Martinique is one Caribbean island, one of the very few, that seemingly is neglected by American cruise ships and, thus, American cruisers. That is a shame, as it is an island with much to offer -- and French cuisine. Holland America visits with most frequency. Other cruise lines do come here, but it often is left out of Southern Caribbean itineraries. As with some of the Netherlands Antilles islands, one gets the sense that money flows in relatively freely from France, its European mother country, and that the locals do not need tourists as much as perhaps other Caribbean destinations do. Well, at least it will not be crowded.
Ships dock in Martinique’s capital, Fort-de-France, right on the harbor front and with no need for a tender. Fewer than 5,000 people call Fort-de-France home, and it is a neat, compact spot with Gallo-tropical flavor and a large cathedral, the Cathédrale Saint-Louis de Fort-de-France, built in the 17th century and over its history, repeatedly in need of repair from fires, volcanoes, earthquakes and, most disastrously, indifference. It looks wonderful today, though. (Another, perhaps more interesting church is on an inland road on the way to the gorgeous botanical gardens of Balata; modeled on the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur in Paris, the Sacré-Cœur de Balata is smaller than the original but to the same scale.)

All is calm today, although the island has a turbulent history from the one geological sensation that dominates the island— Mount Pelée. This colossal heap of rocks is in the record books as being the third worst volcanic eruption in history. When it last erupted in 1902 (it blew its top twice that year), it killed more than 29,000 people, a tragedy only dwarfed by two 19th-century eruptions in Indonesia, including legendary Krakatoa.

I drove up-island to St. Pierre, the town right beneath it, In 1902, it was obliterated by the eruption's pyroclastic surge and tour guides tell delighted visitors that the only person to survive was a rum drinker who due to intoxication was inside a jail cell that protected him. Thus, their argument goes, rum can save your life… please buy a bottle in duty-free. The truth, as so often is the case with tourist-ready anecdotes, is a little more vapid. It is true that this lucky man, Louis-Auguste Cyparis, who went on to be a star attraction in P.T. Barnum’s circus, survived, but he was in the jail because he jabbed a friend with a cutlass, a less romantic tale; in fact, a second man survived, too.

In his 1903 book, Mont Pelée and the Tragedy of Martinique: A Study of the Great Catastrophes, Angelo Heilprin, who visited in May and August of the fateful year, writes that “The landscape was barren as though it had been graven with desert tools, scarred and made ragged by floods of water and boiling mud, and hardly a vestige remained of the verdant forest that but a short time before had been the glory of the land. Great folds of cloud and ash hung over the crown of the volcano, and from its lower flanks issued a veritable tempest of curling vapor and mud. Lying close to its southern foot, and bathed in the flame of a tropical sunshine, was all that remained of the once attractive city of Saint Pierre—miles of wreckage that reached up from the silent desert of stone and sand, showing no color but the burning grays that had been flung to them or that had formed part of mother earth.”

A fantastic—awesome is a better word, in its true meaning—idea of the power of the 1902 eruption was that its ash enveloped, destroyed and sunk a ship, the Roraima, several miles out at sea, so much so that there were survivors from that, too. One of them described the scene on Martinique—which has a really wonderful flag, by the way, four snakes twirling around staffs on a blue background with a white cross—saying “No darkness was ever like it. Imagine the darkest night you ever saw, imagine it a thousand times darker than that, and then you may get some idea of what the air was like for fifty miles in every direction.”

The forests are back, green and healthy, but in St. Pierre, there are still reminders of that fateful day. An amphitheatre lies empty with scorched walls, a statue remains headless and inoperable, bent cannons stand facing a sea that provided far less threat than the land behind it. The first thing I noticed that had life was a train shuttling tourists along the front. Small waves lapped at the shore, and a local in a short-sleeved white shirt stood inside a school building and conducted an unseen orchestra. Everything seems normal, but scientists studying Mount Pelée—translated literally as Bald Mountain—say that it remains one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, despite not having blown its top for more than a century.


Climbing up the side of the volcano, everything looked verdant and idyllic. Here, the landscape has names such as Le Morne Rouge, Le Morne Vert and Gros Morne, monikers that speak of beauty, power and natural color from the bowels of the planet. A little south of St. Pierre is the seaside village of Le Carbet, where supposedly in 1502, four centuries exactly to the date of the volcano disaster, Christopher Columbus landed on his fourth voyage to what he still might have thought was Japan, while a little closer to looming Mount Pelée are the Pitons du Carbet mountains on which grow ferns reaching more than 30 feet in height. Everything is large here.

Tourists might prefer a more placid, worry-free time of things, and for that, head to the southern beaches, most notably Anse des Salines, which affords a distant view of a 574-foot-high diamond-shaped island-rock off the coast of Martinique called, aptly, Le Diamant. In 1804, rather eccentrically, a British naval vessel dropped some of its sailors onto it, with instructions to hoist a Union Jack, register the rock in the name of King George III (who, you might remember, history chronicles as being as mad as a fruit bat) and conduct a naming ceremony, in which the island was thereafter not regarded as being land at all, but rather a ship, and to be called thereafter, His Majesty’s Ship, The Diamond Rock.

France did not like this one bit, so spent the next two years attacking it, without success. Their last-ditch plan worked. The plan was to float out several hundred bottles of rum, which were freely taken advantage of, so much so that the French repossessed the isle the next morning without a single musket bullet being fired. Or maybe this history—and rum does seem to take a prominent part in anecdotes hereabouts—was as spiced as the story of the lone survivor of Mount Pelée?

But I do love the fact that my country still regards the rock as a battleship, and a visit to Admiralty House in London would probably reveal a beautiful certificate proving this, and that if the Royal Navy happens to pass the “rock,” its crew have to stand to attention and salute. Fantastic stuff, and on its own, good reason to come to this beautiful island.