The Final Sunset: The fatal sinking of the HMBS Flamingo

By John McPhee

In the quiet still hours of the evening on May 10, 1980, a young nation faced its most crucial hour. Two Cuban MiGs were dispatched by Cuba's competent authority. Their ultimate destination Cay Santo Domingo a small cay in the southern hemisphere of the Bahamas. Their intended target: HMBS Flamingo, a one-hundred-and-four-foot Bahamian patrol vessel with two Cuban fishing vessels, Ferrocemento 54 and Ferrocemento 165, in tow.The remaining hours in the afternoon will unfold a tyranny of unsettling events resulting in the tragic loss of life and property for the Bahamas. The crises plunged the region into a geopolitical crisis and set in motion a cascading set of circumstances that will affect the young nation for the rest of its existence.Final Sunset is the riveting account of the fatal sinking of HMBS Flamingo by Cuban MIGs on May 10, 1980. It recounts the harrowing tale of heroism and survivorship. The gritty and unrelenting human will to make it home after their routine day took a most unfortunate turn on one of the darkest moments in Bahamian history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662464973

John McPhee

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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The Final Sunset

The fatal sinking of the HMBS Flamingo

John McPhee

Copyright © 2022 John McPhee

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-6496-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-6497-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

The Final Salute: A Date with Destiny

Chapter 2

The Chase

Chapter 3

A Lonesome Goodbye

Chapter 4

A Precarious Cover

Chapter 5

The Invasion of Ragged Island: A Terror Story

Chapter 6

The London Call

Chapter 7

A Mob's Welcome

Chapter 8

The Hidden Truth About Bahamian Airspace

Chapter 9

Paradise Lost: The Collision of Three Crises

Chapter 10

Extended Diplomacy, Fatal Alignment

Chapter 11

A Time to be Judged

Chapter 12

Two More Days: A Mother's Courage and Plea

Chapter 13

Mistruths, or Misled: America's Complicity

Chapter 14

London Speaks

Chapter 15

Politics and the Mischief it Creates

Chapter 16

Breaking News: A Little Boy's Recall

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Bahamas Department of Archives, Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Embassy of Cuba, Commander Raymond King, Royal Bahamas Defense Force, Reagan Kemp, SixSeven Multimedia (photo consultant), ZNS and Nathan McPhee (brand and PR consultancy) Konu Studios.

Chapter 1

The Final Salute: A Date with Destiny

To many who knew him, he was a visionary character and keenly conscious of the times in which he lived, but more importantly, Sir Lynden was gifted with a contagious sense of purpose and national responsibility. He knew that the window of leadership and opportunity swings briefly open to someone, and you were blessed with a narrow space in time to bring to fruition the eager yearnings and candid vision emblazoned in your soul. Having ascended to the reigns of leadership in the islands of The Bahamas at a youthful age, it would seem he was racing against the clock to implement the vision he was called to. They were critically necessary, unapologetically bold, and a compelling array of visions they were for many. To others, they were uncomfortably disquieting; his quest to achieve was intimidating and crudely unrealistic to them, drawing cynicism and condemnation, but the pioneering gentleman dreamed on and inscribed his vision in the most convincing and passionate way. It was this passion and compelling sense of national vision that brought him to the floor of his party's twentieth convention in 1975, two years after declaring independence from Britain, and announced what, to some, was a bombastic and quixotic ambition, but to many a noble and astonishingly grand set of ideals for our young nation's maritime borders. He seemed gripped in the spell of a vanishing moment in time, hard-pressed with an urgent sense of the future, and driven by a peculiar kind of gusto. With a heightened level of bravado he looked across the eager masses and uttered the following:

I see a force which will not only safeguard our sovereignty and independence but will also rescue lives at sea; a force which not only will keep out poachers and smugglers…watch our sea-lanes; a force which not only will help to keep the peace but will also supply food and emergency relief to an island community ravaged by a disastrous hurricane or take needed medical services to isolated communities; a force which not only will exemplify discipline, but will also exemplify the same by example in our communities dedicated to progress with self-reliance and further helps us to tighten up and toughen up. Which of us will deny this higher call to service, this great mark of self-reliance on this superior march to progress?

Just like that, the national vision to create the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) became a public clarion call and a politically curious set of ambitious pursuits, drawing sharp dismissal from his critics and adulation and compliments from many who hung on his every word. But for the determined leader, the proverbial ship had sailed long before the speech. The die had been cast considerably long before that historic night, and like Suetonius—the Roman administrator and historian of 49 BC—in his communication to Julius Caesar, Sir Lynden, crossing the Rubicon River of executing the vision he outlined for RBDF, was undeniably a foregone conclusion.

