Back To The Islands

We first met Duke and Lisa Wells a full decade ago when we made the difficult decision to pack up the apartment at Love Beach after 40 years of enjoying The Bahamas. At that point, Duke and Lisa of The Bahamian Project took a small sample of the thousands of images we had accumulated through Nicolas’s painstaking documentation of the Family Islands over thousands of miles of exploration through the work of Island Expedition.

Ten years on, The Bahamian Project invited us to return to the islands to document them as they are now; our archival images would provide the perfect starting point for a “then and now” comparison of specific settlements.

With this in mind and news that Nassau was experiencing a major boom in development, we were returning with a little trepidation as to what we’d find.

We formulated a plan; start off by touching base with Duke and Lisa in Nassau and then make our way to Ragged Island on the Captain C mail boat. We were curious to see how Duncan Town had regenerated after the devastation caused by category 5 hurricane Irma in 2017

With its drop-offs of supplies in Staniel Cay, Black Point and Farmers Cay along the way, Captain C would be the ideal platform from which to gather images, interview residents and document the special relationship Bahamians have with the mail boat system.

Why the Ragged Island Route?

Of all the places to visit, readers might be curious to know why we chose to go to Ragged Island.

We have a longtime connection with Staniel Cay in the Exumas. For many years, artist Joan Mann supported Island Expedition by welcoming our young students to camp on the beach in front of her home at Staniel. Her grandson, Soli Lawrence, joined one of the expeditions in his teens.

In reciprocation of her support, we hosted Joan whenever she visited Nassau and enjoyed hosting her in the Isle of Wight, UK and the South of France. From our connection to Joan we became regulars at the Annual New Year’s Day Regatta, writing press reports for the local papers and features in Southern Boating and other magazines.

Joan spoke very fondly of mail boat rides she’d taken with her best friend Mary Lowe , who lived in neighbouring Black Point. The two ladies would head south aboard the Emmett and Cephas bound for Ragged Island where they would not just stock up on salt, but enjoy the company of Maxine Wallace, another strong-minded lady.

They must have been a formidable trio. Maxine told me they would enjoy line fishing together from her boat and spent hours sharing stories and laughing together. Both Mary and Joan have passed now, but the way they talked about Ragged Island made me determined to go there.

Aside from these very personal reasons, the news that Ragged Island was still recovering in the wake of category 5 hurricane ‘Irma’, which swept through the islands back in 2017, meant there was certainly plenty to investigate. Had the settlement bounced back? What would we find?

For Nicolas, it was his second trip. When putting together a book on the Central and Southern Bahamas, he arrived at Duncan Town with a small team in August of 1987 aboard an inflatable. The locals wouldn’t allow the expeditioners to sleep in a tent, instantly inviting them into their homes. They were the first foreign visitors of that year to Ragged Island.

I shall be bagging up handfuls of Ragged Island salt, sharing them with friends and telling them exactly where it came from, just as Joan had done.

Written by: Jane Popov
Photos by: Nicolas Popov