|
By chance I have arrived at the Turks and Caicos Islands on the same flight as Lord Triesman, a junior minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has come with a message for the "Belongers" of this tiny pink dot on the Caribbean map: "We have no continuing colonial objectives."
Triesman, buttoned into pinstripes, steps into a polished white Range Rover. I haul my diving gear to the rickety five-seat puddle-jumper which carries my wife and I over the azure sea to Salt Cay, population 62.
It is an island untouched by modern times, paradise to aficiandos of Graham Greene and early James Bond, and the diplomacy of imperial hangover has been the last thing on my mind.
We are heading for the reefs and the wreck of HMS Endymion, an 18th century frigate, and to a different sort of hangover with Porter Williams
|
 |
|
 |
Upstate Downstate
|
|
|
The governor of Britain’s outpost in the Caribbean is packing away his gold braid
|
| |
III, the American ex-pat who runs the bar. With a gold earring and slippery charm, he is the type to have been ladling out the rum to the pirates of the Spanish Main. Beware of "porterizing": incapacitation through shots added to your glass behind your back.
His Lordship speaks of devolving powers, of laying down the white man's burden. The Governor, meanwhile, is expecting a fresh consignment of portraits of the Queen to hang in celebration of her official 80th on June 10. But for the first time his cocked hat and gold braid is staying in its trunk for the Birthday Parade.
Such pomp has been declared "inappropriate". We pour some more rum, and watch the sun setting into the sea where Hawkins and Drake begat the Royal Navy and all that followed. 
FIRST
POSTED MAY 9, 2006
|
skip to nav
