Reflection and musings on Trinidad's History

A narrative about official, and unofficial visits to Trinidad  by incumbent and past presidents. On November, 21 st , 1936, the USS Indianapolis refueled off Port of Spain harbour with US president Fanklin Delano Roosevelt on board. He went into a small craft while the ship was refueling and tried his hand at some fishing down-the–islands, but didn’t catch a thing. He was on his way to Argentina to attend a peace conference in Buenos Aires, the capital.  On the return journey on December 11 th , he visited Port of Spain, with his son James. This was the first visit to Trinidad by an incumbent US president. Roosevelt was met on board the Indianapolis by the Colonial Secretary, Alfred Wallace Seymour C.M.G. , acting in place of Governor Murchison Fletcher, who was visiting Tobago at the time. He toured Port of Spain by car and held a press conference for the local and US press, who had flown down to Trinidad aboard one of Pan Am’s flying boats for the interview. This was n

Onlookers at the scene of the 1885 train crash. Train crash at Champ Fleurs An unseasonal shower of rain greeted the lunchtime train from Arima as it pulled into the St Joseph Railway station. It was Tuesday, 28th, January, 1885. Trinidad Government Railway had been operating  since 1876. Those nine years passed without any fatal accident involving passengers on the railway. The line, at first, went from Port of Spain to Arima, but by 1882, it reached San Fernando, and Princes Town by 1884. The passing of a San Fernando train made it necessary for the Arima train to wait a while in St Joseph, while passengers boarded and detrained. The entire railways system back then was single-lined. This meant, to avoid collision, the line must first be cleared of other traffic moving in the opposite direction. The “staff system” was in place at Trinidad Government Railway at the time. Before a train began its journey through a section of line between stations, the Stationmaster

A duel in the Victorian era. In the early 1800s, two young friends, Messrs Smith and Naysmith, met at the back of an old sugar boiling house in La Brea, south Trinidad. They were bent on killing each other, as the purpose of the meeting was a duel between the two. In attendance were the seconds, Mr. Smithson and Mr. Powell. The disagreement between Smith and Naysmith was ludicrous. The two were dinner-guests at Powell’s house when Smith joked that his family name came from a line of Blacksmiths, and playfully suggested that one of Naysmith’s ancestors was once an apprentice of one of Smith’s ancestors. The apprentice was so inept, that the blacksmith dismissed him one day with the admonishment that he will never become a blacksmith: he was “nae smith”. Naysmith took offence to the pun, and challenged his friend to a duel. Warner Arrundell, the only doctor in the district, attended a duel for a promised fee of $100.  The temporary rivals fired three times and missed, until

How an error in diplomacy affected a historic event. The seagulls and porpoises at the Port of Spain harbour witnessed a very unusual sight on Monday 23 rd , December, 1907 as sixteen freshly-painted, white ships of the US Navy entered the Gulf of Paria. That Monday, the citizens of the city were undoubtedly busy with their holiday preparations, and night fell very quickly as the ships gathered outside the port as there was no deep-water harbour. Of the sixteen warships that later came to be known as Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet”, eleven of them were brand new, and five recently refurbished. The fleet steamed from Hampton Roads, Virginia six days before, and was in Trinidad for refueling. The supply of coals that they were about to take on was preordered and stockpiled in Trinidad in advance, so that the quantity required for a such a large fleet will not disrupt the normal coaling operation. Teddy Roosevelt, eager to raise the status of the United States from b

An insight into life and motoring in Trinidad during WW2 By Wayne Abraham We all know what a tyre is. They are everywhere: on our cars, vans and trucks, on airplanes, lawn mowers, and a variety of other vehicles. Scottish-born, John Boyd Dunlop, patented a pneumatic tyre in 1888 for use on bicycles and light vehicles. His patent was rejected in 1892, partly because he was not the inventor. This did not deter Dunlop from developing the pneumatic rubber tyre to the early predecessor of the ones we know today, and from participating in the formation of various rubber and tyre companies bearing his surname. Dunlop Tyres were manufactured at a factory in Point Fortin Trinidad for a while, but that's far ahead of my story. The first car to appear on the streets of Port of Spain in 1900 was an 1899 model, steam-powered, Locomobile. It was not long after that gasoline-fueled; internal-combustion engine cars became more popular than steam or electric cars. The popularity of cars