When we tell people that
we are sailing to remote tropical places, they tell us they envision
palm tree lined, white sand beaches with thatched huts and a beautiful tropical
forest leading away from the beach. We do not want to seem smug, so we feign
that such places are only in postcards. We are lying.
Deadman’s Cay lies on the northern shore of Peter Island,
about 5 miles south of Tortola. I have now returned to it for the third time,
because I consider it to be a place of
such stunning beauty that after I leave it I feel I must be remembering it
incorrectly. As we steered in to the bay , I was once again struck by a setting
that seems to me from a movie set; a
place that simply cannot exist in real life. I share pictures with you here, but they truly
do not do it justice.
That a place of such ethereal splendor should have such a
foreboding name makes it that much more special.
It faces another tiny island, about ½ mile away, that is known as
Dead Chest Cay. It is allegedly the island where Blackbeard marooned 15 of his
men who had threatened mutiny, leaving them with naught but a bottle of rum. Folklore has it the some of
the stranded attempted to swim to Peter Island and did not make it, thus the
incongruous moniker “Deadman’s Bay”.
On another note, the sheer cliff of Dead Chest Cay when viewed from the Peter Island beach
appears to be a man in a coffin. In the 1700’s a coffin was known as a “dead man’s chest”.
Hence the ditty “fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of
rum.”
More on Peter Island in later posts.
Julianne November 26th,
2016
