History of guano mining in Redonda

Columbus during the Saint Mary phase of his second voyage went on a spree of naming every island he saw after the virgin Mary: Santa Maria de la Galante, Santa Maria de la Montserrat, Santa Maria de la Antigua, and finally, Santa Maria de la Redonda--Saint Mary the Round.

Aerial photograph of the island of Redonda. Taken by the Redonda Restoration Programme.

The high, barren, haycock of an island is about a mile long and about one-third of a mile wide. Lying between Montserrat and Nevis, it was little more that a navigational landmark until the 1860's. At that time, the centuries-old deposits of bird guano (bird manure), which in some places were perhaps a dozen feet thick, were found to be of such high quality that they could be commercially mined. A conveyor belt with large buckets to haul the manure reached from the plateau to the sea.

The guano mining operation was producing a thousand metric tons each year. In 1872 the island, which had been a dependency of Montserrat, was annexed by Antigua. then phosphate was discovered beneath the bird guano. By 1895, more than 130 people from Montserrat worked on the island.
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Members of the Redonda Restoration Programme team spot an industrial relic of the mining operation.

​In 1914, when the guano mining operation ended, about a thousand tons of phosphate were stockpiled near the pier on Redonda. The phosphate and the pier slipped into the sea and rendered the island virtually inaccessible. Afterwards, boats had to anchor off the southwest corner and the crew had to go ashore in small boats. ​

The text of this post is an excerpt from the Caribbean Time Bomb by American journalist Robert Coram. 
Researched during the 1980's and first published in 1993, this book is required reading for all Antiguans and Barbudans who wish to understand the turbulent history of our island nation and the motives of those who wish to rule it.

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