AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023 - 68

A
NEVIS,
CARIBBEAN
Hamilton chafed at his subservience as a
clerk, and his intellect, energy, and ambition
were obvious to those around him from an early
age. He wrote a stirring account of a hurricane
that tore through St. Croix on August 31, 1772,
and admirers took up a collection to send him
to New York for higher education.
Once he started at King's College (now
Columbia University), he took up the revolutionary
cause with fervor. As Gen. George
Washington's right-hand man during the
Revolutionary War, a congressman, treasury
secretary, co-author of the Federalist Papers,
and lawyer, Hamilton was a force in ratifying
the U.S. Constitution and defining the young
nation's future.
Hamilton himself was disinclined to spell out
Alexander Hamilton's birthplace
is now a museum and
meeting hall, but his legacy is
a complicated one in Nevis.
Hamilton left as a child, was
ashamed of his humble origins,
couldn't wait to leave, and never
returned. Nevis residents regard
his ties to this out-of-the-way
island as a historical accident.
the ways his early life shaped his world view.
His out-of-wedlock birth and tragedy-filled
youth brought only stinging shame and embarrassment.
" My birth is the subject of the most
humiliating criticism, " he confessed.
In Nevis, however, the topic of Hamilton's
eventful life is more nuanced.
There's a statue of him outside the singlestory
Museum of Nevis History in Charlestown,
and the two-story stone home on the waterfront
where he was born is a stop on every island tour.
Yet residents are more likely to admire cricket
or basketball stars than Hamilton.
" He was born here but that's it, " said Vincent
Clarke, a lifelong Nevis resident who provides
guided tours of the 36-square-mile island. " He
left as a boy and hardly ever spoke of the place.
He didn't have anything to do with Nevis after
he left, and he probably never wanted to.
" He did great things in America-but the fact
that he was born here was just an accident. It
doesn't mean much to us. "
The neat, tidy appearance of the British possession
today is at odds with eighteenth-century
accounts of rampant poverty and suffering here.
Nevis has a Four Seasons hotel and golf course,
and the sugar plantations that produced both
riches and misery have been transformed into
high-end hotels and housing subdivisions.
The last of the sugar plantations closed in
the 1950s, and the donkeys that were beasts of
burden now have their run of the island. So do
sheep, goats, and monkeys, which far outnumber
people.
I point out a group of goats near the airport
and ask whether they're used to control vegetation.
I soon learn there's no real plan for them,
and they graze wherever they please. And by the
way, they're sheep. Not goats.
" Look at their tails, " a Nevis resident tells me.
" A sheep's tail points down. A goat's tail points
up. That's how you tell them apart. "
Don't sheep have wool? I ask. Isn't wool how
you tell them apart?
Nope. Nevis sheep don't have wool. Who
wants wool in the Caribbean?
Transfixed
I keep hoping for Hamiltonian insights during
our stay in Nevis, but they're elusive. Instead,
I'm transfixed by the place.
There are fiery sunrises and sunsets with
elaborate cloudscapes, dazzling vistas, sweetsmelling
flora, and a sparkling, salty ocean. The
people we meet are spirited and friendly, and
the mood is relaxed and welcoming.
I can't help but wonder why Hamilton
wouldn't claim such a place. Why wouldn't he
identify with it, and take pride in it?
The inescapable answer is that Nevis today
is nothing like the place where Hamilton knew
such tragedy and loss. His family was largely
shunned here, and his mother died beside him
in a sickbed while both were wracked with
fever. His father abandoned them. His cousin,
who was supposed to look out for the young
Hamilton boys, took his own life.
68
AOPA PILOT / March 2023
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023

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