Adrift on St. John (5 page)

Caribbean plantation owners lived in constant fear of slave rebellions and uprisings; if at all possible, they steered clear of slaves they suspected of having a militant background. Individuals from tribes thought to be more easily pacified brought a premium price at auction and were generally sold to the more prosperous plantations on St. Thomas, leaving those from tribes with warmongering reputations to the struggling farmers on the backwater island of St. John.

Despite the hopes of those first migrating planters, St. John turned out to have minimal agricultural potential. The island had a much smaller landmass than St. Thomas, and the available acreage suitable for farming was limited by its hilly topography. Many of the sugar plantations on St. John were eventually deeded to absentee landowners, who in turn relegated their responsibilities to largely unsupervised overseers.

As a result, the least desirable land in the Virgin Islands ended up with the least desirable slaves, that is, those most likely to resist their enslavement. It was no coincidence, then, that one of the most significant slave rebellions in the history of the Virgin Islands happened here on St. John.

In the fall of 1733, after a miserable crop season besieged first by drought, then hurricanes, a group of recently arrived warrior slaves planned and executed an uprising that took over the island for almost seven months. Some if not all of these rebels belonged to an African tribe the Dutch called “Amina.”

The rebel slaves sought to establish a new Amina empire that would encompass all of St. John and eventually extend east across the Virgins to the sparsely inhabited island of British Tortola. As envisioned by the rebels, this Amina territory would be ruled by their designated king and his noblemen. Theirs was not, by any means, a pan-emancipation effort. They expected, as was typical among the warring tribes in their previous West Africa homeland, to profit
from the slave labor of other African ethnic groups as well as any of the homesteaders who survived the rebels’ initial attack. Given the prospect of Amina enslavement, many of St. John’s non-Amina slaves sided with their white owners during the revolt.

The Amina assault began November 23, 1733, at the Danish fort overlooking Coral Bay when a group of slaves purportedly delivering firewood overpowered the seven unsuspecting Danish soldiers manning the fort. The Amina rebels killed all but one of the soldiers (the lone survivor escaped by hiding under a bed); then they fired the fort’s cannon as a signal to their fellow conspirators throughout the island.

The cannon shot was followed by the blowing of conch shells, a call to arms for a bloody slaughter that commenced on plantations across St. John. The Amina wrought their vengeance against white slave-owning families as well as overseers of any color who failed to flee their path. Their reign of terror extended across the island’s north coast from Brown Bay, where an entire family was gruesomely slain, to the front gates of the plantation now occupied by the Caneel Bay resort.

Within a few weeks’ time, Danish troops from St. Thomas managed to recapture the fort at Coral Bay, but the Amina rebels maintained their grip on the rest of the island. They dispersed into the heavily forested jungle interior, many taking refuge in the dense woods of Mary’s Point, a bulging knob of hilly land that curves out from the modern-day eco-resort at Maho Bay to form the island’s northernmost point. Every so often, the rebels emerged from hiding to ambush patrolling soldiers or to raid and ransack another plantation.

Over the next several months, the Amina fought off assaults by both Danish and British troops. It wasn’t until an elite squadron of French colonial soldiers began a systemic sweep of St. John that the rebels finally gave up their Amina empire aspirations and faced the inevitable grim reality of
their immediate future. In the slave-driven society of the colonial-era Caribbean, punishments for even the slightest act of slave disobedience were well publicized and severe. Recriminations for escape were, by design, so egregiously horrifying that only the bravest, most desperate souls dared make the attempt.

If caught, runaway slaves were subjected to a public display of hideous, sadistic torture, usually involving hot irons and crudely executed dismemberment, generally culminating in a slow and painful death. The heinousness of the penalty that would be exacted for seven months of open rebellion, not to mention the murder of several white plantation families, was simply unimaginable; for the Amina rebels, suicide before capture was the only alternative.

The majority of the Amina chose to take their own lives; the few who couldn’t bring themselves to make that sacrifice soon regretted their decision.

The tale of the Amina Slave Princess, the one Conrad so vividly recounted, offers a somewhat romanticized twist on this story’s sad ending. According to the legend, instead of slitting her throat, the Princess opted to take a suicidal leap into the drowning depths of the Caribbean Sea.

The actual site of this jumping-off point has, of late, become the subject of some discussion on the island. Although Conrad and others place the Princess’s fateful plunge at the tip of Mary’s Point, many agree the more logical location is from the cliffs of Ram Head, a narrow peninsula of land that protrudes from the arid southeast corner of the island.

From the two-hundred-foot height of this barren, windblown peak, one can see the low shadow of St. Croix to the south and the flat-faced boulders of Virgin Gorda to the east. Directly below, the roiling churn of the ocean surrounds a bone-crushing array of volcanic rock.

As one stands on this dramatic spot, the image of a
lonely, desperate woman leaping from the cactus-strewn precipice fixes the imagination. It is the ultimate act of rebellion, self-sacrifice in the name of self-preservation.

Despite the Virgins’ modern-day reputation as an idyllic vacation destination, the evanescent remnants of those tormented souls still float through the islands’ ether. The area’s dark history is reflected in the faces of many of the Territory’s current inhabitants, who have inherited their ancestors’ numerical advantage along with much of their seething resentment. Fixation with the Virgin Islands’ tragic history dominates and divides the modern political landscape, a deep fissure straining beneath the surface, threatening to rupture the fragile foundations of the Territory’s still-nascent democracy.

