DAY 64 Mar 17 - Devil's Island, French Guiana

Devil's Island (French: Île du Diable) is the smallest and northern most island of the three Îles du Salut located about 6 nautical miles off the coast of French Guiana. It has an area of 34.6 acres. It was a small part of the notorious French penal colony in French Guiana until 1952.

The islands are located about fifteen miles from Kourou, which is now the centre for the Space Centre, but was earlier the mainland administrative centre for the penal colony.

The rocky, palm-covered island rises 40 meters above sea level.

The penitentiary was first opened by the government of Emperor Napoleon III in 1852, and became one of the most infamous prisons in history.

In addition to the prisons on all three islands, prison facilities were also located on the mainland at Kourou.

Over time, they became known collectively as "Devil's Island" in the English-speaking world, while they are known in France as the 'bagne de Cayenne', (French: Cayenne penal colony) Cayenne being the main city of French Guiana.

While the colony was in use (1852-1946), the inmates were everything from political prisoners (such as 239 republicans who opposed Napoleon III's coup d'etat) to the most hardened of thieves and murderers.

A great many of the more than 80,000 prisoners sent to the harsh conditions at disease-infested Devil's Island were never seen again.

A boat ride was the only way out, accordingly, very few convicts ever managed to escape. It was considered escape proof because of the strong currents and sharks that surround the islands.

Below is a picture of one of the prison blocks on the island.

Arriving here at 6.00 this morning with the sun up shortly after, reminded me a little of our arrival at Robinson Crusoe Island in the Pacific, where incidentally we sadly heard that eight of it's residents perished last month in the tsunami that followed the tragic earthquake that hit Chile.

Perhaps in size these islands are much smaller that Robinson and its sister islands, but are just as desolate.

As it is the 17th March parts of the ship are colourfully decked out in colours celebrating the National Saint of Ireland.

We even have a St Patrick's Ball tonight to be attended by the Captain and his officers. With his strong Dutch accent and name there is no way Captain Shoond-erbeek can pretend to be Irish even if he puts an 'O' in front of it!!

The sun came up at about 6.30 and by 8.00 it was already hot and humid as we surveyed from our balcony two of the little islands that make up the Isles du Salut trilogy.

The actual Devils island is currently hidden from view behind Ile Royale. It is only accessible by a hire boat from one of the other two islands.

A tender service is on offer today for transport to and from Ile Royale, the biggest of the islands.

Some of the old administrative buildings, recently refurbished, can be just be seen in the photo.

On the Island parts of the old wardens' accommodation has been turned into a hotel although far from a 5 star rated one, we are reliably informed.

The courtesy flag flown on the ship's mast is the tricolour of France as we are in the waters of a French Overseas Territory.

I took the opportunity, therefore, of relaying, via concierge Lydia, a “welcome home” greetings to our illustrious Hotel Manager François, reciprocating his similar February Falklands greeting to me!

Although I brought Maria down some breakfast a little earlier she didn't stir on to the balcony until about 8.00. Even by this time she was not quite ready to have her photo taken.

I'm concerned that with less than a week to go she needs to be weaned off the breakfast in bed notion before we are back in Naples.

This is a habit that I don't contemplate continuing there, as I have gently explained to her!!

We are about six miles off the mainland of French Guiana which can be seen here in the distance.

This is our eighth and final South American country that will be visited on our Grand Voyage circumnavigating this amazing continent.

It was pleasing to receive e-mails from friends and relatives that informed me that have been following the blog. I understand from one of these communications that they were unable to sign-up for the FOLLOW part of the journal, maybe because it is over subscribed they suggested?

I would be interested to hear from any others experiencing this problem. Of course it is possible to comment without being a 'Follower'.

At each port of call the ship issues us with a small map of the area accompanied by a write up on what to do, what to see, and its history plus other relevant facts that might make the visit more interesting.

Reproduced here is a copy of the 'Devil Island' map.

The amount of laundry returned by Deden this morning meant that Maria had her work cut out sorting it all our and putting it away. This has been good time to have clothes cleaned in readiness for going home.

It also allowed her to complete some more packing before turning our mind to disembarking for Devil's Island.

At about 11.30 we took the 15 minute tender ride to Ile Royal.

On checking I was told that there were 401 people off the ship which meant they were all on the island. It was much warmer than we had expected and the air was still with little breeze.

We walked up the 400 feet slope to the top of the island where most of the building can be seen.

