A Brief History of Pelican Island: How “The Pelican” became a national symbol
In 1956, the government of Barbados contracted the Costain Group, a British engineering and construction company, to build the island’s prized Deep Water Harbour, otherwise known as The Port of Bridgetown. Located on the southwest of the island, the port expanded the country’s ability to increase trade and commerce by sea, as well as to allow large scale cruise liners to dock with easy access to the mainland. It receives almost 1 million passengers and containerised cargo, per year. As the largest of the three entry ports on the island, The Deep Water Harbour was built at a cost of approx $20,000,000 over a 5 year period with an additional $22,000,000 expansion, some seventeen years later; more upgrades followed throughout it’s 64 year life span. The physical labour for this massive construction project was undertaken by the local work force and was completed with no loss of life or injury to any of the thousands that toiled.
Pelican Island, formerly known as Bird’s Island and Bignall’s Point, was home to a variety of birds and nesting sea turtles. At 229 x 137 metres in total and located 0.06 miles off shore of mainland Barbados, it was named after one of the species of birds found there, The Brown Pelican; a strange bird but one of majesty and grace. After Barbados was settled in 1627, Pelican island became a quarantine base for sick creatures with leprosy, yellow fever, cholera and the plague. Leprosy was a particularly troublesome disease for the mainland, which affected some 2% of the population at the time. All suffered the terror of this pandemic but more than the effects of the disease on the population was the hopelessness and the sticky fear of death. A clever bat experimenting with the speed of news, spread some rumours about the devastation of this disfiguring sickness. Exaggerated tales of this new unsurvivable and disgraceful plague leapt through ears and fell out of mouths. Soon leprosy, was the worst of all fates and whoever contracted it surely deserved their punishment.
The sick were divided into two halves on Pelican Island; “Above The Wall” and “Below The Wall”, a separation, we were told, that aimed to divide the cheerful, hopeful patients whose disposition would more than likely save their lives, from those whose despair was more infectious than their cough. Of course, this segregation, coincidentally also reflected the ever present class-consciousness of the time; a plague of a different sort. The outbreak of leprosy was then exacerbated by the unrest of the population. Rallies, gatherings, strikes, protests; creature rubbing against creature in tightly packed, rowdy crowds. Crowds too angered by the state of things mixed with crowds too scared to openly and willingly acknowledge the problem. The stigma of contracting leprosy was as bad as being accused of murder. While Pelican Island was the quarantine base, “ The Lazaretto” in St Michael was the official Leper Asylum. This institution housed and treated all the lepers they could find. The willing, self admitted patient was rare and so the building was constructed with tall concrete walls and barbed wire fences, to keep its subjects in. The outbreak would eventually calm but other diseases remained. After some years, those too would disappear and by 1918 there were no records of sick patients on the island. In that same year, at the end of the European war, a Marine Biologist from America made the island his research base. He cited,
“There was no turf on the island, and the ground was sandy everywhere, but there were a number of trees, including palms and Cordia, with brilliant scarlet blossoms and broad leaves. …The view from the room occupied by Mrs. Lamb and myself was exceedingly beautiful, overlooking the blue expanse of Carlisle Bay, with its ever-changing array of ships from all over the world: for this is one of the most frequented ports in the West Indies, an oceanic cross roads, used as a port of call for vessels plying between North and South America, as well as between Europe and the east coast of South America.[1] This is a serene place, unencumbered by the unease on the mainland.”
The island remained a research facility until beginning of The Pig Revolution in 1936, when it became an interment camp for hogs who refused to rebel against “GOD”, and later for German, Italian and Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. The war created a demand for transatlantic telecommunication channels and a high frequency radio facility was placed on the island. The violence of the war struck close to home when the HMS Cornwallis, a Canadian cargo ship was torpedoed in the Carlisle Bay Harbour; a blow that would inspire many Barbadians to volunteer for the war. It is rumoured that the pelicans conspired to orchestrate this tragedy but this has never been confirmed and very few believed it.
The Barbados Government knew by the early 1950’s that they needed to build an international seaport, equipped to send and receive goods and passengers, in order keep in tow with the demand from the rest of the world. The best place for this expansion would be to the north-west of the the already established seaport of Carlisle Bay. It was decided that Pelican Island would be absorbed in the construction of this port by filling in the space between it and the mainland with rock, stone and grit. The pelicans faced an unprecedented situation. They could stay and live with the government’s new plans or they could try to continue life on the mainland which was currently over populated. Or they could fly over the sea to find a new home. Tweets from the migrating birds suggested that land lay a few hundred miles away to the south. Another Island, called Trinidad, with more trees than birds in the sky and better food. Most pelicans didn’t trust their tweets. Migrating birds are not known for their honest accounts of things seen in places far away. The Pelicans voted to stay and adapt to what they, wrongly, expected to be an unsettling but simple change. Neither the Costain Group nor the Barbados Government was knowledgable or interested in conservation. They understood the natural habitat of the island would not survive.
And so, the bird was lost. Years later it was learned that S S Diplomat, the first cruise ship to dock in the new harbour, also happened to be the descendant of the HMS Cornwallis. The S S Diplomat did not hide its involvement in the conception and planning, with the Costain Group of the harbour; citing a personal vengeance against the pelicans for their previous and devious actions against its predecessor. This was seen by most as a misplaced accusation but no evidence was ever found to contradict these claims. The loss was hard but necessary for the expansion of trade and commerce and financial development of the country.
In 1966, with the shift from colonial to independent power and as a commemorative act, the country recognised the pelican as its national bird and immortalised it by giving it a place on the coat of arms. The Queen herself approved its presence. A statue was also erected in its name and decades later, in 1999, Pelican Village was opened.
Images of the pelican became more loved than the bird itself. Perhaps because we have lived with them longer. The bird was never seen in or around the mainland again, despite dribbles and chirps and whispers from animals who don’t know anything and who only attempt to be contradictory. People trust in the pelican; they trust in who carries its representation. And people trust in people whose voices sound like the bird they once knew.
[1] http://www.bidc.com/brief-history-pelican-island “A Brief History Of Pelican Island”.