Cayman’s seafaring history was honoured at the weekend with the annual Sea Sunday celebration.
Accompanied by family, seafarers past and present attended the lunch event held at Seafarers Hall in Red Bay on 13 July, where they shared stories of the sea and enjoyed a hearty meal provided by the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman.
The global religious celebration, observed on the second Sunday in July each year, is an opportunity to give thanks for seafarers and their families and recognise their hard work and sacrifice.
The Sea Sunday tradition started thousands of miles away in southwest London in 1891, when Wimbledon College sent devotional magazines and books to 12 ships to keep hopes up while at sea.
Over the years, Sea Sunday has evolved into a global event and was brought to the Cayman Islands five years ago by Merle McGann (Whorms).
McGann told Compass TV’s Daybreak that there was no doubt that Cayman as it is today was created by seafarers.
“They are our backbone in tourism and in finance, and there is no way under the sun that the Cayman Islands should allow that to dissipate in any way, right?” she said.
“And I’m going to work very hard to make sure that that does not happen.”
Bible reading
Attending the lunch alongside seafarers and their families were Premier André Ebanks, author Suzy Soto and Vinton Chinsee, president of the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman.
Premier Ebanks, a regular attendee of Sea Sunday, paid tribute to the sacrifice made by seafarers over the generations, telling the gathering, “I am a grandson of a seafarer and a great grandson of a seafarer.”
He then gave a reading from Psalm 107, calling it “a vibrant testimony of God’s undying love and miraculous interventions. It reassures us that no matter how far we are lost, how deep we are in darkness, or how dire our circumstances are, when we call out to the Lord, he hears and rescues us.”
Soto, with the Cayman Maritime Heritage Foundation, then took to the microphone to recount stories of the sea, which she learned during her years of painstaking research for ‘A History of Turtlers and Schooners of the Cayman Islands‘, a definitive history of Cayman’s mariners.
She told of the loss of the 61-ton R.L. Hustler, which disappeared in 1940 in a deadly hurricane with 13 souls onboard.
“My husband Bob Soto suffered the [loss of] two of his two brothers, Rene and Haldine Bodden, 21 and 16, on the Hustler in 1940,” she said.
“He was 12 years old and seemed to be searching for them for his whole life.”
Having visited Gloucester, Massachusetts and seen the Fishermen’s Memorial, which commemorated 10,000 lives lost at sea, Bob and Suzy decided that Caymanians deserved a memorial too. It was a project which took many years, but resulted in the statue, ‘Tradition‘, which is next to a plaque containing 477 names of Cayman’s seafarers.
During the event, Suzy Soto presented a framed picture of the plaque as a gift to the Cayman Islands Seafarers Association.
Taking to the microphone, Filmmaker Frank E. Flowers Jr. He said that he wanted to express his thanks “to all the seamen like my grandfather, my uncle, like so many grandfathers and uncles and brothers and fathers who left these shores, not for leisure, but for legacy.
“You faced storms and distance and loneliness, not just for survival, but so that future generations could build upon something more. We thank you and we carry you, always. Long before there was TV and cable and internet, seafarers were the ones that were transporting our stories, our culture, our values, our spirit. They connected to the world, and they put this island on the map.”
Women also honoured
Flowers added, “We must also take a moment to honour the ones who stayed, the women like my grandmother, all the mothers, the wives, the sisters who kept … these three islands going while those ships were out. They raised families, they held communities together, they passed on our traditions with strength and grace.”
Health Minster Katherine Ebanks-Wilks spoke about her seafaring father, saying, “If I could relive the time I had with my dad, I would have recorded and I would have asked for more details, and I would have written a book so that the young Caymanians who are coming behind us know exactly what each of you who are still here today had to endure out in the open ocean in order for our country to be this successful Caribbean island and to the women who were part of that too.”
The programme also featured the national song of the Cayman Islands, ‘Beloved Isle Cayman’, an in-memoriam moment of silence and the ringing of the bell.
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