Exercise Bay Rum

News Report

News report that Kate filed with UPI

EXERCISE BAY RUM . . . an adventure training exercise with the aim of teaching soldiers seamanship, sailing, and simple navigation . . .

PLAN . . . a ten-day three-boat sea trip from Belize to the Bay Islands of Honduras . . .

PERSONNEL:

Colonel J. S. S. Gratton, OBE; Commander of the British Honduras Garrison, in command of the exercise

Mrs. Gratton

2nd Lt. Michael M. Tulloch, originally of The Sherwood Foresters, now with the Staffordshires

Volunteers from D. Co., 1st Battalion, The Staffordshire Regiment (Prince of Wales):

Lance Corporal Daniel J. Johnson

Private William S. Farley

Private Stephen A. Warburton

Lance Corporal Thomas T. Currie, Royal Corps of Transport; Col. Gratton’s driver

Bucher Scott, formerly of Atlanta, Georgia, and Sarasota, Florida, now a resident of Belize; “sailing master”

Mrs. Scott; Belize correspondent for UPI

Alex Scott; their 16-year old son

Egbert Williamson; Belize sailor

Mascots:   Pedro—a beagle

  Oscar—an ocelot

EXERCISE BAY RUM got underway way when the 24-foot auxiliary sloop Ceilidh (pronounced KAY-lee in case your Gaelic is rusty), flying the Garrison burgee with its sailfish, cleared Belize Harbor under command of its owner, Col. Gratton, and Mrs. Gratton. Following was the British Army sailboat Ambassador with the detachment of soldiers and the local sailor. The Scotts left later in their faster cruiser, M.Y. Blivet, tender and tug for the trip, stored with supplies of food, water, and fuel for all.

First destination, Tobacco Caye on the reef south of Belize. As the wind dropped, the Ceilidh proceeded under power, leaving the engine-less Ambassador to thumb a ride astern of the Blivet. As the sun set, the sturdy lines of the Belize-built fishing smack at the end of its tow line made a stark silhouette against a skyline of mauve, violet, shocking pink, scalloped by the low, graying mountains along the coastline.

As it grew dark, the lieutenant on the Ambassador and Alex (who had been instructed by a signalman before leaving) rigged up the platoon radio equipment which had been issued to each boat. First, unnerving message from the Ambassador: “You will be interested to know that we sprang a leak thirty minutes ago. However, it is satisfactorily attended to. Do not reduce speed.”

At the first glimpse of the colonel’s light far ahead in the darkness, flashlights signaled as the radiomen tried to make contact. Bucher called Alex forward as lookout and I took over the radio work in my own timorous and inept fashion . . . delighted with my apparent professionalism when I had wits enough to send out a for-your-information message telling the crew in the Ambassador not to expect to reach Ceilidh for another thirty or forty minutes, realizing that most of them were unfamiliar with the deceptiveness of distances at sea.

Tobacco Caye to South West Caye, at the southern tip of Glover’s Reef, an atoll on a long ridge of an oceanic mountain range east of and paralleling the reef off British Honduras (second longest reef in the world, after the Great Barrier Reef of Australia).

South West Caye was almost trite in its adherence to the tropical paradise format . . . long sandy beach, hundreds of coconut trees, jagged coral along its weather coast, crystal water shading from clear to aqua, pale green, jade, turquoise, and indigo according to depth . . . everything for the soldier-sailor from the north except tropical maidens.

Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

Exercise Bay Rum’s destination, the Bay Islands, is an interesting area settled by the British in the 17th century, long a stronghold for pirates, formally ceded to Honduras in 1859. At the time the islands were given to Honduras, the people, principally British, were given permission to keep their own language, own schools, own churches. The Bay Islands still are a little pocket of British Colonial culture, resentful of their political subservience to Honduras, resented by the mainlanders for their resistance to latinization. Its people are principally fishermen and seafarers. A good percentage of the small boats sailing the waters in this part of the world have Bay Islanders as captains.

The flotilla, which sailed from South West Caye at ten o’clock at night, deserved Technicolor movie treatment. It was an eerie melange of disembodied faces exposed and changed by running lights, skeletonized rigging, lightly moving hulls temporarily huddled as tow lines were secured and payed out.

The three moved through the pass in the reef with the Blivet towing the sailboats. The wind was directly ahead, the sea moderately rough, and it would have been a desperately long and hard beat for the sailboats to cross separately. Alex was seconded to the colonel in the sloop Ceilidh for the long passage across open water to the Bay Islands. We carried two soldiers since the Ambassador was a bit crowded for the six men she was carrying.

The trip . . . rough, but not violently so; dark, but with a temporary piece of moon and night-long stars; endless, as relentlessly rolling through the dark can be no matter how many cat naps and cups of coffee break it.

