Position: 16:48:13N 62:12:41W

It was a hard and frustrating sail to Montserrat.  The wind was on the nose, and it was 35 miles.  The first part of the sail was OK, as we beat our way to about 8 miles downwind of Montserrat by 1230, but it then took three hours to get up into the relative shelter of Little Bay, the only allowed anchorage on the island.  Those last 8 miles were frustrating, because it was very gusty and shifty and too windy just to motor directly into it.  However, short tacking just doesn’t go with Lego and Polly Pockets all over the cockpit floor.

The bonus of a painful sail was a spectacular view of the volcano on Montserrat, together with the remains of Plymouth, the capital.  Montserrat is somewhere I have always wanted to visit, since I saw a documentary back in the late 90’s on the massive volcanic eruption and the islander’s subsequent struggle to remain on the island.

Approaching Montserrat

It is a tragic tale of cataclysmic natural forces.  In 1995, after centuries of no activity from the volcano, it erupted.  Luckily, there had been some warning and the islanders had evacuated to the North of the island.  In 1997, it erupted again, spectacularly, and unfortunately the pyroclastic flows and subsequent mud flows engulfed the capital town of Plymouth.  It now sits, deserted and partially buried, a modern-day Pompeii.

The volcano with the remains of Plymouth, the capital, below it

The main anchorage used to be towards the south of the island but there is now a large exclusion zone, both on the island and for 2 miles offshore.  You could smell the sulphur and see a continuous cloud of smoke trailing off downwind from the volcano.  So the only anchorage is a marginal one in the north of the island. There is minimal protection and very little space, but we managed to anchor and went straight ashore.  This little bay now serves as the island’s port, so it is very basic and utilitarian.  There was one small rusty freighter registered in Monrovia (capital of Liberia, that great bastion of shipping!?). which was wedged in against the dock.

Deserted houses below an ominous-looking volcano

After customs & immigration, we met a taxi guide called Sam Sword, and went straight on a tour of the island, eager to see for ourselves this fascinating place.  The taxi tour turned out to be extremely enlightening, because whilst the southern half of the island is off-limits, you can get quite close to where the action had been and it is truly awesome.

We went straight to the volcano observatory, which is where a team of scientists monitor the volcano, measuring seismic activity and making numerous flights in helicopters to measure the growth of the lava dome and various other things.  We didn’t stay long because it was late, but we bought a DVD which documents the activity since 1995, which we watched when we got back to the boat.  The volcano has been active pretty much continuously since 1995.  It erupted in January this year, when we were down in the Grenadines. 

From the volcano observatory, Sam pointed out his house, high up in the hills, and inside the exclusion zone.  He can’t get to it by road now, and shouldn’t really walk to it either, but he has been back a couple of times in the 13 years since he was told he had to leave it. He said that it is still full of possessions, car in the garage, but there is no way of getting it all out and it is all covered in dust from the volcano.  There are hundreds of houses like his, including a whole load of extremely smart villas – this was one of THE places to be seen before the volcano.

We drove, then walked, up Garibaldi Hill, passing beautiful yet abandoned houses.  Now and again one would be occupied, it’s owners clearly deciding to make the most of what they own, even if there is no community left and they are at risk of being evacuated again.  Garibaldi Hill overlooks Plymouth, and the view from the top I shall never forget.

View south from Garibaldi Hill.  Plymouth on right of picture

The town, which was clearly quite a sizeable town before the eruption, was partially buried in mud.  The scale of the devastation was shocking.  Boulders the size of houses were mingled amongst what was left of the buildings.  In some areas, there was simply nothing left.  The pier was now only half it’s original length as the mud flows had extended the shoreline by 100m.  You could see just the roofs of some of the buildings, the rest buried deep in the mud and ash.  Anything wooden or metal had been burnt or melted by the intense heat.

The remains of Plymouth.  The tower is an old sugar mill

I was stunned.  What I found most galling was that having come from Nevis, where the capital had exactly the same aspect – East-facing, in the shadow of the volcano – I could just picture what Plymouth must have been like before this catastrophe.

Old pyroclastic flow in river valley.  All the houses are deserted

We walked back to the taxi and drove down to Old Road Bay, where the mud flows had come down what used to be a river valley with a golf course and beautiful hotels, and covered the lot.  We drove onto the mudflows, which are now hard, and down towards the beach.  We drove past what had been a two-storey golf club building, now buried up to it’s eaves in the mud.  The dust gets everywhere and everything is coated in this fine sand.  All the trees were just dead stumps.

What remains of the golf club

The hot mud flows had reached the sea, and had extended the beach by 200m.  You could see the old line of the beach by the palm trees in a line, now in the middle of nowhere.  It must have been a gorgeous bay.  We found all that was left of the small breakwater which provided some shelter and docking space for pleasure cruise boats. Only the bollards and the rubber fenders remained, just sticking up out of the sand, a long way from the sea.

The old dock, Old Road Bay.  Two bollards and black rubber fenders in front of them show where dock used to be.

I found the whole thing stunning, shocking and sad.  What was also clear was how close a community there obviously had been, and how the eruptions had ripped that community apart.  There were 12000 people prior to 1995, now there were just 4000.  Many had gone to Britain, or to America or elsewhere, and who could blame them – but it was sad to think that one of these wonderful little islands, who epitomize how we in the overcrowded UK wish we could be, where everyone knows one another and looks out for one another, and it has just been turned on its head – by an act of nature.

The remaining islanders now have to live on the north part of island, which is now being developed, but it is hilly, difficult terrain with no real agricultural land, so it begs the question of what will the remaining islanders build an economy from?  There is no “natural” capital or centre, and whilst the port is being developed and has clearly had various discrete pieces of outside investment, the development has all gone on hold because there is not enough money.  I think I was expecting to go to Montserrat to find that everything was pretty-much back-to-normal, but it isn’t at all and I don’t think it will be for quite a long time, if ever.

Montserrat’s people are obviously resilient but I found myself walking back to the dock with tears in my eyes.  I am just glad that we were able to see for ourselves what has happened here.

We would have loved to have stayed longer and get to know the northern part of the island and it’s people better, but the weather was about to turn boisterous and it is a 25M sail back upwind to Antigua and Sarah and girls were due to fly out on Sat 12^th, so we headed off the next morning.