Island memories: Creating Anguilla’s first telephone link to the outside world

Peter Wakeham was one of the engineers sent to Anguilla in 1971 to help establish its first modern telephone service in the years following the 1967 Revolution.

Working for Cable and Wireless, he witnessed first-hand the challenges of building a communications network from scratch in a young territory.

More than five decades later, he shares his personal recollections of the people, places and remarkable improvisation that made the project possible.

In the autumn of 1971, I was sent by Cable and Wireless, the prevailing telephone system provider in the Caribbean at that time, from St Vincent to Anguilla with a cheque to start a telephone system which I deposited in Barclays Bank.

I was not party to the diplomatic wrangling between the new Anguilla – post revolution – regime and the wider diplomatic community. All I had to do was install a phone system from scratch.

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The invasion of Anguilla by St Kitts had been previously thwarted by letting a large heard of goats loose on the runway but the RAF Hercules that landed with my phone system met no such opposition.

Off loaded were drums of cable, telephones and a central exchange switching system and the huge plane took off from Anguilla airport leaving us feeling a bit isolated

The rest of the team arrived in due course and we all got started.

The exchange was, in fact, a repurposed office system and had a capacity, as I remember, of 50 lines. This mechanism was squeezed into a spare police station cell by some burly policemen.

The cables were laid and telephones installed. They were allocated to local admin departments in and around to the central civic offices.

There were wide ranging discussions on who should get the new lines but they were restricted, so no domestic customers.

Some problems arose as was expected. Exchanges need electricity and the police station was selected as it had a 24-hour supply from the generators in The Valley.

They were managed by the two sons of a displaced American engineer who specialised in cutting the complex geared drive shafts on outboard motors ruined by heavy-handed captains. His wife made delicious banana bread.

My switch required batteries which were ‘not included’ in the Hercules delivery, so I bought four large truck batteries and hooked them up and they did the job. To get the switches and sockets to connect them up I had to take the ferry to St Maarten.

The ferry boat was run to St Maarten at 8am. The ferryman was a garrulous captain, and I just cannot remember his name, but he had to get his catch of lobsters to the hotels on St Maarten on time, so he brooked no delays.

The creaking sacks of lobsters were sinister, but they encouraged his other passengers to sit on deck.

Which was okay until it rained and they all crowded below. Which was also okay until the fumes of the diesel caused sea sickness and they all had to head back to the deck and feel sea-sick in the pouring rain.

The captain watched this with stoic indifference. Regular passengers just stayed on deck.

He returned at noon which was too early to have a useful stay so the fallback was to head to the airstrip and wait for Mr Lloyd’s island hopper service to get home. But then that might be full.

Older Anguilla residents will remember these times well I imagine.

A telephone was required to test the newly installed lines. Someone mentioned, jokingly, that they already had a telephone on their wall from an earlier attempt to install phone service.

Sadly, it had been totally wiped out by a hurricane, but they were happy to donate the phone to the new system, which I used it continually to test the lines.

The choice of office facility was, by any judgement, a bit strange.

The powers that be decided that an immobilised three tonne army truck left over from the army days abandoned at the back of the police station was to be the new telephone company headquarters.

The tyres were flat and the engine was wrecked so work was needed.

The man who was assigned to the task was a rather gruff shipwright from the ship building harbour at the end of the island.

The back door of the truck was about shoulder high, so some steps and a waiting area had to be incorporated in the design.

An internal partition was required to separate the office from the counter area. We sat for a while and together designed the work on a single piece of paper.

The carpenter had a large sack from which he produced his tools. He drew out the most ferocious adze used in crafting the shapes for a boat. It was so sharp that it chilled me to the core.

However, he briskly set to work and produced the most incredible steps, platform with handrail and a finely crafted partition and door and access hatch. It was a truly an inspired piece of ad-hock construction.

When he had finished, with a nod, we shook hands and he went back to his shipbuilding.

The radio link to Tortola was installed using the leftover mast from the military and some hard work to mount the radio aerial, it was all working. The date was set for the inaugural call.

It was a close-run thing, but the call went through in the end. The unfortunate governor was in the middle of a serious bout of flu but made the call and headed back to bed in no time.

Connection to the outside world for Anguilla was established for the first time. Telegrams and telephone calls gradually increased.

The office manager was a very competent lady named Bernadine Huligar who quickly got the hang of placing calls through Tortola.

She also managed the sending and receiving telegrams which was an elaborate process. The incoming messages had to be hand delivered all over the island.

On my first arrival on Anguilla, we were all given rooms at the Rendezvous Bay Hotel run by Gerry Gumbs and his daughter. It was a truly idyllic setting with direct access to the beach and social facilities were pleasantly relaxed.

I had many discussions with Gerry about the current situation and learned quite a lot about the breakup with St Kitts and the aftermath.

Later in the year I was joined by the lady, who was later to become my wife, and I had moved into a bungalow overlooking the airstrip.

It was pink in colour and could be clearly seen from the plane as it came into land. It did not have electricity, so life was conducted by oil lamp.

Showing my naivety, the house had a large fridge and kept the beer cold. One day it just stopped and I called the landlady to get it fixed. She asked me if I had filled it up with paraffin.

I felt a bit daft as I was living in a house with no electricity and was looking for a socket to plug the fridge into. I filled it up and lit it. The fridge burst into life and cold beer was resumed.

We spent time at the beach and were advised to look out for barracudas. I thought they were goldfish size until one was caught and we got to look at it. Seeing the teeth in the fish we changed our minds.

Sadly, all things were changing, and I felt that I had completed the task of establishing a phone service in Anguilla and we decided to leave the island.

It was quite a wrench and the memories built on Anguilla and those people I met there are so fondly recalled.

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