Navigation was difficult even after daylight, with haze hiding the coast of Honduras. All of us were tired from the rough night so we changed our destination for Utila, the nearest of the Bay Islands, rather than proceed to Roatán, for which we had cleared.

Ceilidh turned loose her tow line as we rounded the point of Utila and, blue-and-white be-starred Honduran ensign and yellow quarantine flag flying, the colonel led his “fleet” into harbor.

Several local launches ran out to meet us and led the way past the shoals. It was a picturesque town, typically British Colonial with red-roofed, square frame houses lining the crescent harbor facing the rugged mountains of the mainland across twenty-odd miles of sea.

The main pier was solidly jammed with people awaiting our arrival. All the local authorities were there, desolate that confusion over our schedule had spoiled the elaborate reception planned for the colonel.

Somehow word had been that we would reach Utila (not Roatán) two days earlier. All the top officials of the Bay Islands . . . military commandante, gobernador, policía, aduana, a detachment of soldiers and other key people . . . had been sent over from Roatán to meet Col. Gratton. They had left, finally, just an hour before our arrival.

Gradually it registered with all of us that, despite the colonel’s assurances to the Honduran Consul that this was an informal visit, the bare facts which had filtered through to Tegucigalpa, the capital, must have appeared questionable, possibly sinister!

A British colonel, first officer of that rank to visit the Bay Islands in over a hundred years, was arriving from Belize with three boats and a detachment of soldiers.

The Hondurans outdid themselves in offering the colonel an enthusiastically friendly welcome. Utila authorities accepted copies of the ships’ papers, although we were to enter formally next day in Roatán, and waived quarantine so that the soldiers could go ashore.

One of the soldiers, seeing his first Honduran coin, 20 centavos of lempira, with an Indian chieftain’s head on one side, exclaimed, “Blimey, there’s Hiawatha.”

Next day, asked about Utila, one of the corporals remarked that it had seven churches and one bar . . . and that one so small that they had to take turns lining up at the bar to order a beer.

Coxen Hole, Roatán, Honduras

We arrived mid-afternoon after an easy crossing from Utila. The official reception committee had reconvened on the pier at Roatán, stiff in khaki uniforms. Col. Gratton, who had not tried to find space for a uniform in the limited living space on his sloop, met them in khaki trousers, scarlet sport shirt, and seasoned Malayan jungle hat, demonstrating the informality of his visit to the country.

The officials entertained us the first evening in the cool patio of the Club Bossa Nova, under a gloriously spreading almond tree. Next evening we invited them with their wives to the Blivet and ended the evening with a cruise from our anchorage back to the main pier.

Ice was not available in Coxen Hole so we took the Grattons and went up the coast to Oak Ridge to buy some. The island is lovely . . . benign green hills, coves, little islets, coastal communities of houses on stilts built right over the water, thatched huts, and in the distance facing the southern coast of Roatán, the mountains of the mainland.

Oak Ridge is a town on stilts, built on the long, narrow fingers of a winding bay. The rusted hulk of a stranded ship looms as a dismal warning at the west edge of the narrow channel into the harbor. The ice house is part of a neat little marina operated by an enthusiastic American who bought his property sight-unseen, visited it, returned to California, sold out, and with his family moved down to Roatán.

The soldiers were invited to a big dance where Miss Roatán would be selected. To their chagrin, there were just two contestants, and the party folded at ten o’clock when the town’s lights went out. As a matter of fact, normally the lights are put out at nine o’clock but they were left on later in honor of the colonel’s visit.

Another day . . . picnicking at the western end of Roatán . . . great wide sandy beach, coconut palms, and pitted volcanic cliffs.

The soldiers took some local friends with them and one of the girls, spotting Steve’s one blue eye and one brown, made up a calypso about him, to the delight of the young soldier . . . who understood not a word since it was in Spanish.

Half Moon Caye, British Honduras

Cleared Roatán in the early afternoon, with a strong southeast wind. The Ambassador, who had suffered the indignity of frequent tows, sailed off almost out of sight. Lt. Tulloch, an experienced sailor, put his men on the tiller in rotation and let them practice the lessons in sailing he had been giving them through lectures.

Another night-long sail with alternating naps and turns at the helm. Interesting, with the responsibility of watch-dogging the two sailboats and keeping the flotilla together. Ceilidh skirted the edge of one of the squalls dotting the area and had severe enough winds for Mrs. Gratton to have to call the colonel to relieve her at the tiller.

Sighted Half Moon Caye soon after dawn. Picked a slow passage to anchorage through the treacherous reef. Behind us the Ceilidh scraped briefly without damaging herself. A local fisherman, Pete Young, assessing the situation, poled out from a nearby caye in his dory to guide them through the coral.

