Astrolabe
Pine Cay Pioneers
Although recent field work revealed more Ft. George history, will time run out?
By Dr. Donald Keith, Trustee, Turks & Caicos National Museum & President, Ships of Discovery
November 7, 2009 marked the end of our two weeks of field work on Ft. George Cay. It was a little sad to backfill the test excavations, take down our base camp, and shuttle everything back to Pine Cay. We didn’t accomplish as much as I hoped, but there’s nothing new about that. I’ve always been suspicious that meeting all your goals may mean that they weren’t set high enough to start with.
There is still a lot of Ft. George Cay to explore. We did not set foot on every square meter of land or comb the shallows offshore as thoroughly as I intended. Clumps of really dense bush discouraged us from testing many promising areas. But we managed to accurately map the locations where we found evidence of habitation and put them on geo-registered high-resolution digital aerial photos of Ft. George Cay using a program called Ozieexplorer. This is important because the part of the cay currently protected by legislation is only one acre. The maps now irrefutably demonstrate that structures and artifacts belonging to the fort cover at least eight acres and probably much more.
That same night we gave a brief presentation at the Meridian Club. For us it was an honor and a privilege because many of the people who pioneered the exploration of Ft. George decades ago were in the audience. We owe them a lot. They have been the custodians of the fort for more than 30 years. They are the ones who brought Ft. George and its history to our attention, the ones who first voiced alarm at how rapidly it is eroding into the sea, and the ones who made this expedition possible. They initiated research in Great Britain and elsewhere to pick up the wispy historical threads that reveal who built the fort, when it was constructed, and why. One Pine Cay couple has already donated their collection of documents, maps, and artifacts to the Museum and another collection is pledged. A very accurate and highly detailed map of the principal ruins that they made in 1998, when compared with ours, furnishes incontrovertible evidence of the rate of erosion experienced by the part of the fort closest to shore. At least 40 feet of it has fallen into the sea in the last 11 years!
Although the field work portion of our archaeological exploration of Ft. George is finished, the project is far from over. We have artifacts and samples to clean, conserve, and analyze, articles and reports to write, and exhibits to prepare. This issue of the Astrolabe features the first research efforts on the artifacts in the Ft. George collection. They are brief, but the articles represent information that has been put together in just the last four weeks. This represents a very good beginning.
We hope that our efforts will engender a greater awareness of the historical importance of Ft. George, how rapidly shore erosion is destroying parts of it, and how time for efforts to protect and preserve it is running out.
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Tucked at the northeast corner of North Caicos is Greenwich Channel, formed at the northern tip of Bottle Creek by the convergence of Horsestable Beach and Bay Cay. By using a drone Master/Craftsman Photographer James Roy of Paradise Photography (www.myparadisephoto.com) was able to capture this dramatic abstract image. The shallow water and shifting sandbars and channels create surreal natural art in many hues of turquoise and green.
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