Sint Eustatius

Hence, at a time when England's high-handed and short-sighted colonial policies had almost ruined commerce in the West Indies, virtually all trade between Europe and the American colonies became diverted to the tiny volcanic isle of Stasia.

Then, when the French threw in their lot with our forefathers, they too flocked to the Dutch port, until St. Eustatius became the richest and greatest center of commerce in the New World and rivaled the most famed marts of trade in the Old World as well.

Ships flying the flags of all nations steered their course for Stasia.

The roadstead before Orangetown was a forest of masts and yards.

Medieval Jews and Arabs were represented in profusion, and Mr. Merrick turned pale when, upon taking down a fine volume conspicuously labeled as the Cuny Islam, he found it was in truth the forbidden necronomicon of the mad Arab, abdul alhazred of which he had heard such monstrous things whispered some years previously after the exposure of nameless rights at the strange little fishing village of kingsport in the province of the massachusetts bay but the worthy gentleman owned himself most impalpably disquieted by a mere minor detail on the huge mahogany table there lay face downward a badly worn copy of borelis bearing many cryptical marginalia and interlineations in kirwin's hand the book was open at about its middle and one paragraph displayed such thick and tremulous pin-strokes beneath the lines of mystic black letters that the visitor could not resist scanning it through he recalled it to the end of his days writing it down from memory in his diary and once trying to recite it to his close friend dr checkley till he saw how greatly it disturbed that urbane rector it read the essential salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved that an ingenious man may have the whole ark of noah in his own study and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure and by the like method from the essential salts of human dust a philosopher may without any criminal necromancy call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has been incinerated he was near the docks along the southerly part of the town street however that the worst things were muttered about joseph kirwan sailors are superstitious folk and all made strange furtive signs of protection when they saw the slim deceptively young-looking figure with its yellow hair and slight stoop entering the kirwan warehouse in doubloon street or talking with captains and supercargoes on the Long Quay, where the Kerwin ships rode restlessly.

Kerwin's own clerks and captains hated and feared him, and all his sailors were mongrel riffraff from Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana, or Port Royal.

It was, in a way, the frequency with which these sailors were replaced which inspired the acutest and most tangible part of the fear in which the old man was held.

and in time it became exceedingly difficult for Kerwin to keep his oddly assorted hands.

It really is.

I mean, Statia is one of the absolute least visited islands in the entire Caribbean.

Yeah.

There is zero cruise ship pressure.

Yeah, not the time to go.

No, because that's when the flights and businesses just become totally unpredictable.

So our mission today is a rigorous, practical travel due diligence audit of Statia for the 2026/27 season.

Right.

The Dutch were sympathetic to the Americans.

In fact, they were allowing, uh, their island in the Caribbean of Saint Eustatius to be used as sort of an arms trafficking hub to support the American revolutionary forces against the British.

So the Brits said, "Well, we're just gonna pirate you." And so a, a British pirate captures the Zorg, takes it to the Gold Coast, and parks it outside Cape Coast Castle, which is the headquarters of the British slave trading operations along the Gold Coast, and the William is there at that same time.

Now, the pirate does what a pirate does, which is he says, "Well, I, you know, I, I'm not in this business.