A new start for Bimini

What a difference five years can make. In 2005 I flew to Bimini from Ft. Lauderdale on a Grumman Albatross and spent one of my nights on the island at the Compleat Angler hotel. Now, of course, the seaplanes are gone, as is the Compleat Angler. The fatal crash in December of 2005 put an end to the over 80 years of Chalk’s relatively accident free service, just as a fire, barely a month later, would destroy the historic inn. The NTSB investigation into the plane crash discovered that the airline had “failed to properly repair the fatigue cracks” in the Albatross’s fuselage while no one really knows how the blaze at the Compleat Angler started. Walking down King’s Highway (one of two roads on the island) you can still see the foundation and the concrete chimney of the hotel’s fireplace. Nothing has changed since then and as far as I know there are no plans to rebuild the inn, which had become a kind of unofficial museum for the island and a shrine to my grandfather with an autographed copy of one of his novels and many photographs of his fishing exploits.

 Chalk's Grumman Albatross landing in Bimini

For my father there was never any question about staying at the Compleat Angler so long as Helen Duncombe owned the hotel. She and her husband Henry had built the inn in 1935 and while other places might have had swimming pools, or marinas or fancy restaurants, nothing could compete with my father’s childhood memories. Whenever possible he took me to the same room where he and his father had slept. It was up on the second floor and had a view of the Blue Water Marina across the street. It was small by today’s standards, with two single beds and an ancient, wood burning stove in the center. The stove was there for heating, as it could get cold in the winter. When I was eight I remember asking my dad about the stove and he said that I should never touch it during a storm. Years back, when he was a year or two younger than I was then he’d been sitting on my bed and my grandfather was on the other side of the room near the door. There was thunder outside and heavy rain and my father had made the mistake of walking to the stove and touching it to see how hot it could get when a lightening bolt connected with the hotel and threw him back against the wall. It knocked him unconscious and he said that Ernest had picked him up and carried him out in to the rain to find a doctor. 

 The Compleat Angler before the blaze

My father also told me about the boxing matches that Ernest organized on the island. He was passionate about fighting and in 2005 I asked Yama Bahama (William H. Butler, Jr.), a native of Bimini and one of the greatest welterweight fighters of the 1950s, if it was true what they said about my grandfather, that he’s set up a ring where the seaplanes used to land and that young men would come from all over the Bahamas to knock him out, but that none of them ever did. Yama told me that while he had never seen Ernest fight his older brother had and that in his opinion Ernest always won for the simple reason that none of his challengers had any professional training. Many of them were big, really big, and incredibly strong but Ernest had technique and that made all the difference.

 Ernest boxing in Bimini, 1936

“He used his head,” said Yama, “and while he’d sometimes get beat up pretty bad he knew a thing or two about fighting, see? And those guys never had a chance.”

The Bimini Big Game Club is right across the road from where I spoke with Yama.  Like a lot of things on the island it had seen its better days. In 2008 it shut down due to the economic crisis and its effect on tourism. But the fact that it’s now reopened can definitely be seen as a turning point for Bimini. After an extended period of mala suerte, starting with the Chalk’s crash and continuing with the destruction of the Compleat Angler, its new owners are optimistic about the future. It’s now a “Guy Harvey Outpost”, the first in a series of resorts that will mix Caribbean pleasures with Mr. Harvey’s renowned passion for Blue Marlins, the sea, research and conservation. I have to say that I was impressed by what I saw there last July. The hotel looks great, the food is excellent and the staff very friendly and helpful. With any luck at all the reopening of the Big Game and its marina will put Bimini back on the tourism and big game fishing map where it belongs and that other good things for the island will follow.

 The Bimini Big Game Club marina at dawn

Chalk's

There’s a lot to be said for flying on a new airplane. Generally they’re more fuel efficient and quieter, more comfortable, and excluding acts of God and pilot error, a guarantee that you will get to where you’re going in one piece. Still, being fresh off the assembly line isn’t everything.

Up until recently, anyone who wanted to fly the old-fashioned way, with lots of noise, popping ears and serious jolts when the weather got bad, could take a Chalk’s seaplane from Miami to Bimini in the Bahamas. These were vintage Grummans, most of them built in 1947, and they took off and landed in the shipping channel of the city. Chalk’s had been around forever and when I first climbed aboard one in the early 1960’s the airline had already been in service for over thirty years. The owner and founder, Arthur “Pappy” Chalk, was an ex-aviator from the First World War and when I was a boy he was almost always at the ticket counter in the hut next to the water that doubled as a terminal for the tiny airline. My father, Gregory, knew him well, as did my great-uncle Les, and whenever we went to Bimini for a weekend of fishing Pappy would help us with our bags and close the rear door of the Grumman when we were all on board.

My grandmother Pauline and father Gregory leaving a Chalk's seaplane in Bimini harbor, 1930's

I don’t know how many times I flew to Bimini, hundreds perhaps, but I never got tired of it. There was nothing quite like the sensation of being in a plane that could float into a channel, turn to the left and then soar out over the Gulf Stream. In some of the earlier Grummans there were only seven or eight seats and I remember the view from the small windows, that were actually more like the portholes of a boat, turning white for a minute or two with all the water from the wind and the speed and wondering if we would ever make it.

My father had learned to fly when he lived in Africa in the 1950’s and sometimes when we were airborne and had reached our cruising altitude the co-pilot would let him sit in his seat and take the controls of the plane for a couple of minutes. It was the kind of thing that you weren’t supposed to do and that in today’s post 9/11 world would definitely cost a pilot his job, or worse, but that back then was possible. My dad knew everyone who worked for Chalk’s and even though he had his own fishing boat that he took from Miami to Alice Town on North Bimini he liked to fly and liked the Grumman Mallards in particular.

These planes were incredibly sturdy and would fly in almost any kind of weather. Once in December of 1973, when my parents were divorced and my father had taken the three of us to the island for the weekend, we were getting ready to go back to Miami but a bad storm was approaching and we didn’t know if the plane that was scheduled to land would make it. I remember that it seemed to bounce over the heavy chop in the bay between the north and the south island and when it was still in the shipping channel and where it would have to turn ramp next to the customs house the wind was so strong that the tip of the right wing was under water and one of the engines was flaming from the strain. In the end it made it up the ramp and the pilot didn’t seem to think that it was anything unusual. My dad asked him if he was still going to fly back to Miami that afternoon and he told us that it wouldn't be a problem.

A Grumman leaving Bimini a few days before the December 2005 crash

So, we climbed up the stairs and took our seats and once airborne we found out that there would be another, unscheduled, stop at a Cat Kay, an island to the south of Bimini. The landing there was smooth enough, but the take off was hellish. The Grumman was heading straight into the wind and the waves were enormous. We smashed into about ten crests until finally we were airborne, and even my father was impressed by the pilot’s ability and the plane’s strength.

That was the kind of outfit that Pappy Chalk ran, but nothing lasts forever and when he sold the airline in 1975 it passed from one financial group to another. The old Grummans continued to fly in the thirty years that followed but in this age of deregulation and cost cutting, maintenance is often overlooked, sometimes with tragic consequences. On December 19th, 2005 one of the Mallards crashed just off the coast of Miami Beach when its right wing separated from the fuselage due to metal fatigue. All 20 people aboard perished. It was Chalk’s first and only fatal crash.