The following is a speech given by Lt. Governor Richard Hart at the opening of the 2nd Annual Maritime Congress on Bonaire, held May 20-22, 1999

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning!

First of all I want to welcome those of you that come from abroad to our island and I hope you will have a fruitful conference. In this conference, different aspects of maritime business will be highlighted and it will cover a wide range of subjects and I hope that all of you can identify yourselves in one or more of the speeches to be held in these two days.

I was asked by the organizers to speak about the maritime history of Bonaire. You might ask yourself what might the maritime history of a small island like this be? Our written history started 500 years ago when Amerigo Vespucci came to the shores of this island. The maritime history from that day till approximately the beginning of the nineteenth century was written by the Spanish, the English and especially by the Dutch and to be more exact the West Indische Compagnie (WIC).

Up and till that time Bonaire was owned by the WIC and not by the Dutch government. From 1816 when Bonaire was acquired by the government till 1868, this island was a plantation of the colony Curaçao.

In 1868 large parts of Bonaire were auctioned off. Plantations with names like Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Lima, America and Mexico were born. The owners of these large properties realized that they did not have transportation for their produce to the sister islands and started to buy their own ships to be able to get a market for their products. All these small and somewhat larger sailing ships were manned by Bonaireans. Another part of the Bonairean maritime history worthwhile mentioning is that most of the sailing ships of Bonaire were built on this island. Well known shipbuilders were Kachi Craane, Tuchi Martijn and Jose Marchena. These people built from small fishing boats to larger two masters. The largest ship build by Mr Craane was the Neerlandia. For those of you who understand measurements of ships the size was 368.89 cubic meters.

Like I said before, these ships were all manned by Bonaireans. A lot of these sailors, after getting their experience on these small ships, went to work for U.S. companies like the Red D Line, United Fruit Company and Grace Line. They sailed between the East Coast of the USA to the Caribbean.

In the beginning of this century oil was discovered in Venezuela and as a result of this refineries were built on Curaçao and Aruba. The transportation of this oil from Venezuela to Aruba and Curaçao took place in small tankers. A large number of the sailors working on U.S. ships up to that moment decided to change jobs and start working on these tankers just to be closer by home.

What I just told you about the maritime history of Bonaire was taken out of a book of Mr. Boi Antoin, and, by the way, he will be one of your speakers tomorrow.

The people of Bonaire have always been known as sailors, more so than the other islands of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. I will end by telling you the history of one Bonairean family, just to illustrate how the sea and ships were part of their daily lives.

In the middle of the last century, Pieter Cornelis bought his own ship and started a mail service between Bonaire and Curaçao. The business prospered and his son Jozef Philippus was brought in and he started working with his father. On one of these trips they got into bad weather and the ship sank. Pieter Cornelis drowned and Jozef could save himself by holding on to some wreckage until he was close enough to land to be able to reach it swimming. After this ordeal he stayed on land and started to care for his family as a small businessman and administrator. But he never forgot the sea and he induced his sons to take up marine life. Two of his sons went to sea while one stayed on land to help in the family business which at that time was growing. Ricardo, the oldest of the two, spent many years at sea until he too met the same faith as his father. His ship sank in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately he was saved and he too decided not to go back to sea but to start working in the family business. The other son, Jose, was the most daring of the brothers. He was sent to New York to buy a new ship for the family business. The story is that after he bought the ship he could not find a crew to sail it back to Bonaire. He had a dilemma and his solution was to go into a New York bar that was frequented by Bonairean sailors, get about six men stone drunk, take them to the ship and get the ship out of the harbor. When the men woke up they were on high sea and they had no other choice than to sail to Bonaire. The name of the ship was Fedalma. The business of Jozef grew and became quiet big and like I said, the sea played a very important role in this. Between 1918 and 1947 his company had 10 ships sailing the Caribbean Sea.

Stories like this, I am sure, can be told by the families of countries that are real seafarers. I told you this story to show you how important the sea was and still is for this island but only in another context.

By the way ladies and gentlemen the grand children of' Jozef never went to sea. They took boring jobs compared with what their ancestors did. The last name of this family is Hart. Cornelis was my great grandfather, Jozef was my grandfather, Ricardo was my father and Jose was my uncle.