moved to England and became a science fiction writer. “They all had a good time, and consumed much alcohol.” In 1880, when Sheill’s son, M.P., was 15, they took a day trip over to the island with the Bishop of Antigua and other friends, and Shiell had the bishop crown his son “King Filipe I of Redonda. Obviously, he wanted a kingdom for his son, and since no one had claimed nearby Redonda, he did. Generally, the story goes that Matthew Dowdy Shiell, an Irish-Montserrat merchant, had a long-awaited son, after five daughters. There is much written about this, so I tried to condense it into the most interesting bits: Now for the quirky and amusing part of the island’s history…The Kingdom of Redonda. By 1914, phosphate production had stopped, and the mining lease was given up in 1930.

Phosphate production grew, and 100 people worked on the island, which at the time had a wharf, and houses for the miners. In 1872, the British decided that they’d better claim the island before America did, and annexed the island as a part of Antigua. All that guano (bird poop), rich in phosphorous material, led to the production of phosphates on Redonda in 1865. The island is teeming with bird life, but has no source of freshwater other than rain.

Most of the island is extremely steep and rocky, with only a small, sloping area of grass at its summit climbing is difficult at best, and can be dangerous. It offers no protected or “proper” anchorage, and landing on the island is a challenging, to say the least possible only on the leeward coast, when the seas are flat-calm. Redonda is the all that remains of an extinct volcanic cone. At just over one mile long, and almost 1000 feet at it peak, Redonda has a very interesting history. As we turned away from the coast of Montserrat, the tiny island of Redonda came into view.

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