A mere sixty months later Princess Anne, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, waded into the capital city and bestowed the official title of Royal on the organization's Coral Harbor base, declaring it "Her Majesty's Bahamian Ship." By the time of her visit, the visionary leader had commenced and concluded discussions with Thorneycroft ship builders and taken delivery of two 103-foot, four-and-a-half-million-dollar patrol vessels, HMBS Marlin and HMBS Flamingo, named after the national fish and national bird.

It was a long and unaccustomed but bold twenty-eight day trip from Thorneycroft Shipbuilding Company in Amsterdam, the ship and crew tracking southerly through the North Atlantic. Straddling the clockwise-flowing winds and low atmospheric pressure associated with the North Atlantic Ocean, The Bahamas bound ships and crew journeyed, placing the coast of England, the white Cliffs of Dover, the English Channel, the coast of Spain, and Portugal all positioned at various coordinates on their east and on the port side of the ships. Using nautical positioning, they would have easily intercepted the route taken by the early explorer Christopher Columbus almost five hundred years earlier. Columbus's crossing was the end of life as we knew it for the Lucayans living in The Bahamas, inscribing perilously in the annals of Bahamian history. Parenthetically, HMBS Marlin and HMBS Flamingo's crossing meant the new people or inhabitants were poised to write another turbulent and regretful chapter resulting from the arrival of the new ships, but specifically Flamingo, how historically similar in yet another ship convoy coming across the very same ocean. Having navigated sufficiently south in the North Atlantic, the ships and crew steamed into the Central Atlantic and made their first stop at the volcanic, archipelagic, Creole-speaking islands of Cape Verde, provisioning there before departing.

The seasoned mariners would then steam into the eastern Caribbean Sea and make a final stop at the port of the independent nation of Antigua and Barbuda before voyaging into the Atlantic Ocean and pointing the ships homeward-bound toward the port of Nassau in The Bahamas. Relatively, in 1492, Columbus, another mariner and seafarer, would have sailed into the same port situated in the Leeward Islands in the West Indies.

The grandeur and splendid affirmation of commissioning the ships were a national landmark for the proud leader and his people. Sir Lynden, once again, had dreamed, and the dream was now a reality—his critics were again temporarily silenced and choking on humble pie. A sufficiently signature accomplishment to the credit of a giant of a man, outwitting his naysayers at every turn.

A brief time later, just under two years, several voyages completed, and the tide of accomplishments of the new leader was about to turn. The Bahamas was at the crossroad of history, billowing toward and stepping into the most consequential decade of its post-independence history.

Commanding officer Amos Rolle was now serving as the ship's commander. The vessel's Paxman engines roared into gear, and the vessel drifted smoothly away from the jetty. The senior marine led the smartly dressed marines in their usual colors, coming briskly to attention and saluting the ensign which encapsulated the yellow-black-and-aquamarine national flag in the upper left corner of the white flag with the universal red cross draped through it. He had seen this sacred ritual more than a thousand times before, this sobering reminder of sovereignty and patriotism emblematic of one man's vision for his people. This was no ordinary flag. Buried in its colors were the highest ideals and aspirations of a young nation. Sir Lynden had so eloquently and forcefully declared this chapter that fateful night at the Progressive Liberal Party's (PLP) convention. The ensign married the lofty ideals of sovereignty in times of peace and a symbol of conflict engagement in times of war. The marine was moved with serendipitous gratification that this ensign had only known times of peace. He was a marine who only knew the quiet sound of tranquility each time that he had observed this patriotic recital. It was never under the sound of bombs and gunfire that this flag had ever flown. But he also was unaware that the acrimonious intersection of the hour was on a rendezvous with history and would be nullifying all of this.

The morning sun beamed gloriously down for the last time on the emerald-green deck of the ship in her final moments, berthed at the HMBS Coral Harbor Base, and already, the sailor could feel the heat rising from the 103 feet of slip-proof metal surface of the ship. On the bridge, simultaneously, a set of final acts were unfolding—from reverse to a soft throttle forward, the ship completed a 180-degree pivot, thrusting gently forward and beginning its final slide gracefully out of her home port.

The skilled marine returned the sharp ceremonial salute to his comrade standing at attention on the pier, and for the last time, unknowingly, closing a chapter in Flamingo's history, then ordered his crew dismissed.

On the bridge, Commander Amos Rolle could feel the stiff, crisp air piping from the vent just over his chair. A fierce and gallant crew comprising of David Tucker, Austin Smith, and Fendrick Sturrup made up the watch and were amongst the extraordinary wheelmen he could choose from. Just then, another marine hustled into the wheelhouse and announced in crisp and drill-like sequence his rank, name, and that he was reporting for duty. Commander Rolle acknowledged his arrival and ordered him at ease. The vessel was now fully out of the Coral Harbor Port, so the seasoned commanding officer handed the ship to his navigating officer, Acting Sub Lieutenant Allen, and left the bridge for his quarters to get some much-needed rest. Ahead was his darkest hour, and destiny had