Antigua
During a pleasant morning under sail in light airs we were prepared for our visit to Nelson's Dockyard on the island of Antigua by a short talk and documentary on the life of England's greatest naval hero. He was posted to Antigua in 1784, charged with enforcing the Navigation Acts in the northern Antilles under the command of General Shirley, British Governor of the Leeward Islands. We had already encountered General Shirley in Dominica where the fort at Cabrits was named after him.
At the start of our afternoon tour on Antigua we were taken to Shirley Heights for a spectacular overlook of the English harbor at Falmouth, one of the best natural harbors in the Caribbean. So efficient was Nelson in carrying out his duties that he antagonized those many Antiguan traders in molasses who wished to sell to their established customers in New England. In Nelson' words: "The Americans, when colonists, possessed almost all the trade from America to our West Indian islands; and on the return of peace, they forgot, on this occasion, they became foreigners and, of course, had no right to trade in the British colonies." Such was the opposition that Nelson encountered that he was forced out of considerations of safety to sleep on board his ship in the dockyard.
It was only after the year 1805 that the English Dockyard was renamed in honor of the fallen hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. The dockyard was abandoned in 1889: other sources for sugar had been developed and the new steamships followed different routes to the Americas. The harbor went into rapid decay until, in 1949, the Nicholson family sailed into the harbor and recognized its importance as the best surviving example of a Georgian naval dockyard. They embarked on a remarkable lifetime project of restoration, the result of which we saw on our afternoon visit.
As well as being of interest to naval historians, the harbor has taken on new life in what might be described as a second age of sail and is vibrantly alive as one of the world's great yachting harbors.
During a pleasant morning under sail in light airs we were prepared for our visit to Nelson's Dockyard on the island of Antigua by a short talk and documentary on the life of England's greatest naval hero. He was posted to Antigua in 1784, charged with enforcing the Navigation Acts in the northern Antilles under the command of General Shirley, British Governor of the Leeward Islands. We had already encountered General Shirley in Dominica where the fort at Cabrits was named after him.
At the start of our afternoon tour on Antigua we were taken to Shirley Heights for a spectacular overlook of the English harbor at Falmouth, one of the best natural harbors in the Caribbean. So efficient was Nelson in carrying out his duties that he antagonized those many Antiguan traders in molasses who wished to sell to their established customers in New England. In Nelson' words: "The Americans, when colonists, possessed almost all the trade from America to our West Indian islands; and on the return of peace, they forgot, on this occasion, they became foreigners and, of course, had no right to trade in the British colonies." Such was the opposition that Nelson encountered that he was forced out of considerations of safety to sleep on board his ship in the dockyard.
It was only after the year 1805 that the English Dockyard was renamed in honor of the fallen hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. The dockyard was abandoned in 1889: other sources for sugar had been developed and the new steamships followed different routes to the Americas. The harbor went into rapid decay until, in 1949, the Nicholson family sailed into the harbor and recognized its importance as the best surviving example of a Georgian naval dockyard. They embarked on a remarkable lifetime project of restoration, the result of which we saw on our afternoon visit.
As well as being of interest to naval historians, the harbor has taken on new life in what might be described as a second age of sail and is vibrantly alive as one of the world's great yachting harbors.
