Island in the Stream . . . Your Dream by Karla Stover

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Island in the Stream . . . Your Dream

 

“Ineffectual,” “inept,” “ineffectual,” “a constant failure,” these are just a few ways Ernest

Hemingway described his brother, Leicester.  So being the less-brilliant, younger brother of a world-renown author, what could Leicester do to become famous in his own right?  Well, he could work hard and become president of a foreign country—a country that he created on a platform in the Caribbean Sea off the island of Jamaica, a wacky pursuit and therefore sure to inspire others.  On July 4, 1964,  Leicester Hemingway introduced the world to New Atlantis

            It’s hard to know how serious Leicester was about his enterprise, but perhaps very serious.   He not only waited until three years after his famous brother’s death before launching the kingdom, he also used his own money to create it, money that came from the proceeds of his book, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway.

            Approximately six miles off Jamaica’s coast, in international waters, Leicester found a place where the ocean floor, normally about 1,000 feet below sea level, was only fifty feet down. “Anything we build there is legally called ‘an artificial island,’” Leicester said.

First he put down a foundation made of used steel, iron, and bamboo cables weighted down with a ship’s anchor, a railroad axle and steel wheels, an old Ford motor block, and other scrap metal.  To this he attached an eight-by-thirty foot bamboo log platform.  He claimed half of the structure for New Atlantis and half for the United States government, based on the U. S. Guano Island Act of 1856.  In the 1850s, guano (bird poop) was a valuable fertilizer, and Western nations were busy claiming unoccupied areas having guano deposits.  The act authorized United States citizens to take possession on behalf of the government of   “any unoccupied island, rock or key on which deposits were found.”

            New Atlantis’s first citizens were Leicester Hemingway, his wife, Doris, and their daughters Anne, aged seven, and Hilary, aged three.  Eventually, the citizenship grew to seven with Leister as president.  In an ironic but classy touch, a British subject named Lady Pamela Bird, who held dual citizenship, became vice president.  Thus, New Atlantis had its own Lady Bird.

As president, Leicester drew up a constitution based on that of the United States but with one line taken from the Swiss constitution that prohibited gambling.  A constitutional provision let honorary citizens be elected president with no oath of office required. 

Leicester created an official currency comprised of a fish hook, carob bean, shark’s tooth, and other items.  He called it the New Atlantis scruple.  “The scruple was chosen as a unit of currency,” he explained, “because the more scruples a man has, the less inclined he is to be antisocial.”

His raft island had a national flag sewn by Doris.  It was a blue square with a gold triangle in the middle and a blue circle in the middle of that.  She made at least four flags because storms and thieves frequently left the flagpole empty.  And finally, Leicester issued five different denominations of postage stamps.  They honored the provisional government of the Dominican Republic, the United States 4^th Infantry, Winston Churchill, Herbert Humphrey, and Lyndon B. Johnson.  A letter sent from President Johnson addressed to Leister Hemingway, Acting President, and Republic of New Atlantis in which Johnson thanked Hemingway for some New Atlantis first-issue stamps.  Since it from the president and went through the United States postal system, it inadvertently gave the fledgling republic approbation.

Had it not been for storms that repeatedly took out the platform, Leicester would have enlarged it to 100 yards wide and half-a mile long.  His future plans included a lighthouse, a shortwave radio station, a customs house and, of course, a post office.  In the end, he quit rebuilding and turned all the country’s documentation over to the University of Texas at Austin.

            The purpose of New Atlantis was never clear.  Leicester explained, once, that it was to house the headquarters of the International Marine Research Society, an organization he founded.  The society’s mission was to raise funds for marine research, and to build a scientifically valuable aquarium in Jamaica.  A possible side benefit of the bamboo island was that it might help protect the Jamaican fishing industry.  But then Leicester also said he founded New Atlantis mostly to have fun and “make dough”—presumably from the stamps.

            After the demise of New Atlantis, Leicester tried to found another island nation—Tierra del Mar.  This time four State Department officials explained to him, in no uncertain terms, that “attempts at creating this (new) island would be viewed by the United States government as a highly undesirable development, adverse to our national interest, particularly as it might encourage an archipelagic claim,” i.e. serve as a springboard for annexation of one of the nearby Bahaman Islands.