There’s a legend that alleges Robert Louis Stevenson used Norman Island as the inspiration for his classic Treasure Island. Part of the myth credits Stevenson’s uncle, a sailor, with regaling his nephew with legends of the British Virgin Islands. First sighted by Columbus in 1493, the mystique of the BVI certainly would’ve no doubt intrigued Stevenson, who crafted the first chapters of the book in the cold and dreary Scottish Highlands in 1881, nearly 400 years after the islands’ discovery. The story is augmented by the fact that not a half-mile off the coast of nearby Peter Island lies Dead Chest Island, but here the story grows murkier. It’s unclear whether the real-life island took its name from the sea shanty “Dead Man’s Chest” that Stevenson likely penned for the book or if he lifted the name from a book about the West Indies by Charles Kingsley, an English writer and contemporary of Stevenson’s.
I remember reading Treasure Island as a kid, one of those books that Jude and I raced through after our father consistently praised it as one of his favorites growing up. I mentally added Hispaniola, the name of Captain Flint’s schooner, to our growing list of boat names.
Norman has its share of actual history, too, from Spanish galleons transporting chests filled with silver coins to hapless fishermen braving a storm only to discover gold doubloons washed into their boat. No one’s quite sure where the name of the island originated, but another fable claims that Norman was the name of a pirate who laid claim to owning the island (legally or illegally) sometime during the 18th century. We would certainly find our share of interesting moments during our stay, and while I won’t fill up 34 chapters like Stevenson, I’ll attempt to do the famous island justice.
I awoke just in time to greet the dawn. I’d slept soundly in the cockpit, and awoke feeling as refreshed as I’d been since I left Santa Barbara five days earlier. It struck me that my internal clock was slowly growing adjusted to its temporary time zone, and I passed the time that Ken slept by first quietly cleaning up the dishes and garbage from the previous night, then settling back into the starboard-side bench with The Tempest, which I’d neglected since landing in Tortola. I chuckled knowingly in Act 2 as Ariel’s song floats the stranded Italians off to sleep and Antonio comments that it is “the quality o’ th’ climate” that causes their strange drowsiness—I could certainly appreciate the sentiment. The quiet morning didn’t last long, however, and as soon as the sun rose and burned off the slinky morning haze, the Bight sprang to life with boats leaving their moorings, others quickly snapping up those vacated, and frantic worker-bee dinghies motoring away from their vessels, off to fetch provisions or dump garbage for their queens.
Our trash would need to be disposed of sometime today as well, but considering we’d been cleaning our plates the old-fashioned way (either by devouring our meals or sharing scraps with the fish), we had little more than some food wrappers, dirty paper towels, and empty beer cans and bottles in our wastebasket. Early that morning a company wittily named Deliverance brought its boat around the Bight, the two long-haired white kids at the helm looking like they’d just stepped off their longboards at Leadbetter Point in Santa Barbara. They delivered any and every type of amenity from fresh ice to birthday cakes, and they took away our just-barely-full bag of trash for $2.50. My instinctive read of the two young men proved accurate, and we talked for a few minutes about surf conditions in the BVI before they motored on to the next boat. I learned that there were indeed a few good beach and point breaks in the islands, centered mostly around Tortola, but with so many dangerous reef bottoms (both exposed and hidden), they suggested I stick to snorkeling.
Note: here's an aerial photo of Norman Island for reference.
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