The sail from Saba to Statia was very nice. Statia is ESE of Saba so we had to do a bit of tacking and since our batteries were down we motorsailed much of it. Statia is an interesting island, both present and past. Currently, there isn't much there except a huge oil distribution facility. Its an oil hub for the Caribbean and historically it was a free port in which many export papers were "cooked". i.e. countries that technically couldn't trade with each other would bring there goods to Statia. The goods would then become "exports of Statia" and the goods could reach markets they otherwise couldn't. For example, in 1770 Statia produced about 600,000 pounds of sugar, but exported 20 million pounds. Most of the 8000 Statians (of mixed Dutch, English, and Jewish decent) got very rich during this time.
Who knows what goes on with the oil trade today?
Two interesting pieces of American history involve Statia.
First is that a lot of the weapons and ammunition supplied to the American soldiers were purchased from the dutch and passed through Statia.
The first time a US Navy ship was reconized and saluted by another country occured in Statia. As a side note it is becoming very evident how important these islands were as Europeans colinized the Caribbean and North America. A sailing ship coming from Europe naturally ends up in the Eastern Caribbean as it follows the trade winds and currents. It seems that during the American revolution the US was looked at without much more (if not less) importance than some of the Caribbean islands. Little did the Brits know that the sugar trade would dry up and they would all be lusting after Harley Davidson motorcycles many years later.
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| Probably the nicest and one of the only hotels on the islands "The old gin house" |
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| Fort in the main town of Statia, Oranjestad. It was from this fort in 1776 that the Andrew Doria, an American vessel, came into harbor and gave a salute. The governor (de Graff) didn't know what to do so he fired a return salute, abit two guns less. He didn't realize that although the Andrew Doria was a merchant ship, she was under command of an American rebel navy captain. This event coupled with many other things, mainly the fact that Statia was selling lots of weapons to the American rebels, lead to war between England and Holland. |
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| It felt like we were anchored off the docks in Newark. Those are your BIG boy oil tankers. |
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| Thanks for the help Holland!!!! |
Next stop... Nevis... Hopefully we'll be able to capture a little helper monkey there!
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