DEVIL'S ISLAND

We anchored off of Ile Royale, largest of the 3 “Salvation Islands”, the other two being Devil’s Island and Ile Ste. Joseph, and took a tender ashore to visit the ruins. The French created a penal colony on these beautiful tropical islands in 1852 and it was a very harsh place to be imprisoned. Many of the guards were very cruel and enjoyed beating the prisoners for no particular reason. Depending on their crime, inmates might do light maintenance work on the island, have limited liberty if their crime was a political one, or sentenced to hard labor if they were felons. It was finally closed in 1946. Seventy per cent of the prisoners died from malaria or other illnesses -- they were stitched into sacks and simply thrown into the ocean for the sharks to dispose of. The guards and their families were buried in a cemetery on Ile Ste. Josephe, where the solitary confinement buildings were located. Very few prisoners managed to escape. They showed the movie Papillon yesterday to prepare us for some of what the convicts might have endured.

It was a lovely walk around the island, and we saw areas that we had missed two years ago; the children’s cemetery, hospital, convent, chapel and guards’ quarters. There were no iguanas to be found, but we saw a squirrel monkey, several agoutis, lots of chickens roaming the grounds freely, a macaw and peacocks. On the far side of the island we saw people swimming in a protected cove, which was probably the remains of the stone-lined, sea-fed swimming pool that was built for the guards by convict labor, safe from the many sharks and strong currents.

We were lucky with the weather -- 84 degrees, calm seas, but very high humidity! Enjoying the beauty and tranquility of this lovely tropical island, it was hard to imagine the brutality and lives of the convicts who existed here for 94 years.