Gaspar Grande

The isle of Gaspar Grande owes its name to the first owner, Gaspar de Percin la Roque, who was granted the island in 1783 first called Gaspar Ile (Gaspar’s Isle) it is the only one of the Western Isles to be under private ownership from 1783 to the present day. The name Gaspar Ile soon became Gasparee (and, for some, remains so to this day), but eventually the name was officially changed to Gaspar Grande to distinguish it from Little Gasparee (or Centipede Island, as others would have it). Cotton, and the fortunes being made by planters on Chacachacare, Huevos and Monos were what attracted de Percin la Roque to the island that bears his name. He may have enjoyed three or four profitable years from his plantation but the arrival of the boll weevil in 1787 put paid to that promising enterprise.

In 1796, when war broke out between Spain and Britain, de Percin la Roque received compensation for part of his land where, according to E L Joseph writing in 1838, Admiral Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca “repaired an old fort of 20 guns and three mortars, on the island of Gaspar” (sic) “and anchored his fleet under it in a position advantageous for defence.” Fr de Verteuil writes of the Spaniards’ frantic efforts to construct a road to the highest point on the island, a fort, a ditch, a parapet and a firing platform. By February 16, 1797 there were two dozen cannons and four mortars in place. At sea level there were four or five more cannons, and another battery between the “beach” and the fort. However, not one of the artillery pieces was ready for firing.

Joseph writes that yellow fever decimated Apodaca’s men. When the British sailed through the Grand Boca they sighted the Spanish fleet sheltering under the guns at Gaspar Grande. Describing what happened next Captain Lasalle de Luisenthal aboard one of the British ships wrote “ . . . around 11 o’clock that night the Spaniards simply fired their fleet, which both surprised and angered us . .” Trinidad had fallen to the British, but the Napoleonic wars weren’t over yet. French and Spanish warships were still patrolling the Caribbean and could attack the island to re-take it from the British at any time. Governor Hislop conscripted slaves to build two forts, one on the hill above Bombshell Bay. The remains of this fortification, as described by Fr de Verteuil, are substantial, the redoubt has walls two feet thick and one and a half feet high; the barracks’ walls are one and a half feet thick, but it appears the buildings were never completed.

The British did, however, repair, or at least complete the construction of the Spanish fort at the eastern extremity of the island but little trace of it remains today. Some mortar shells have been discovered west of the fort; these shells weighed about 155 pounds, were 13 inches in diameter and contained a round shot that was exploded by a fuse to scatter shrapnel in all directions. Was it these mortar shells that caused the bay below the main Spanish fortifications to be called “Bombshell Bay?” — a name far more interesting, surely, than the copycat name of that appalling TV series Fantasy Island or the current misnomer Paradise Island.

In 1826 de Percin La Roque sold 55 acres of land on the western most tip of the island to retired sea Captain C A White, who, hearing of the profits to be made in whaling and refining whale oil, petitioned the Cabildo for permission to establish a whaling industry. Captain White soon found it easier to grow sugar than to hunt whales and process their blubber. Two years later he sold the whaling station on the seven acres of land now called Point Baleine — Whale Point — to Joell who, in turn sold it to the Tardieus; then, when whaling was no longer profitable, Todd bought the station and an adjoining 16 acres of land. Canning of the Queen’s Park Hotel in Port-of-Spain acquired the land at Point Baleine to build a large hotel luxurious enough to tempt the likes of Noel Coward to stay there when he visited Trinidad. Fr de Verteuil tells that apart from diving boards and a water chute, there were two tennis courts. The Caves of Gasparee were also part of the hotel property.

Those were golden days for Point Baleine which came to an end in World War II when the military appropriated the land as a strategic point to defend Trinidad from the threat of U Boats. Some 7-inch guns that were mounted on Nelson Island were transferred to the ridge above Point Baleine now known as The Battery. This was the Third Coast Battery; it was equipped with two searchlights and two elderly guns, said to be manufactured by the Japanese at the end of the nineteenth century, and brought up-to-date with modern sights and firing gear. They never fired a shot in combat, although, in 1942, a German submarine sneaked past them out of sight of the gun crews, due to the slope of the land. At the end of the war the guns were “spiked” and dumped in cracks between the rocks from where they were rescued and can now be seen in the military museum in Chaguaramas.

The guns in place on The Battery today are naval guns dating from around 1902 and are one of the sights attracting day visitors to Gaspar Grande; however, the main attraction has always been the caves, the fantastic forms of stalactites and stalagmites and, on a sunny day, the incredible colour of the water. It’s a stiff climb up to the caves where, unless they have made arrangements (which we did not) for permission to visit and pay a small fee to view this natural wonder, visitors find (as we did) the entrance bolted and barred. Sadly, it’s been necessary to keep the caves under lock and key to protect them from vandals who delighted in shattering the fantastic natural forms built up by slow-dripping water over the millennia, scrawling graffiti and pelting litter into the water.

On my first visit to the caves with the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club we had to scramble over loose shale and slippery rock to see the caves at their best; the water was a brilliant blue-green for, in those days, the sink hole had not been cemented over. The second time, again with the Field Naturalists’s Club, I was more than glad that the Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) had built a staircase and flight of steps down into the main cave. It was on that second visit that I saw one of the giant centipedes on the opposite wall of the main cavern. These fearsome creatures can grow up to fourteen inches in length and an inch or more across the body (not counting the twenty-one pairs of legs that extend another inch and a half on either side). The fangs on a really big specimen may measure the best part of an inch; there are horny black tips on the needle-sharp pincers they use to hold prey while injecting venom, poison, through their hollow fangs.

Leaving Point Baleine on our island tour of research we passed holiday home after holiday home, some basic beach houses, some large and luxurious. Winn’s Bay on the South side of Gasparee facing the Gulf of Paria – sometimes known as Corsair’s Bay for the pirates said to lurk there to attack ships leaving Port-of-Spain – is a sheltered cove where Newsday photographer Enrico Matthews photographed several gorgeous houses. Leaving that bay our boatman pointed out a small islet dividing the entrance, telling us that the asking price for that prime piece of property was no less than a million and a half TT dollars.

From the sublime of Winn’s Bay we proceeded to the ridiculous of Bombshell Bay aka Fantasy Island aka Paradise Island which has a chequered history of fortifications during wartimes, a club-house and casino for the Chinese Association, a somewhat basic small hotel and holiday resort with honeymoon cottages and, in 1980 a grandiose time-saving scheme of “terrace” holiday houses, breakwater to shelter bathers, and water chute.

Conservationists were horrified when they saw ranks upon ranks of identical holiday homes on the hill above the bay and promptly christened it “Laventille West” — completely ignoring the fact that one never see rows of houses all alike on “The Hill.” Nevertheless, Father de Verteuil points out that the development brought an island home within the financial reach of those who wouldn’t, otherwise, be able to afford one. Gaspar Grande is indeed a playground for the rich, the not-so-rich, owning or sharing homes in Bombshell Bay, and those who enjoy a day exploring the caves, climbing to see the guns, or enjoying watersports in “Paradise” Island. Next week, Kronstadt and Carrera.