The Hermitage on Cat Island

March 3, 2011

Our morning ritual is to run the generator to charge the boat batteries which keeps all of our refrigeration  and lights working through the day. At the same time we run the water maker and I also run a batch of laundry a few days a week which I hang up on a make shift clothes line on the top deck. I use the dryer just for towels because they end up feeling like scratchy cardboard otherwise. During this time we catch up on our to-do list or plan our cruising. Once this is done then we have the rest of the day to ourselves.  Now that we don’t have the morning net we have 30-45 minutes extra time every day.

Today we dinghy to the beach and walk up to Mount Alvenia (also called Mount or Comer Hill) which is the highest hill in the Bahamas at 206 feet.  This is where Beloved Father Jerome built “The Hermitage” atop of Mount Comer.   The Hermitage is a monument to the faith of one man, Father Jerome (born John Cecil  Hawes). Born in England in 1876, he first became an architect and then an Anglican priest. After the 1908 hurricane, the Anglican Bishop sent this architect/priest to restore the damaged churches. His unique stamp of hurricane-proof stonework with its thick walls and barrel vaulted roofs can be seen in seven churches that he rebuilt on Long Island. After an interim elsewhere as a wagon train driver, a monk, a missionary and a horse breeder, he became a Catholic priest and return to the Bahamas to build Catholic churches.  In 1937 he received permission from the Bishop to retire on Cat Island as a hermit. He built a miniature replica of a European Franciscan Monastery. The entire structure was built with his own hands out of native rock as his retirement home. His humble devotion to God, which carries all the way up the hill through the Stations of the Cross, past the replica of Jesus tomb to his Spartan living quarters and small chapel for private devotions.  He chose a place where he could look east and see the colbalt blue of the Atlantic Ocean and to the west where he could gaze upon the emerald and turquoise waters of the banks. He lived here until his death at age 80. He is buried beneath “The Hermitage” that he so lovely built with his own hands.

As we approached The Hermitage I was unsure what to expect. We had read that you must signal your approach by striking a stone on a piece of scrape metal left hanging off a tree. We did so and we amazed a the amount of detail and care taken in the building of the Stations of the Cross along the hill side and the Hermitage. We are grateful for the Bahamians who continue to care for this treasured place since Father Jerome’s death in 1956. We took about a 100 pictures but pictures do not do this justice.