Every year, as the November 23 anniversary of St. John’s 1733 revolt approaches, commemorations of the event fill the calendar, culminating in a public march to the site where the attacks began, at the original Danish fort overlooking Coral Bay. Of late, the dramatic story of the Amina Slave Princess has infiltrated these festivities. She has become a community icon, worshipped with the reverence of a patron saint.

Hannah Sheridan arrived on the island just as this annual frenzy was beginning to build, and our new employee quickly became caught up in the local whirlwind of obsession with the Princess and her tragic death. Somewhere in the midst of this melee and confusion, she set off down the murky path that would culminate in her disappearance.

In a way, it was the public’s fixation with this historic figure that pulled Hannah from the water taxi into the waters of the Pillsbury Sound.

It certainly wasn’t the ghostly hand of the Slave Princess.
After the events of the last twenty-four hours, of this, I was certain: while the Amina revolt of 1733 was real enough, the Amina Slave Princess herself was nothing more than a vivid figment of someone’s imagination.

4

As I sat there at the Dumpster table on the morning after Hannah’s disappearance, swirling the straw through my melting daiquiri, my thoughts drifted back to the day our pesky employee first arrived on St. John.

It was the end of October—a Monday—not that the start of any given workweek signified more than a different digit on the calendar. Here in the lazy vacationland aura of the resort, each new day looked pretty much the same as the one that came before it. The only change of any significance would occur with the next drenching rainstorm, and its respite, however temporary, from the oppressive heat.

I woke that muggy morning in my resort-appointed quarters—an older one-bedroom condo unit that was scheduled for renovations in about six months’ time—swatting at the high-pitched drone of a gnat hovering near my forehead.

We were nearing the sweltering end to the watch and wait of hurricane season. A couple of storms had come close to grazing the Virgins, but it looked as if we would make it through this year’s danger months unscathed.

The smothering humidity was torture enough. The stagnant air and heavy listless heat had dampened the energy of all but the island’s insect inhabitants. Even the tiny yellow-chested bananaquits that typically twittered along the treetops in nonstop frenetic harmony had lost some of their pep.

With effort, I pulled myself out of bed. After shrugging on a white T-shirt and the cleanest pair of khaki-colored capri pants I could find in my dresser, I staggered across the resort to my office.

There’s a lot to be said for a job of actionless supervision. I’d grown comfortably careless in my leisurely lifestyle, delegating most of the resort’s day-to-day operation to my assistant, Vivian.

Having clocked another late-night session at the Crunchy Carrot’s Dumpster table, I decided a low-key start was on order—one that would allow plenty of recuperation time from the hangover pounding against the inside of my forehead.

A quiet morning on the couch inside my office should do the trick, I thought as I stumbled down the dimly lit hallway on the second floor of the administrative building.

It was with rueful surprise, then, that I found a young woman in a brightly colored sundress waiting outside my office. I stifled a yawn into the half-drunk paper cup of coffee I’d picked up on my way past the breakfast bar and braced my still sleeping brain for the mental rigors of conversation.

The woman pushed a curly tangle of dark hair from her face to expose a timid smile. Nervously, she gripped the pouch of a blue nylon satchel slung over her right shoulder. Then she stepped forward and grabbed hold of my coffee-free hand.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hoffstra.”

Her voice hesitated with a bashful tic as I took another swallow from my paper cup.

“I’m Hannah, Hannah Sheridan. I’m supposed to start work for you today.”

I nearly choked as the liquid clogged my throat. Hannah Sheridan? Surely, I hadn’t heard her correctly.

“It’s Pen, just Pen,” I replied hoarsely. My vocal cords rasped as I gasped out the short response. “And I’m definitely not anybody’s missus.”

I drained the last drop from my wilting paper cup and warily surveyed the resort’s new employee. She was a tall slender girl in her early twenties with creamy cocoa-colored skin that showcased high cheekbones and emerald green eyes. It was a beautiful, exotic look, the result, I suspected, of a mixed-race heritage.

“I’m sorry. What did you say your name was?” The words stumbled over my sleep-numbed tongue.

“Hannah…Sheridan,” she repeated, slowly measuring out each word.

Her face bore an honest expression, as if she hadn’t noticed the disturbing effect of her introduction.

I coughed loudly at the confirmation. The throbbing in my head intensified, this time from an entirely nonalcoholic source.

“Hi-umm, yep, good morning,” I replied, tugging my hand free from her grip as my mind struggled to process the information. “Nice to meet you—Hannah.”

I unlocked the door and held it open for her.

“Please, come into my office,” I said, still puzzling as she sped past me through the entrance.

A slight breeze eddied in her wake. In the long hot history of the Caribbean, no one had ever walked with the fast-paced vigor of this Hannah Sheridan.

I followed my unexpected visitor through the door, my feet shuffling across the floor at a much slower, more island-appropriate pace. Tossing my crumpled cup into a trash can, I motioned for her to take a seat on the couch at the far side of the room.

“You’ll have to bear with me for a moment,” I mumbled as I riffled through the papers scattered across my desktop, a maneuver meant only to buy myself a moment to regroup.