The island of Redonda has been known ever since Columbus as a marker for ships and lately yachts sailing up and down the Eastern Caribbean. But very few people have landed as the island's sheer cliffs plunge straight down into the sea. Ferocious surf and swells pound the one boulder-strewn beach. Nevertheless, there has been a Kingdom of Redonda for 118 years!

The story began in 1865 when a quarter-Irish Montserratian trader named Matthew Dowdy Shiell was sailing his ship past a lump of rock near home named, by Columbus, Nuestra Señora de la Redonda. His Free Slave wife had already presented him with eight daughters and finally a son was born. Shiell was, of course, over the moon about this so being partly descended from Irish kings and a romantic sort of gent he promptly annexed the island so that his newly born son, Matthew Phipps Shiell, could one day become King of Redonda.

For several years while Matthew studied and settled in London some people moved onto the island and mined the extensive guano and phosphate deposits left by centuries of boobies. Matthew became a well-known writer with some thirty novels to his credit. One of them, THE PURPLE CLOUD is still an undisputed classic of modern science fiction. It was much later made into a film starring Harry Belafonte. King Felipe died in London in 1947 and was succeeded by the poet John Gawsworth who was crowned King Juan 1.

In 1958 King Juan advertised in the personal columns of The Times a Caribbean Kingship with Royal Prerogatives - one thousand guineas". Now this was going too far for the successor the Grand Duke of Basalto who saw his future monarchy slipping away. Several solicitors were immediately at war and offers of £100,000 for the title were reported. Count Bertil Bernadotte even sent a crisp £50 note to secure an option! But, in the end, King Juan settled for the small but continuous liquidity to be gained at the bar of the Alma. As a result there are at least nine claimants to the throne and more Redondan dukes than are registered with the Knight Herald of England.

In 1979 one of the few visits to Redonda was perilously carried out to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Kingdom. Juan II took a party with him on a small yacht and they all leapt off into the surf by the broken-down jetty, barely making it through the breakers to the steep shoreline. Short of breath and out of shape the half-drowned party clambered up the boulder-strewn gully to the saddle of the 1000 foot peak and there carried out the commemoration ceremony. Everyone present received a title, and the Redondan flag, blue for the sea, brown for the soil, or perhaps the man-eating rats, and green for the vegetation, or for the crew's complexions, was planted again.

King Juan's self-appointed Ambassador in California got himself into a pickle in negotiations with some Middle Eastern gents. They hired a New York design team to draw up plans for a floating extension to Redonda, suspended by hawsers from the peak. The King spent four days in Los Angeles dissuading his Ambassador from such a "ghastly" idea. The aforementioned gents offered mega-bucks for proof of the title but the King rose above it all and the deal was scotched.

In 1984 Wynne-Tyson wrote and published SO SAY BANANA BIRD, a novel in which Antigua and its sattelite anonymously featured. He spends time promoting the idea of Redonda as being a symbol of all the unspoiled places that should be spared the attentions of man, and there may yet be a poetry prize sponsored by him.

"Who will be the successor when you abdicate, Your Majesty?" I asked the Reluctant Monarch during tea, while obsequiously buttering His toast.
"I've drawn up a short list and at No.1 is a very rich Spaniard who recently bought all the regalia from Sotheby's" he replied "As well as the literary executorship of Gawsworth's work and Matthew Phipps Shiel. I barely refrained from asking why he'd sold all the royal gear - after all, it belongs to the nation, doesn't it? But instead said "What? You should be ashamed of yourself. Thousands of lives and millions of pounds sterling were spent kicking the Spanish out of the Caribbean and now you're planning to give a bit of it back?"

"Oh, heavens" he replied "I didn't think of that".

I thought the next king should be a keen skipper like Matthew Dowdy Shiell: a tall, stately, incredibly wise and handsome, poetic sort of bloke with remnants of a family castle in Ireland, owner/skipper of a square-rigged ship, living within sight of Redonda on a good day, clearly descended from other kings from another time right back to Arnulf Bishop of Metz in AD643... Great Leaping Leprechauns - sounds exactly like me! Robert the Bald was one of my ancestors. So, after he'd gone back to Blighty on the great silver boobie I wrote to the King right away and asked to be included on the Short List, mainly because I am only 5'6".

By return I received a letter from His Majesty. It seems his commitment to others were weighing more heavily than he'd imagined but he was looking for a way out. He suggested that, if I would become King Robert I of Redonda it would let him off the hook with the Spaniard. Here I quote his very words: "You should prepare your square-rigged schooner, drive her downwind to Redonda, plant your flag, give an inflammatory speech to the boobies; that you are now the supreme ruler; and that furthermore you intend to resurrect old man Shiell's territorial claim, which means that Antigua has no right of possession and must pay you retrospective taxes for all the help that Redonda has given the tourist industry. Be worthy of the Realm".

We have bowed humbly to most of his suggestions and so We hereby announce to the world that on May 31st of this year onboard the square-rigge topsail schooner "Sir Robert Baden-Powell" We sailed to the island with sixty loyal subjects, planted the new flag, and declared Ourselves to be the fourth monarch, King Robert the Bald.

Thus a new Kingdom, friendly to all, especially Cuba, Bhutan, and the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, has appeared in the Caribbean. We intend to be an easy-going, benevolent monarch, strict but fair. For a modest fee not even approaching princely We will be available to launch boats, nudist beach clubs, and bar mitzvahs. Among the proliferation of Royal Edicts is one that, to protect Our legions of loyal rats, goats and boobies, throws a two-hundred mile Exclusion Zone around the island. Everything sailing through the zone must pay a fee of 10¢ a foot per year. The Queen now has her own flag. It's yellow and is already known in Court as the Q Flag. Anything afloat flying this flag anywhere in the world will pay a flat license fee of $US10 a year. Skippers will receive a beautiful certificate, signed by King Robert himself. Revenue is expected to be around $US35M a week. Or maybe a day.

There's old adage, quintessentially appropriate here, still heard in and around these islands: "The sun never set on the British Empire simply because nobody could trust the Brits in the dark". But pay no attention to this colonial verbiage - trust Us, We're a sailor.

Bob Williamson's "The Kingdom of Redonda" web page at Antigua Nice Ltd can be found by clicking here.