On the way we stopped at the old Comm-andant’s House which is now a museum.

It was full of interesting papers from the past. Included in the papers was a photo of the famous Captain Dreyfuss, in his prison hut.

He had been wrongly accuse and convicted of espionage in 1893. Interment followed here on the actual Devil’s Island until his pardoning in 1906.

At the plateau area on top of the island there is an old school house next to the church. This building also provided accommodation for the teachers. I assume they taught the children of some of the prisoners.

I also assume that the prisoners were of both sexes and families must have flourished thus the need for a school house.

The church still has some of the murals painted by inmates well over 150 years ago. It must have been some kind of sanctuary for prisoners to come to the church to produce their art. Perhaps a way of them getting away from the harshness of their environment.

Many of the buildings including the church, while in a state of ill repair, have now had new metal roofs installed.

One of the sadder sites on the island is the little children’s cemetery. Some of the head stones are still readable and shows many babies buried here. Some survived for just months after birth.

Nearby is the convent that was later used as a maternity ward which is unfortunately in a terrible state of repair. In the same building was the hospital with the chief doctor’s quarters adjoining it.

It seems a shame that the authorities have let this notorious and historic Island’s treasures get into such a state of decay.

Little has been preserved for prosperity although work was in progress on selected buildings while we were there.

Some people presumably think that preserving these awful relics of the past is not a desirable thing to do.

The island’s rather basic and unob-trusive hotel once served as barracks for the prison guards but now served the need of the international tourist.

We stopped there and had a much needed cold Heineken beer. I would have thought that the hotel made a killing here today with the several hundred Prinsendam passengers all in need of cold drinks.

The hotel was therefore full of people from the Prinsendam in addition to a large group of people that had come over by boat from the mainland.

Next to the hotel is the old and disused reservoir once used to provide water for the islanders needs.

From the hotel’s grounds on the top of the Island are wonderful views of the much smaller Devils Island that lies close by. This is where Dreyfus’s restored hut can be found.

We were lucky to spot many little reddish guinea pig like animals on stilts that frequent the island and seem very tame. They are called agoutis and are indigenous to this region of the world. They are a local type of rodent.

The island also has a good supply of squirrel monkeys that frequent the many trees that are found there. We had fun seeking them out and photographing them. Again they seemed quite tame and didn’t run when humans were in the vicinity of their habitat.

After a couple of hours exploring this fascinating outpost we felt like we had been stuck in a sauna and so slowly headed back to our tender pick-up point where fortunately a boat was waiting to return us to the ship.

From the tender docking area the near-by island of St Joseph was very clearly visible with little activity apparent. This was where prisoners on solitary confinement were incarcerated during their enforced exile on these inhospitable islands.

Despite only being on this Island for a couple of hours we did get the sad impression of the pure desperation those French prisoners must have felt once they disembarked on one of these three inhumane Devil Islands.

There was no hope for most of them.

Once the tender operation was over at approx-imately 5.30 it was time for these boats to be hoisted back on to the mother ship. This can be a tricky operation particularly when it is windy or when the sea is rough.

For some reason today, when neither conditions applied, one of the poor Prinsendam crew mariners was knocked overboard from the tender into the strong current in the sea as he was assisting in the operation of lifting the tender.

Within minutes he was being swept away from the ship in the fast moving current.

Unfortunately for him the tender from which he fell was unable to execute a rescue presumably because of an engine problem or just incompetence.

I prefer to think it was the former reason. However the captain and others were soon on the bridge watching the rescue operation and maybe asking a question or two as well.

Another tender bringing passengers back from the island was alerted and redirected to the poor crew member who was being swept even further away.

Fortunately he had a functioning life jacket which kept him buoyant. And he showed no sign of panic.

It must have taken at least 20 minutes before his rescue could be accomplished. These surely have been the longest 20 minutes in the poor seaman’s life.

They say that escape from Devil's Island was impossible because of the (a) strong currents and (b) the sharks that inhabit these waters! Thankfully no sharks appeared to our knowledge.

As we eventually managed to sail away once the rescue was completed we had our first sight of all three islands that make up Iles du Salut.

Dinner tonight was a grand affair with the stewards all dressed in suitable green attire in celebration of the day.

We sat with Henk and Lucia at their table for the meal and enjoyed their company thoroughly.

We decide to give the St Patrick's Night Ball a miss and retire early.

I still had today's blog to put out for one thing.