Port Antonio, capital of Portland Parish, a city on Jamaica’s northeast coast, the gateway to John Crow Mountains, tropical jungles, Blue Lagoons & and Crystal Clear waterfalls, fed by underground springs and flowing into the warm Caribbean Sea……….
Dragon Bay turned out to be far different than Port Royal, where Port Royal had pirate heritage and was a working city with all that implied, where the Government yards still existed in Trenchtown and where there were areas you wouldn’t particularly want to be at night, Dragon Bay was a resort, private in its own secluded bay with all you would expect from that exclusivity…..a million miles from what Bob Marley grew up in and somewhere Hollywood had recognized for its peace, tranquility and beautiful Caribbean beaches. Those who remember the Tom Cruise film “Cocktail” would instantly recognise the beach bar; it was where the majority of the film was shot…….That’s not the only Hollywood movie filmed there either, just around the headland in Frenchman’s Bay they shot blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields……..
It turns out Don had dropped lucky with this phase of the Expedition, Dragon Bay had just been through a transfer of ownership and had been undergoing some refurbishment, it was not yet ready for guests but the owners were happy to let us use the chalet accommodation in Two of the blocks before they opened for regular business. There was not One single complaint from any of us…..there was a bar, the beach bar, a restaurant and a beach-side pool…..this was slumming it….big-time! There was even an on-site Dive operation “Lady G-Diver” run by a very attractive local girl and her crew. Don had arranged to use them for cylinders & weights and to use their skiff and diver cox’n to get us to local sites and back
So, where were we in more global terms? Portland formally became a Jamaican “parish” in 1723, it was originally to be called Port Antonio by order of the Duke of Portland, the then-Governor of Jamaica, after whom it is named. The existing port was planned to become a naval stronghold intended to protect settlers from attacks by the Spanish from the sea. By 1729 the British had begun construction of Fort George, on the peninsula separating the East and West harbours known as the Titchfield promontory. In the 1880’s Lorenzo Dow Baker who started the banana trade in Jamaica, began promoting the sleepy little coastal town of Port Antonio as a destination for wealthy Americans. Portland took off and quickly became a tourist driven boom town. The influx of tourists and the concurrent shipping of Bananas’ became so large that, at one time, weekly sailing from Port Antonio was purported to be greater than weekly sailings from Liverpool….
Dragon’s bay was a wonderful location, an idyllic place where at night, firefly’s hummed everywhere, lighting the trees around you, I had never seen Firefly’s and found them mesmerising in the heat of the tropical evenings, as dusk fell to the dark of night. One evening I sat on the veranda in front of the resort restaurant, empty of people as we were the only guests there for the duration, and watched as far out to sea a storm of epic proportions chased across the horizon, angry and purple at its base, but white and huge the clouds above…..and watched, hypnotised, as incredible lightening forks danced to Earth and struck the Caribbean sea….. the anger of Gods creating a light show Pink Floyd could only dream of………
We took advantage of the excellent bay location to undertake some training dives and some photographic work, the exped had brought an underwater camera, it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in at the time, however I had a go on at least one dive in the secluded bay. The shots I took turned out to be pretty poor, there is a distinct art to photography, and when it came to adding depth and light correction to the mix….I just did not have the time, or interest to take it seriously! The diving was great around Dragon Bay, we had far better visibility than at Kingston throughout, our first dive there giving us 24m, measured off an SMB reel! The log book reads: “….Small boat dive Alligator Head (J) Great descent (freefall) to 28m and onto a large reef that drops to 60m teeming with life Coral and accompanied round by a shoal of Silver – Black barred Angel fish Very large for this area a fantastic dive……”
This was the location of my very first night dive, the second dive made at Dragon Bay which we undertook in the bay itself. The sheltered nature of the gentle sloping sandy shore, and the coral outcrops we could see from the shore in daylight, meant it was an obvious choice, easy access, no boats required…..perfect! The log book says all I recall, despite the adventurous nature of the dive itself in terms of my experiences to date: “….Shore dive – Dragon Bay (JA) 1st True Night Dive – Around a coral bay sometimes down to 0.5m depth – Two large Puffer Fish – a Sea Snake – lots of smaller reef fish beautifully coloured – a couple of Crayfish A great dive…..”
