Our destination, Nelson's Dockyard in the village of English Harbour, lay ten miles across the Caribbean island of Antigua, and our trip should have involved our first romantic encounter with a tropical night in the West Indies. But romance quickly turned to terror as we boarded a new Toyota taxicab and began hurtling through the pitch-black night. On a serpentine road posted with a 40 km speed limit, we raced through dimly lit villages and sugarcane fields at 95 km per hour. Our jovial, extroverted driver magnanimously offered, "If there is anything you would like to know about my island just ask." Since he turned his head around to answer each of our questions, we quickly elected silence, offered up fervent prayers for our deliverance, and searched in vain for seat belts.
In what must have been minutes, but seemed like hours, we reached the end of our ordeal when the taxi's headlights illuminated a young man, wearing a T-shirt that read ROMANCE, standing in the road. That was Andrew waiting to meet us.
Nelson's Dockyard was poorly lighted and steeped in an aura of antiquity. The place, which has existed since 1746, had served Admirals Nelson, Rodney, and Hood as a stronghold against the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch during the Napoleonic wars. Today the dockyard is still functional. Operated by an American yachtsman, V.E.B. Nicholson, and his two sons, the yard is primarily a yacht chartering facility, but much has been preserved or restored as a moment to its early place in seafaring history. The admiral's house (now a museum), the Porter's Lodge, the Guard House, Engineer's Workshop, Sail Loft, and Paymaster's House, as well as capstans and bollards, stand much as they did in the eighteenth century. Even the batteries that guarded the mouth of the secluded harbor are still in evidence, although crumbling with age.
Romance was anchored near the mouth of the harbor. We could barely see her anchor light, but after a short trip in the ship's lapstraked dinghy, we bumped against her hull, struggled up the rope ladder, and climbed over the bulwarks to be welcomed aboard by Gloria, the skipper's wife (a seagoing lady who looks and sounds very much like Margaret Mead). We were shown to our 7x7 foot cabin off the mess deck (or saloon), which had once been the ship's cargo hold, and carefully instructed in the use of the community sea toilet, a monster that required a minimum of twenty strokes of the handle to flush. With gear stowed, we made our way topside, cracking our skulls en route on the horizontal deck beams in the saloon, which provided at best about 5 ½ feet of headroom.
The charter guests aboard Romance numbered eight besides my wife, Ellen, and me. Many were seeking the fulfillment of sailing dreams, much as I was, and most were accompanied by long-suffering wives. Three of our shipmates were particularly interesting. One was David Gurney-James, a Scottish laird and former Member of Parliament, whose home address was Torosay Castle on the Isle of Mull. As a teenager, some fifty years ago, he had gone to sea on the four-masted bark Viking, which carried grain between Stockholm and Australia. David often reminisced about his days at sea, working canvas 150 feet above the deck in all kinds of weather and in many parts of the world, including Cape Horn. Now, the Scotsman had come aboard Romance to experience once again the thrill of a wind ship under sail. This time, however, he was quite content to watch others negotiate the tall spars and swaying yardarms.
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