Baby Bim - A peek into Pelican’s Past - Part I
Similar in shape, a mini Bim of sorts.
From here, vessels continue to arrive and depart.
Once home to birds, Bertie and the gravely ill,
How much remains of Pelican Island still?
Located on the southwest coast of the island of Barbados is the Barbados Port Inc., an internationally acclaimed harbour for sea vessels. It today welcomes and bids farewell to thousands of visitors and cargo from across the world. However, the operation which facilitates the entry and exit of cargo ships and cruise liners year round was quite different to what once existed in its place. The port terminals shadow the bones of a small island and former dependency of Barbados known as Pelican Island. As its name suggests, it earned its name because it was once home to shoals of brown feathered pelicans which could be seen commanding the skies or dipping down to the ocean for their next meal.
Physically, Pelican was a mini Barbados with a similar pear shape look and positioned and set on the same axis. It was quite tiny as you can imagine, about 250 yards by 150 yards. Much like ‘Big Bim’, its beaches on the West Coast were sheltered while those to the East were more rugged. Nonetheless, all of them were breathtakingly beautiful.
As aforementioned, the Island once stood where the Barbados Port is now erected, approximately 100 yards from the Fontabelle-Carlisle Bay stretch on the mainland. Like the Port, Pelican welcomed many a vessel from abroad in its heyday but the reasoning behind this was much different. You see, the island was also referred to as ‘Quarantine’. Due to her strategic position, Barbados has always been of importance as the port of intersection between Europe and the West Indies. However, this reality made the island extremely vulnerable to any and every new disease which accompanied incoming callers. From cholera to yellow fever, malaria, typhoid and dysentery, Barbados was no stranger to epidemics. These outbreaks often tore through the population as was seen with cholera in 1854 which claimed thousands of lives in a matter of weeks.
Therefore, it was soon recognised that there was a grave need to isolate and monitor infected arrivals to contain the disease from the rest of the population. With this in mind, a hospital was erected on the little isle across the waters: Pelican. This recommendation came in 1866 after several yellow fever cases were recorded amongst passengers arriving from Demerara and threatened the health and safety of Barbadians (Stoute, 1977, p. 7)
By March the next year, the work on this hospital was underway and by 1873, it was functional as Barbados’ quarantine centre. To give some insight into the ins and outs of the operation was Dr. Bertie Clarke who was one of the few people who grew up on the island. As granddaughter to the head nurse at the Hospital, Mrs. Ethel Prescod, Bertie got front-row access to the daily going ons.
In her memoir, Bertie explained that the facility’s buildings were divided by a tall wall. The buildings on the above side of the wall housed administrative operations. As for the other side, the Hospital’s main medical activities took place there. She explained:
“The other part of the island “Below the wall” had three other wards, a fumigating station, its own jetty, the luxury of a bathing hut and an elaborate building known as “The Hospital”. This was a well-designed building at the extreme tip of the island with individual rooms all fitted with mosquito screens.” (Clarke, p. 10).
As a child, she watched as an unnamed number of ships sailed into the mainland harbour with a yellow flag hoisted. This yellow flag was the telltale sign that there was potentially an infected individual on board. Not soon after arriving, the ship would turn and make the short journey over to Pelican. With this, everyone aside from not hospital staff (and Bertie’s family) was expected to evacuate the premises to accommodate the isolation of whoever was on board. Once off the ship, patients were taken to the fumigation building where their clothes were removed and disinfected in a sulphur oven.
As it relates to sanitation, the compound was outfitted with some of the most modern waste-removal systems at the time. Erected were three structures which when opened, each contained a wooden seat with a bucket. From there, the sea was used as the escape for sewage. Compared to the more commonly used pit toilets, this was rather “state-of-the-art” for its time.
The set up at the quarantine centre was apparently quite satisfactory as it was still welcoming patients into the 19th century. Around this time, smallpox was making its presence felt and any individuals with noticeable symptoms (fever, vomiting, muscular pains, rash) were immediately directed to Pelican to isolate. What was particularly impressive was that according to Bertie, deaths at the facility were far and few between, a sign of excellent care by the Barbadian medical staff. Despite this, as the years went by, a decreasing number of infected individuals were sent to Pelican. This was because infected arrivals were now being treated at the Lazaretto in Black Rock, St. Michael. Save for a few cases of meningitis in the 1940s which were taken to Pelican when the Black Rock facility burnt down, the Hospital was no longer in use by the late 1930s (Clarke, p. 11).
Yet, the significance of the Pelican Quarantine station was memorialised even after the island was incorporated into the mainland with one of the original buildings being left behind. While it is unclear whether it still stands today, it was located somewhere in the area of Fontabelle. In addition to this, the naming of the Pelican Village is no doubt a nod to the sacred Bajan bird as well as the former dependency. A fitting tribute indeed, as Pelican Island served an invaluable function in protecting the mainland population from total decimation by one epidemic or the other and should be suitably honoured for such.
Bibliography
Clarke, Bertie. “Pelican Island”. In Bajan.
Stoute, Edward. “Pelican Quarantine Station”. Advocate Magazine. February 13, 1977. p. 7.
