry Varlack and Glanville Penn as crew, they sailed to San Juan to have it replaced by a keel of concrete and iron. Mr. Wagner sold the lead to a scrap merchant in San Juan and spent part of the proceeds on buying 200 bags of cement as extra ballast.
O’Neal’s first boat
Mr. O’Neal comments that he built his first boat in partnership with Captain Evermond Rabsatt in Fat Hogs Bay, to export cattle from Beef Island to St. Thomas. But business declined after the advent of supermarkets and refrigerators on St. Thomas — and the replacement of VI cattle with supplies from Guadeloupe and Martinique. VI trade subsequently shifted to Puerto Rico, needing bigger sloops and schooners.
On April 14, 1955, they launched the 50-ton MV Charmaine, fitted with bunks for its crew and named after Mr. O’Neal’s daughter, who had been born on Nov. 26, 1954. There was no bank in the VI yet, but they purchased its 80-horsepower McLaren diesel engine through the British Export Credit Guarantee Department. In 1955, it made 55 trips to Ponce, Puerto Rico, selling bags of cement at the dockside at a marginal profit and storing the rest.
In part 18 of this series (published on July 4, 2024), I noted Ms. Wagner’s recollection that her husband’s partnership with Herbert Lee had greatly boosted progress in building his clubhouse on Bellamy Cay. Just as almost the last bag of cement had been used, a sloop-full arrived from Mr. O’Neal in Road Town. The men offloaded enough with a small dinghy until the lightened sloop could move alongside the dock.
However, Mr. O’Neal must have been disappointed to observe Mr. Wagner’s subsequent return from St. Thomas with roofing material, plumbing equipment, service tanks and galvanised piping. But Mr. O’Neal wouldn’t have known that Mr. Wagner had been able to pay cash to merchants who had previously supplied goods on interest-free loans, which VI merchants would have found difficult to match in the absence of banks.
VI techniques
Some remarks in Ms. Wagner’s account suggest that her husband learned some of his techniques in the VI. For example, he replaced a smelly kerosene stove outside their house with a coal pot, fuelled by charcoal produced on site. She also notes that John Dawson, who made charcoal from the bushes he cleared from their land, described how the VI sloop’s unorthodox shape was designed. Their ability to sail windward made them good boats for inter-island trade.
Ms. Wagner also writes that while her husband built a new slipway at Conch Shell Point, he showed the men how to split some massive boulders which they couldn’t shift by burning dry brush on them until they were extremely hot and then pouring buckets of cold seawater over them.
And as I recounted in part 28 of this series (published on Jan. 9), he used branches from local turpentine trees to make fence posts for the airfield that could reproduce as trees, to save buying timber.
O’Neal’s accounts
Mr. O’Neal describes the way to build a sloop in almost precisely the same words as Mr. Dawson did. He also recalls, as a boy, splitting rocks with fire and water to get to mango trees and making fencing on Virgin Gorda with “ping ling,” a type of pine tree that propagates itself.
