Wickams Cay
Wickams Cay is a commercial and marina development in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, which sits in a bay, Road Harbour, on the south shore of Tortola.
Wickams Cay and Little Wickams Cay were once small islands in the bay, close to the shore, but were swallowed up in a land reclamation scheme in the 1960s and now the tow has spread over their area. The islands as were are now known as Wickhams Cay and Wickhams Cay II (for Little Wickhams Cay). Also included in the same reclamation projects were former islands known as Bird Cay and Dead Horse Cay.[1][2]
The reclamation project which led to the islands' being annexed to the mainland by reclamation was led by Ken Bates,[3] a British investor and former Chairman of Leeds United, who above anyone was responsible for turning the British Virgin Islands from a backwater into a glittering tourist desitination. Bates signed long-term and generous lease agreements with the territory's administration. However, this was a febrile time of nationalism and black empowerment: a march mourning the assassination of Martin Luther King turned inot a march on Government House about the influence of Ken Bates. Popular protests were led by a local man, Noel Lloyd, and the leases Bates had received on Wickams Cay, Anegada and elsewhere were nullified by the British Government, for which Bates received approximately US$1.5 million in compensation.[2]
Location
- Location map: 18°25’37"N, 64°36’49"E
References
- ↑ Cohen, Colleen: Take Me to My Paradise: Tourism and Nationalism in the British Virgin Islands - Making paradise as a Tourist Desti-Nation, p 59
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Positive Action Movement: When Ken Bates Took Over His Homeland in 1968, Noel Lloyd Led The Fight To Take It Back
- ↑ Builders of Tortola: Norman Fowler
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