Antigua offers a beach for each day of the year

Miami.com

April 13, 2008

The island with 365 powdery-sand beaches, one for each day of the year, is one of the least-known Caribbean islands to most Americans.

But two Brits, Adm. Horatio Nelson and guitarist Eric Clapton, were and are very familiar with Antigua, a former British colony that is popular with yachters and the nautical crowd.

Nelson commanded the British naval base and shipyard at English Harbour on the island's southern coast in the 1780s. His dockyard no longer caters to naval ships. Instead, it serves sailing ships and yachts.

Clapton has built his $8 million house along the rocky southern shore not far from English Harbour, as well as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. Antigua has been a second home to Clapton.

English Harbour is one of the top tourist hubs on Antigua, along with Dickenson Bay on the north coast.

The harbor became a haven from hurricanes as far back as 1671 and the British opened a naval dockyard there in 1725.

The dockyard was moved to the current site and expanded in 1743. It became the No. 1 British base in the eastern Caribbean and a safe deep-water anchorage. It was where the British ships got the barnacles scraped off.

That enabled the British to keep its fleet in the Caribbean and to establish dominance from 1713 to 1815 over the French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Americans, as well as privateers after cargoes of sugar and spices.

Nelson arrived in 1784 as captain of the frigate HMS Boreas and second in command of the Squadron of the Leeward Islands. Nelson is said to have hated Antigua during his three years there.

Steam-powered ships and the decline of British influence led to the dockyard on Antigua being closed in 1889.

The Friends of English Harbour, a grass-roots group, reconstructed the dockyard and reopened in it in 1961.

Today Nelson's Dockyard (www.antigua-barbuda.com) is a national park, complete with waterfront taverns and chandleries popular with yachties. It is a British-style Williamsburg.

Most of the Georgian-style buildings were constructed between 1785 and 1792.

Those include the Admiral's House from 1855, the Copper and Lumber Store, which has been converted into a hotel with 14 units and a restaurant, the Capstan House and the Officers Quarters Building, where officers lived during the hurricane season.

Only a dozen capped stone pillars remain of the large boathouse where sails were removed from ships. The sails were then hoisted through trap doors into an adjoining workshop for repairs.

Other buildings include the sick house, mast house, a blacksmith's workshop, pay office, and the remains of the cordage, canvas and clothing store.

About a half-mile away from the harbor is Fort Berkley at the entrance to English Harbour. It's an up-and-down walk to a lone cannon, an old powder house and the remains of the old fortress.

Admission to Nelson's Dockyard (it covers 15 square miles) is $5 a person.

Some of the best views of English Harbour and neighboring Falmouth Harbour come from Shirley Heights, which tower more than 400 feet above the rocky coast and the two marina-filled bays.

Fort Shirley, a military structure, was named after Gen. Sir Thomas Shirley. The crumbling remains were rebuilt in 1981 into the Fort Shirley Lookout by the Hodge family.

The up-high view is one of the most impressive in the Caribbean and includes a peak at Clapton's low-slung house on rocky Standpoint Peninsula sticking out into the azure-blue waters.

What's most impressive about Clapton's complex is how it naturally fits on the peninsula.

In the distance you can also see the red-roofed Crossroads Centre Antigua established in 1997 by Clapton. He has supported the center with benefit concerts and auctions of his guitars.

Shirley Heights (268-460-1785) is popular today for its sunsets and its partying, which have reputedly attracted such luminaries as Whitney Houston (she has a house next to Clapton's) and Chuck Norris.

Dinner is served at Shirley Heights on Thursdays through Saturdays.

Every Sunday night, Shirley Heights sponsors a Jump Up on the patio with reggae bands and a barbecue. The admission is $4. Food is extra.

Shirley Heights is open from 9 a.m. to sunset Monday through Wednesday and to 10 p.m. the rest of the week.

It may attract upward of a thousand people during Sailing Week in April. That's the biggest event on the island.

Antigua (pronounced an-tee-gah) was discovered in 1493 and named by Christopher Columbus. He named the island that is 13 miles by 10 miles after Santa Maria de la Antigua, a Spanish saint.

The island was not settled until 1632, when settlers came from St. Kitts. No one had

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