After a brief stop at Roseau, Dominica’s capital, we continued north to Portsmouth on the NW corner of the island the following morning.  Portsmouth had once been the capital of Dominica, but the capital was moved to Roseau to escape the malarial mosquitos (largely eradicated since the 1940s).   Here on the lovely Prince Rupert’s Bay is the estuary of the Indian River, so named because the early European arrivals (privateers like Hawkins, Drake and Grenville) used to trade with the Kalinago/Carib indians who lived here in the 16th Century. A century later, after Prince Rupert of the Rhine (a nephew of Charles I) used the bay for shelter and repairs in 1652, the bay was named after him.

 

The British started building Fort Shirley and a garrison on the Cabrits peninsula at the north of the Bay in 1774 as part of the cycle of military colonisation in the region. After being lost to the French, Dominica was ceded to the British by the 1783 Treaty of Versailles after the British naval victory at the Battle of the Saintes on 12th April 1782.  By then Fort Shirley and the Cabrits Garrison were a major armed outpost, work having been continued by the French during their occupation.  But in 1854, the whole Cabrits peninsula was abandoned to the jungle by the British.  The name “Cabrits” comes from the Spanish  “cabra”, meaning“goats”, which were left to roam in the area by sailors as a future food source.  Throughout the Caribbean today, one can still find Cabri stew on local menus.

 

Fort Shirley had a major renovation, starting in 1982, and is now a stylish reminder of past grandeur, but the garrison buildings still lie in the jungle like some lost world. The vegetation has, in slow motion, been dismantling the work of the slaves who built the garrison two and a half centuries ago.

 

Lennox Honeychurch, an anthropologist born in Portsmouth and educated at Oxford, now an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of the West Indies, wrote the very readable  “Dominica’s Cabrits and Prince Rupert Bay”, which informed my comments above.

 

Alexis, our Indian River guide

 

Herons are common along the river, as are land crabs, lizards and a few harmless snakes

 

Tree roots buttress the river banks

 

The Ticking Croc Tavern awaits tourists at the head of the Indian River trip!

 

The Cabrits National Park is on the NW coast of Dominica

 

The restored Fort Shirley

 

Jungle has overcome the Cabrits Garrison

 

Some local inhabitants view tourists with suspicion, but most are friendly!