A Traveller's Tale: The story of Florida Sands

A Traveller's Tale 6
The Story of Florida Sands
By Christopher Cape

"El imperio dode nunca se pone el sol" (Spanish) or "The empire on which the sun never sets", according to Mr Google. Popularised by Scottish poet John Wilson writing under the pseudonym Christopher North in Blackwoods Magazine 1829, he was referring to the British Empire. Every time I look at the Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 website I'm reminded of that saying and realise the war is not over.

The red tide of the virus spreads like raspberry jam over the scorched toast of the world. A commentator on Al Jazeera, speaking recently of climate change and the increasing frequency of forest fires, called this time the Pyrocene Period.

The tranquillity and breathing space the wild world had barely eight months ago, now seems like a mirage and a distant echo. The reported increasing global tension reminds me of the early 1960s when America came within a hair's breadth of nuclear war with Communist Russia as Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba. The CIA financed the Bay of Pigs invasion, a botched attempt to overthrow Castro, in April 1961. Comrade Premier Khrushchev subsequently placed nuclear missiles on Cuban soil targeted at the United States mainland.

It was into that hotbed of growing dissent that my family and I sailed in April 1962 aboard the MS Oranje, a Royal Dutch Mail passenger ship. We'd sailed from Wellington, New Zealand via Tahiti and the Panama Canal, heading for London where my father, Peter Cape, was to study television production techniques with the BBC. My father was a senior producer for the fledgling NZBC and the knowledge he would gain would bolster New Zealand's media evolution. As the Oranje ploughed its way through azure blue seas under an overcast sky, passing Florida Keys bound for Miami, I recall the sense of anxious anticipation in the air. Being 8, I had no deep understanding of the unfolding Cuban Missile Crisis.

On the lower stern deck uniformed male crew members, armed with .303 rifles, stood firing at clay pigeons catapulted from the ship's stern. Overhead a USAF aircraft circled us closely at low altitude. We survived that scrutiny and eventually docked at Port Everglades.

I don't recall how long our stopover was but it was time enough for my father to hire a car, do some shopping, take note of, and photograph, some characteristically American locations, as my parents were interested in history, architecture, housing and lifestyles. We saw pink flamingos at the Hialeah Racecourse and the 1917 Plymouth Congregational Church in Coconut Grove. The Florida Everglades were expansive and opulent. Hotels, such as the Dupont Plaza and Beau Rivage were modernist. The Castaways Motel with its sweeping sail roof and resident Chinese Junk was iconic.

USAF P2 Neptune Maritime Observation aircraft investigating MS Oranje off the Florida Keys during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Photo / Peter Cape

Apartments were high-rise and generally painted white. Chemist shops were labelled Drug Stores – as if stating the obvious was necessary. Palm trees and pleasure boats were everywhere and the roads were wide. Mind you, in 1962 American vehicles were not small. I don't think they knew what a Mini was. The car we hired was the smallest available - the size of a Ford Falcon. We spent part of a day at Miami Beach. I still have a glass-stoppered bottle in my bathroom containing its grey sand. The sun beat down. We found a blue Portuguese Man-o-War on the sand. My mother warned me against touching it. Her father had survived being stung by one while fishing.

From the beach the American Seventh Fleet was visible along the horizon, blockading Cuba. We shopped in Fort Lauderdale. I was bought a Civil War Musket – a toy one that actually worked. It had a ramrod and bayonet (rubber) and fired gunpowder caps which launched solid cork musket balls from the muzzle hard enough to dent a pillow some 20 feet away. It was "cool". The Oranje, docked at Port Everglades, was guarded by uniformed and armed GIs. As we made our way back to the ship I, carrying my musket, was addressed by one of these towering figures.

"Say son," he drawled, "Are you one of Castro's boys?" I just grinned. I still have that much-loved musket but unfortunately I'm out of balls and powder. When we left Florida naturally I opted, on shipboard fancy dress occasions, for the rebel cause and the Confederate flag. Thanks to my mother's theatrical wit I was outfitted as a uniformed Yankee soldier, slouch cap, water bottle and musket in hand. I suppose the crimson, non-conformist sentiment has always been part of my life. I can thank my parents for that too. They fraternised with the Wellington Socialist Party briefly, purely for the renegade status, although I suspect that their reasons were probably principled too, based on values of social justice.

This brings me back to the current state of play. As the Oranje escaped the brinksmanship of President Kennedy's post-McCarthy America in 1962, bound for London, there was no knowing how the following months would play out and what we would be returning to. With 2020 vision I suspect the Reds under the bed were not, and are not, the real problem. The real problem is how to cohabit with the Reds, and the Yellow Perils, the nationalists and the Green Revolutionists and stop Covid -19 before it swamps all of us in red raspberry jam.