In l956 Canadian business tycoon Garfield Weston purchased 45 acres of prime ocean real-estate in Jamaica planning a retreat for himself and his staff. Mr Weston missed a clause in the deeds to the property mandating its development as a public resort, thus prompting the development of one of the most memorable resorts in Jamaica…… Frenchman’s Cove is in the parish of Portland, in a secluded corner of the island located on the northwest shore of Jamaica, the John Crow mountains (a native Jamaican hawk giving them their name from it’s almost ubiquitous presence on the up-drafts of warm tropical air lifting it lazily into the sky) run down to the sea, amidst hidden coves and lush tropical forest washed by the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean Sea. Frenchman’s Cove evokes a chapter in Jamaica’s sugar industry, milling made use of a stream running through the cove and occupies a significant place in the islands history. The cove has been used for various films, Blue Lagoon, a Brooke Shields film based on a novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole shot there in 1978, and, most notably William Golding’s the Lord of the Flies shot in 1988. Interestingly, from a scuba perspective, the underwater filming in Blue Lagoon was by Ron & Valerie Taylor, probably most famous for Blue Water White Death, the 1971 White Shark odyssey featuring Rodney Fox, the former Abalone fisherman savaged, to the point of near death in a Great White attack off Aldinga Beach just South of Adelaide, Australia
The next few dives (in all we dived 9 times out of Dragon Bay during the 5 days we were there), all of them surrounded by a myriad of Caribbean reef fish, were similar, some deeper dives around the 25 to 30 meter mark, with a few more shore dives thrown in. There are many reefs out in both directions from the resort, to the Left and Frenchman’s Cove, to the right and Alligator Head……all of them similar, abundant coral, fans, coral heads, table corals and brain corals, wonderful to see, with plenty of sandy swim-through’s, some of which go right under the coral one side to the other, landward to ocean…… one of the more brilliant things to do on coral reefs! I had a “Tropical Fish of the Caribbean” slate with me, I had already seen and identified an Octopus, a 3’ Barracuda and a big Ocean Trigger fish, and on one dive alone logged: “…..Small boat Dive – Alligator Head (JA) free fall to 35m down the side of a reef from 20m back up and along it – the most beautiful yet – endless coral – all types & these are just the fish I can I.D. lg Black Durgon – Trigger Fish – Balloon Fish – trumpet Fish – Dusky Squirrel Fish – Juvenile Clown Wrasse – Butthead Wrasse – Striped Parrot Fish and Blue Tang Some List – Some Dive !!…….” On our last dive out of Dragon Bay I added Scorpion Fish, Four-eye Butterfly Fish, Doctor Fish, Yellowtail Snapper, Yellowtail Damsel Fish and Blue-head Wrasse to the list….but we hadn’t seen any sharks the whole 5 days! It is, however, an awesome location for those who love marine biology and especially reef denizens
Dragon Bay 2019
It is desperately sad to look at the resort today, remembering it with such joy from the days of 1994. Almost 14 years after the Gordon Stewart-led Sandals Group acquired Dragon Bay, having promised to transform it into “the Caribbean’s most luxurious resort”, the 99-room facility is closed, the closure having sent the local community, (whom I remember very fondly having spent several nights with locals, listening to “Hard” Reggae, eating BBQ cooked Jerk Chicken and downing Red Stripe from fridges powered off local houses in the town square), to the brink of financial ruin. The Sunday Gleaner, the local Jamaican news sheet reports: The mayor of Port Antonio, Wayne McKenzie, expressed his concern regarding the continued closure of Dragon Bay saying “…..we are equally concerned about the fact that it has been closed for so long. Prior to its closure, it was the most promising hotel in terms of employment in the parish, so it has been a major concern to us for quite a while now“. McKenzie acknowledges the continued closure has been influenced by a failure to update the local Airport and the coastal road connecting to the Dragon Bay resort. As someone who loved being in Dragon Bay and who found the locals wonderful and welcoming people, and, with the diving and location being so beautiful, it is a tragedy if this continues, it truly is…… Sandals should be ashamed of their behaviour! You can still dive the area as Lady G’Diver still operates, but now out of the Quay on the Errol Flynn Marina, at the New Marina Port Antonio…..say Hi and tell her I sent you……… http://www.ladygdiver.com/
I have been waiting decades for Dragon Bay to be refurbished…pathetic.
Looks like we will both be waiting a while longer too…….tragic waste