St. Pierre, Martinique

The anchorage in the town of Saint Pierre always seems to be crowded. There's a big bay but only a narrow shelf where it's shallow enough for cruising boats to drop anchor, it drops rapidly from just 25 feet deep down to 80 feet or more. On our first try we ended up a little too close to another boat for our liking, so we tried again much further down the beach and got settled. Then we went into town to do a little sightseeing. Our first stop was the Musee Volcanologique, which houses artifacts and photos of the eruption of Mont Pelee in 1902. Before the eruption, Saint Pierre was a bustling hub full of ships importing and exporting goods. That all changed on May 8, 1902. The volcano erupted and it took just ten minutes to destroy the town, covering it with hot ash. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in those ten minutes. In "after" photos, it looks more like an atomic bomb was dropped -- twelve ships in the harbor sank and there were no buildings left, just some walls here and there. The museum was full of weird displays of ordinary household objects completely transformed by intense heat. There were nails and screws from a hardware store that looked like a surreal sculpture all fused together. Wineglasses and vases were melted like they were wax, and there was a large metal church bell that had been crushed almost flat. Despite all this destruction there was one survivor, Louis Cyparis, who was in a solitary cell in the jail when the eruption happened. He was badly burned but survived several days drinking water that leached into his cell. What was surprising is that his cell is still intact and you can go inside. We walked over to where the jail was and took a look. The walls of the cell are a good two feet thick. The foundations of the theater next door are still there, too, so it was really interesting to walk around and see what they had excavated. Most of the rest of town looks a little ramshackle, and part of that is due to the fact that they rebuilt using the walls left standing after the eruption. So everywhere you look there's evidence of what happened here a hundred years ago. Mont Pelee is still active but is closely monitored and hasn't had any major activity since 1932.

Of course when we got back to the boat another sailboat had anchored pretty close to us. We didn't say anything to them because it looked like it would be okay if the wind stayed steady and we all pointed the same way. But just before midnight sure enough the wind died down and the boats started turning in different directions. They started getting pretty close to us so we sat outside and watched for an hour. I guess they were awake, too, because they finally hauled in a little chain so they would be far enough away not to hit us.

Where we are:
Location=St. Pierre, Martinique
Lat=14 44.351
Lon=61 10.652