The Isle of Redonda
"The Only Island Kingdom in the Caribbean"
King Juan II in describing his kingship concluded:
“The
legend is and should remain a pleasing and eccentric fairy tale;
a piece of literary mythology to be taken with salt,
romantic sighs, appropriate perplexity, some amusement, but
without great seriousness.
It is, after all, a fantasy”
I had lunch one day last year with a King. And a Queen. Why, we even had afternoon tea together. His Majesty King Juan II, King of Redonda and his lovely wife Queen Jennifer to be exact, and a right honorable pleasure it was.
But the story really began in 1865 when a half-Irish Montserratian trader named Matthew Dowdy Shiell was sailing past a lump of rock near home named, by Columbus, Nuestra SeŅora de la Redonda. His Free Slave wife had already presented him with eight daughters and finally a son was born. Shiell was, of course, over the moon about this so being partly descended from Irish kings and a romantic sort of gent he promptly annexed the island so that his newly born son, Matthew Phipps Shiell, could one day become King of Redonda.
| On his fifteenth birthday the boy was crowned King Felipe I of Redonda by the Bishop of Antigua. He promptly elected, for reasons known only to him, to drop one “l” from his name. Ten years later the British Government officially annexed the small island declaring it to be a dependency of Antigua. But the act of annexation was also declared not to have affected the sovereignty vested in Shiell and the British Colonial Office tacitly admitted his claim. |
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For several years while Matthew studied and settled in London some people moved onto the island and mined the extensive guano deposits left by centuries of boobies. Matthew became a well-known writer with some thirty novels to his credit. One of them, THE PURPLE CLOUD is still an undisputed classic of modern science fiction. It was much later made into a film starring Harry Belafonte.
King Felipe died in London in 1947 and was succeeded by the poet John Gawsworth (a.k.a. T.I.F. Armstrong) who was crowned King Juan 1.
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In 1954 King Juan
signed an irrevocable document appointing a wealthy
property developer as his successor, but sadly he died
two years before the King. Gawsworth carried on with his
remarkable reign until he in turn died, some say of
drink, in the year of Our Lord 1970, at the age of 58.
The reign was tempestuous by any standards and the King
ruthlessly took advantage of his exalted rank. Whenever
the royal purse fell short of funds for another glass of burgundy the King would flog a title or two. |
During King Juan's stormy rule the Redondan aristocracy grew exponentially - the bar bills at the Alma pub held at bay. Among the many notables even more ennobled by Juan were Fabian of the Yard, Diana Dors, Dirk Bogarde, Victor Gollancz, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen, Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, J.B. Priestley, Michael Dennison and Dulcie Gray. After three State Papers were issued (1947, 1949, 1951) royal sozzlement set in and and he started hurling Dukedoms and Kingdoms around like confetti. Thus the Kingdom fell kerplonk into what became known as the Almadondan Period.
In 1958 King Juan advertised in the personal columns of The Times a “Caribbean Kingship with Royal Prerogatives - one thousand guineas”. Now this was going too far for the successor the Grand Duke of Basalto who saw his future monarchy slipping away. Several solicitors were immediately at war over this and offers of £100,000 for the title were reported. The Swedish prince Count Bertil Bernadotte even sent a crisp £50 note to secure an option! But, in the end, King Juan settled for the small but continuous liquidity to be gained at the bar of his favourite pub. As a result there are at least five claimants to the throne and more Redondan dukes than are registered with the Knight Herald of England.
Some of the material in this piece comes from The Quest for Redonda and The Works of M.P. Shiell, both privately published by A. Reynolds Morse and from poet/historian Steve Eng who is preparing a biography of John Gawsworth. It was Eng who said about Gawsworth
“Whatever
else he was, recall
He was a Bookman, after
all,
And, at his quietest, a
poet too.
Redonda... wine... the
sordid rest
Ignore for now - extol the
best
For there was good in
Gawsworth, as in you.
| On his death bed in 1970, his sudden sobriety controlled by a ferocious ward sister, the King appointed as his (and M.P. Shiell's) literary executor the publisher Jon Wynne-Tyson. Along with this appointment, unknown at the time to Jon, came the succession to the Redondan throne. Jon accepted his role as the third monarch with great reluctance and has kept a low profile ever since. Describing his kingship Jon (or King Juan II) concludes “The legend is and should remain a pleasing and eccentric fairy tale; a piece of literary mythology to be taken with salt, romantic sighs, appropriate perplexity, some amusement, but without great seriousness. It is, after all, a fantasy.” |
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In 1979 one of the few visits to Redonda was perilously carried out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Kingdom. Juan II took a party with him on a small yacht and they all leapt off into the surf by the broken-down jetty, barely making it through the breakers to the steep shoreline. Short of breath and out of shape the half-drowned royal party clambered up the boulder-strewn gully to the saddle of the 1000 foot peak on the rim of the broken down volcano and there carried out the commemoration ceremony. Desmond Nicholson and the skipper each received Dukedoms - in fact everyone present received a title, and the Redondan flag, blue for the sea, brown for the soil, or perhaps the man-eating rats, and green for the vegetation, or for the crew's complexions, was planted again.
