St Pierre Martinique (Part 2)

Steps up to l’Eglise du Fort

Walking through the town it was clear to us that it never really recovered from the disaster. Later buildings have very obviously been built up on the few feet of stone foundations left after the eruption and we found it a slightly disjointed mix of old and new. Further west from the ruined theatre we walked up some steps to the ruins of l’Eglise du Fort.

L’Eglise du Fort

As we walked through the site with large lumps of carved stone littered about, it reminded us more of ruins from the Roman Empire rather than of a church dating from 1678. The church had been full with residents celebrating Ascension Day when Mount Pelée erupted and all inside perished. The church and bell tower were never rebuilt and the overgrown ruins remain as a reminder of the destruction on 8^thMay 1902.

The waterfront as it was after the eruption and today. Note the church bell (bottom right) blown out from the bell tower and onto the quay 

We walked as far as the Centre de Découverte des Sciences de la Terre where we watched an excellent film documenting the scientific research following the eruption. Prior to that, eruptions were assumed to involve lava flow and so the realisation that this had been an explosive eruption taking out part of the summit and scattering ash and rock rather than lava resulted in a new categorisation of volcanos. Still very much active whilst the analysis took place, the scientists were able to watch new peaks form and then collapse at the summit. Hundreds of black and white photographs were taken by the scientific team and many of them are on display in in the centre, graphically showing the almost complete destruction of the town by the forces of the eruption.

The film also explained how the Lesser Antilles island chain was formed. The more eastern islands are from an earlier volcanic period and so have had more time to be eroded which is why they are lower. Conversely the western islands have much higher peaks from more recent eruptions and most still have active volcanos on them.

The Figuier Quarter

Wandering back to our dinghy we passed the Figuier Quarter, a collection of terraced houses, shops and warehouses which sat under the stone ramparts of the fort. From here they supported the extensive commercial activity of the port. Until the middle of the 18^thcentury nearly all of the commerce to/from Martinique, Guadeloupe, St Lucia, Grenada and Dominica came through St Pierre; it must have been a very busy place.

Our final piece of exploration before we moved on was to walk up to the high ground to the south of St Pierre Bay. Here, on the site of an old gun battery, there is a statue of the Virgin Mary which is floodlit at night and from the here we were rewarded with excellent views down onto the anchorage, the town and up to the peak of Mount Pelée.

There was plenty more of Martinique that we could [Ed: should?] have visited but we also recognised that we needed to keep progressing north. We had a deadline to meet Charlotte in Guadeloupe when she came out to holiday with us from 23 March, and we knew that we wanted to take a good look at Dominica, the next island to the north of us, before then. With that in mind we made plans for an early start on 14 March to make the jump to Prince Rupert’s Bay on Dominica.

St Pierre, Martinique