Half Moon Caye is one of the loveliest in the country. Although its shape was altered by Hurricane Hattie, it still is a sandy crescent with a Victorian lighthouse at one end, coconut palms without underbrush giving a clear view from one side of the caye to the other, and on the southern half of the island, dense green foliage with Chinese-red blossoms. Living in the bush are some of the rare booby birds, which behave like slightly inebriated clowns.

At Half Moon, the Colonel’s Lady invited the entire party for a curry lunch. Mrs. Gratton magically produced can after can of ingredients, simmered all over a charcoal fire, cooked her rice, and served the traditional British Army luncheon on the beach.

Just before the Ambassador sailed from Roatán, the secretary to the aduana arrived in a launch with a gift of two chickens for the men. They were put on board squawking, proudly held aloft for photographing as I took pictures of the Ambassador under sail, and stepped on during the night accidentally by Egbert, who was probably more startled than the chickens. The fowls were destined for roasting on Half Moon Caye but that evening, as cooking time approached, the soldiers turned the execution over to Egbert, who had not developed their degree of affection for the feathered passengers.

Trip home, uneventful. Summing up the trip wryly as the Ambassador was taken in tow for the last time, the colonel’s driver, Cpl. Tom Currie, remarked in his broad Scot’s brogue that one of the things he had learned from the trip was “never a-go-go-go without an engine.”

On the wharf at Belize City, army lorries waited for the arrival of the convoy. The soldiers stepped ashore considering themselves seasoned sailors. And Exercise Bay Rum was over.

Kate V. Scott

 

Personal Addendum

Letter written after Trip to Bay Islands in September 1965

Very few British Army adventure training exercises include a family of Americans among their personnel…and almost none, I expect, carry ocelots as mascots.

At the briefing session preceding departure, newly arrived Lt. Tulloch asked Col. Gratton if he were taking his beautiful pair of black cockers. The colonel replied that, because their boat was small and the trip long, they had decided not to. The Lieutenant remarked that it would have been nice to have pets along.

Col. Gratton’s blue eyes twinkled as he answered that Mr. Scott had the pet situation under control…that he was taking his beagle and his ocelot.

Lt. Tulloch looked startled and said, “Ocelot, that’s a kind of cat, isn’t it?”

“Yes, like a panther…only smaller.”

Oscar is a good bit smaller than a panther. He’s a little over a year old, born in the British Honduras forest, very tame and affectionate, but a bit “jungle-y” at night. It is not easy to find babysitters for ocelots, so we decided to take both Pedro, the beagle, and Oscar with us.

Within a day, Oscar had decided that ocelots belong on boats. He found several easy holes to retire into: a cupboard in the galley; a perch among the life jackets in the forepeak, where only a banded tail dangling over the edge betrayed his presence; a padded nook behind a suitcase.

Oscar was a good sailor after the first rough night passage, when he was in his cage and probably got whiffs of diesel fumes. He was released and was quietly seasick in neat little piles before retiring in dignity to one of his “caves.” As we saw him adjust to his sea life, we simply leashed him in one of his hideaways during passages when it would have been dangerous having him prowl on deck, and he was completely happy rocked to sleep by the boat’s motion.

At night, before being incarcerated so that the rest of us could sleep without being pounced on and licked awake with a sandpaper tongue, Oscar prowled the boat, swinging on the after-canopy, leaping to the deck-house top, disappearing in and out of hatches, behaving as if he had his own private jungle afloat.

He showed a shocking lack of respect for the Colonel’s Lady and jumped briefly on her head, not once but repeatedly, at very awkward moments indeed.

The soldiers loved both animals. Pedro swam with them, visited the Ambassador, stole rides in any available dinghy whenever he could.

And Oscar quickly made himself responsible for the comings and goings of all personnel of the flotilla. After one visit ashore, when he decided ocelots don’t really belong on beaches, he stayed on the boat, appearing the moment a dinghy pulled alongside. The soldiers got used to finding an ocelot in their inflated 4-man raft whenever they returned to it after coming aboard the Blivet.

Oscar’s first appearance at Utila caused something of a panic. As we tied up at the deck with dozens of people crowding alongside, Oscar, who was leashed in the cabin, managed to stick his head out of a window level with the ankles of the onlookers. There were screams of tigrillo as the nearest Bay Islanders pushed backward, almost sending those behind them into the sea on the other side of the wharf.

In both Utila and Roatán, people circled the boat endlessly by dory and launch, trying to see the tigrillo. While ocelots are common to the forests throughout this part of the world and frequently are kept as pets, people usually are afraid of them. Also, few ocelots are as “people-y” as Oscar or have as much freedom as he was able to have in the relative confinement of the boat.

Oscar was always leashed at a dock, although leaving the security of his very own boat for the terrifying and threatening outside world was probably the last thing he would have done. And we kept him secured when alongside the sailboats since he certainly would have boarded them to visit his friends and would have been difficult to retrieve from the rigging.