Times of the Islands Fall 2016

astrolabe newsletter of the Turks & Caicos National Museum
MICHAEL FLOCH FOR EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL
TCNM REYNOLDS COLLECTION
From top: Tres Hombres is a modern example of a topsail brigantine.
Note the similarity to the brigantine etching on the previous page.
This 1950s image shows a single-masted Caicos sloop, well-stocked
for working.
Maritime archaeologists treasure these representations as
potential sources for tracing the evolution of ship types,
sail configurations, and construction details. At the same
time, because there is always the ambiguity associated
with simple artistic attempts to represent complicated
objects, they are cautious about the conclusions they
draw. Still, I was intrigued by the potential the Ghost Fleet
of the Caicos Islands might have to reveal some tantalizing
clues to the Islands’ maritime connections to the rest
of the world 200 years ago. I thought it was a subject
that should be brought to people’s attention, particularly
because many of the ships in the fleet must have been
created by the ancestors of people who live here now!
The range of identifiable ship types found so far in
the Ghost Fleet appears to be fairly narrow, consisting
mainly of single- and two-masted vessels: schooners,
brigantines, sloops, ketches, and skiffs. “Typing” ships
can be very confusing. It tends to key on features such as
the number of masts, their heights relative to each other,
where they are located along the length of the deck,
whether they carry square or fore-and-aft sails, and the
configurations of those sails. Another layer of confusion
is added when you consider that ship types evolve over
time, whereas the names used to describe them stay the
same. As a result, a “Bermuda Sloop” of 1800 bears little
resemblance to the vessels we call by the same name
today. Regardless of the nautical information contained
in the fleet, the questions of who drew the ships—and
why—remain.
Over the years as I continued to ponder those clues
and as similar graffiti turned up on the walls of other
plantation buildings on Providenciales, North, Middle,
and East Caicos, I realized that it was not just a TCI phenomenon.
People in the Bahamas were finding the same
type of ship graffiti in association with plantation houses
from the same period—and asking the same questions.
There were even unsubstantiated reports of their presence
in Haiti.
Ship graffiti in the Bahamas
I am aware of only one scientific publication dedicated to
the study of this type of phenomenon, Ms. Grace Turner’s
2004 M.A. thesis titled “Bahamian Ship Graffiti,” in which
she examines numerous examples found in the Bahamas
as well as two from the Cheshire Hall Great House on
Providenciales, and six from the Wade’s Green complex
on North Caicos. Ms. Turner’s research led her to advance
several hypotheses as to who created the ship graffiti,
when they did it, how they did it, and even their purpose.
After demonstrating that most of this type of ship graffiti
is associated with the Bahamas’ 19th-century plantation
and slavery period, and that it was not the work of a single
person, she observes:
“An assessment of the various locations where ship
graffiti were documented in the Bahamas suggests
a very high correlation of this cultural phenomenon
with Bahamians of predominantly African heritage.
The presence of ship graffiti at several sites not
56 www.timespub.tc