Waves of Change: Peter Matthiessen's Caribbean

Abstract

Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga (1975) has received a steady current of critical commentary, responding at first to the novel as sea literature and more recently as an expression of the pastoral, of oriental thought, and of an ecological vision.' This essay proposes to further that dialogue and examine how Far Tortuga and Matthiessen's article in the New Yorker (To the Miskito Bank) reflect Grand Cayman Island and western Caribbean cultural issues and vicissitudes during the 1960s. Its focus also will anticipate more recent changes and invite historical and cultural dialogue with the reader. My intention is to make clear Matthiessen's interest in providing a voice for endangered peoples, for professions, and for species, and his larger vision of man's place in the ecosystem as well as in human history. In the mid 1960s Peter Matthiessen paid three productive visits to Grand Cayman Island, visits that provided raw materials for both the article and the novel. As the New Yorker article reveals, stories about the remarkable, albeit threatened green turtle (Chelonia mydas), and of the traditional wind-powered turtle schooners that ply the dangerous waters of the turtle banks whetted his appetite for the region. Thus, by both design and chance, Matthiessen visited the Caymans in time to record the phenomena of a vanishing species and of a disappearing economy. As he indicated in the New Yorker article, he wanted to learn more about the endangered green turtle, one of the last of the great reptile relics from the age of the dinosaurs, and an ocean wanderer whose powers of navigation are more awesome than those of the birds; and he wanted to sail a turtler voyage before it was too late.2 Matthiessen's difficulty in booking voyage on a turtle schooner was a lucky break for his readers. By the time he was able to work out a date with Captain Cadian Ebanks of the Lydia Wilson (Captain Raib Avers of the Lilias Eden in the novel), the once sleek schooner had its masts chopped in half and had been modernized with twin diesel engines. Despite Matthiessen's disappointment and payment of an unreasonable fee to join the Wilson crew, the New Yorker article is filled with details and realities of what the author regards as a heroic, noble, and dangerous profession. Although Matthiessen missed the era of the wind turtlers, he recognized that he had experienced something much more valuable: The changes in the Wilson ... were only a small part of the metamorphosis that was coming fast to Grand Cayman.