S/V Aphrodite

We sailed from St. Lucia to Martinique the day after Christmas with great expectations of French wine, French bread and chocolate croissants.   Unfortunately the yachting guide made the island sound more inviting than it actually is and our experience was a bit of a disappointment.  Try as we might, neither one of us were able to warm up to the people or places we visited.  The few coastal villages we stopped at seem down and out, even though their standard of living is supposedly higher than in St. Lucia and everything was ridiculously expensive.  But my main observation is that a general lack of country pride and soul exists. Even though it was New Year’s week, we saw little in the way of local celebration. 

We anchored in one of Martinique’s prime tourist’s area so we could go ashore to celebrate New Year’s Eve and Michael’s birthday.  When I went ashore to see about reservations the woman said no problem, it was a set price of 250 Euro’s PER PERSON!  That is about $350 US each.  My mouth dropped and I tried to retain some sort of dignity as I excused myself saying that I would get back to her with our plans.  We stayed “at home”, made dinner, played some cards and enjoyed the resort’s music and midnight fireworks display.

Just as we were heading north to leave the island we made one last stop and discovered a very interesting place with an even more interesting history, St. Pierre, a town at the foot of the Mt. Pelee volcano, not far from where European settlers wiped out the last of the Carib residents in 1658.  It is said that before the last ones died they uttered horrible curses, invoking the mountain to takes its revenge.  Mt Pelee, in true Caribbean fashion, took its own sweet time, until Ascension Day, the 8^th of May, 1902.

At this time, St Pierre, with a population of 30,000, was known as the Paris of the Caribbean and was the commercial, cultural and social center of Martinique. The volcano gave plenty of warning, minor rumblings began early in April and before dawn on the 2^nd of May a major eruption covered the city with enough ash to kill some birds and animals   so why did people stay?  Governor Mouttet, on the island for less than a year, couldn’t cope with the huge responsibility of evacuating Martinique’s most important city.  He desperately wanted the problem to go away and was encouraged to sit tight with most of the planters and business leaders who would have suffered financial losses if the city were evacuated. A few individuals had the sense to leave, but for the rest the destruction of such an important city was unimaginable.

The end came on May 8^th when the side of the volcano facing St. Pierre glowed red and burst open, releasing a giant fireball of superheated gas that flowed down over the city, releasing more energy than an atomic bomb.  All that remained were smoking ruins.  An estimated 29,933 people burned to death, leaving only two survivors in the town: a cobbler who was in his cellar and a prisoner in a stone cell.  Many ruins still remain so we spent a few hours walking through the town.  It had an errie feeling, like a ghost town with people living in it.  Post-disaster buildings have been built onto old structures, so many of the new buildings share at least one wall with the past.  Two buildings remained distinguishable, the town’s elegant theater and the prison which housed the surviving prisoner.  The buildings shared a thick stone wall.