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King Juan's
self-appointed Ambassador in California got himself into
a real pickle in negotiations with some Middle Eastern
gents. They hired a New York design team to draw up plans
based on a Frank Lloyd Wright scheme. It consisted of a
floating extension to Redonda, suspended by hawsers from
the peak. The King spent four days in Los Angeles
dissuading his Ambassador from such a “ghastly”
idea. The aforementioned gents offered mega-bucks for
proof of the title but the King rose above it all and the
deal was scotched. In 1984 Wynne-Tyson wrote and published SO SAY BANANA BIRD, a novel in which Antigua and its satellite anonymously featured. He spends time promoting the idea of Redonda as being a symbol of all the unspoiled places that should be spared the attentions of man, and there may yet be a poetry prize sponsored by him. |
“Who will be the successor when you abdicate, Your Majesty?” I asked during tea. “I've drawn up a short list and at No.1 is a very rich Spaniard who recently bought all the regalia from Sotheby's” he replied. I barely refrained from asking why he'd sold all the royal gear - after all, it belongs to the nation, but said instead “What? Thousands of lives and millions of pounds sterling were spent kicking the Spanish out of the Caribbean and now you're planning to give a bit of it back?”
“Oh, heavens” he replied “I didn't think of that”.
I said that I thought the next king should be a keen skipper like Matthew Dowdy Shiell: a tall, stately, incredibly wise and handsome, poetic sort of bloke with remnants of a family castle in Ireland, owner/skipper of a square-rigged ship, living within sight of Redonda on a good day, clearly descended from other kings from another time... Great Leaping Leprechauns - sounds exactly like me! Robert the Bald was one of my ancestors. So, after he'd gone back to Blighty I wrote to the King right away and asked to be included on the Short List. I am, after all, only 5'6”.
My application went something like this:
“Dear Majestic Beatitudes King Juan and Queen Jennifer, Hope you both had a comfortable trip on the great silver boobie back to Britain. Your Majesties, I know you're keen to keep Redonda strictly for the Boobies (with which which I entirely agree) but progress is in the air and I've just had a great idea...”
By return I received a letter from His Majesty. It seems his commitment to others (i.e.the cursed Spaniard) were weighing more heavily than he'd imagined but he was looking for a way out. He suggested that, if I would become King Robert I of Redonda it would let him off the hook with the cursed Spaniard. Here I quote his very words: “You should prepare your square-rigged schooner, drive her downwind to Redonda, climb to the peak, plant your flag, give an inflammatory speech to the boobies (declaring all previous monarchies to be null and void); that you are now the supreme ruler; and that furthermore you intend to resurrect old man Shiell's territorial claim, which means that Antigua has no right of possession and must pay you retrospective taxes for all the help that Redonda has given the tourist industry since circa 1939 ... but you will have had to make your intentions clear to the world's press so that the story breaks when you are outside Antiguan/Barbudan waters and heading east”. Last year King Juan II made me a Baron for my contributions to the Realm, notably the design of the new Coat of Arms. |
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I have bowed humbly to his every suggestion and I hereby announce to the world that this very year, with the help of two friendly skippers of square-rigged ships each bearing nine cannon and full complements of dashing sailors, fighters all, I intend to sail to Redonda to execute the details of the coronation.
My daughter, Princess Tamara, a musician and singer/songwriter in Toronto is, as I write, composing a thundering Battle Hymn for the occasion.
Don't forget, dear reader, that you first read about it on this website: a new Kingdom, friendly to its neighbours, especially the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, has appeared in the Caribbean. I intend to be a kind, benevolent monarch, strict but fair to interlopers and money-launderers. Amongst the proliferation of Royal Edicts will be that I shall, to protect my legions of loyal rats, goats and boobies, instantly throw a two-hundred mile Exclusion Zone around the island. Every yacht sailing through the zone will be liable to pay a fee of 10¢ a foot per year. The Queen now has her own flag. It's yellow and is already known in Court as the Q Flag. Any boats or ships flying this flag anywhere in the world will be expected to pay a flat license fee of $US10 a year. Skippers will receive a beautiful certificate for each payment, signed by King Robert himself. Revenue is expected to be around $US35M a week. Or maybe a day - my Chancellor hasn't worked it out yet.
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Apropos of nothing - there's an old adage, quintessentially appropriate here, still heard in and around these islands: “The sun never set on the British Empire simply because nobody could trust the Brits in the dark”.
The Duke of Bayview has said “Redonda is a kingdom of the mind - a sympathetic and welcoming refuge for people whose finer sensibilities are offended by the mindless materialism, unbridled greed and soul-destroying competition which have become hallmarks of the age”.
King Juan II put it very nicely when he wrote “Redonda is a symbol of the unspoiled places that should be spared the depredations of the human species”.
As the new King of Redonda I hereby invite disaffected people everywhere to join us in this cheerful enterprise by becoming citizens of Redonda and participating in a worldwide community of like-thinking souls through our Internet Website "www.jalypso.com/redonda"
We shall be installing a chat room soon in the virtual royal court for anyone who may like to comment publicly on any matter of the realm.
All comments should be directed to his highness "King Robert the Bold" via email: kingrobert@redonda
