DFR Travels: Saturday, March 4. The Salvation Islands...

Cloudy, very warm, showers..

Day 60 of 67. A week from today we fly home.

Most of you must have heard of Devil's Island, or seen the movie Papillon with Steve McQueen.

There is a bit of a story behind the creation of this French Penal Colony and I will try and explain it for anybody reading this. Long ago, prisoners were used as oarsmen on ships, they were chained in warships, and other ships and served out their term as men below decks, rowing.

With the advent of bigger guns, the ships got bigger and they used sails. So, there was a need for somewhere to put all these bad buys seeing they did not have oars on sailing ships. The French put them in 'hulks' in ports. They were just big ugly barges that housed prisoners, they were not ships, just hulks. Eventually In 1851 it was decreed to get rid of the hulks because they were plugging up the ports.

What to do with all these people? Let's send them to the colonies! But the real bad guys were not fit for colonization so they sent them to a group of islands off of what is now called French Guiana. Three Islands; Isle Royale, Saint-Joseph and lastly Isle du Diable, [Devil's Island in English].

The Penal Colony was opened in 1852 and it was finally closed in 1953 but they stopped sending prisoners there in 1938. Over the years 50,000 to 60,000 prisoners served time here, less than 10% survived. There were seven escapes, but if you attempted to escape you were given two years in solitude, the next attempt, five years The conditions were brutal, but that is the way the world was in those ugly times. The English did the same thing with prisoners but they sent them to Australia.

We four went ashore around 10.00 and wandered the rough dirt and stone walking paths and several very steep stone stairs, all made by hard labour. There is now a fair amount of tourism here including some converted residences that I can only assume were for the guard and administration staff, who I believe had their families here. There were a few sailing boats in the harbour and we encountered French tourists in the cafe where we had soft drinks ashore today.

It was only two hours ashore but at the end we were all a ball of sweat and somewhat bagged. We also were very happy to get back to our Floating Air Conditioner just in time for a shower and lunch. I watched the movie Papillon, about Devil's island, in the afternoon while Fellette got her hair done and her finger nails tuned up.

We four were here 11 years ago and there have been many, many improvements to buildings. They are really trying to build it up here and I think the space station on the mainland has made a big difference in the economy here.

Our ship arrived a bit after 7.00 AM and we hauled up anchor and left for Barbados around 6.00 PM.

The Island group got their name 'Salvation Islands' because, prior to the Penal Colony, the settlers on the mainland went to the islands, seven miles from the coast, to escape diseases like Malaria that were particularly bad one season so they named the Islands Salvation Islands.

The island called Devil's Island was used to house the most famous prisoner, a french Army Colonel called Dreyfus, you may have seen the movie, 'The Dreyfus Affair' who spent 12 years here until he was proved innocent, but were only on the island called Isle Royale today.

The French have a space rocket base on the mainland and when they send off a rocket the islands are evacuated, I have no idea how many people live here but it must be somewhere in the 50 range I would think and tourism is suspended. They get about 50,000 visitors a year to the islands and the space station.