Îles du Salut - Devil’s Island

 I dare say if France hadn’t had the good taste to imprison some passionate writers there, I’d never have had the opportunity to ride a gigantic catamaran 8 miles out into the Atlantic to visit an otherwise unremarkable island yesterday.

Ile Royale is the largest of the three islands that once formed one of the most notorious prisons in literature but nowadays it is a lovely 75 acre park filled with abundant wildlife, lush greenery and some well preserved buildings. Had I been able to ignore its past I’d have had a lovely outing, as it was I had a fascinating day on a tropical island with one hell of a history.  Truly hellish. 

They say 70,000 prisoners were held here in the hundred years of misery in French Guiana ill treated beyond belief and those that survived were required to finish out their lives in the colony, not to be allowed to return to France. Oddly enough they call these islands « Îles du Salut » or in English “Salvation Islands.”

I managed to buy a $55 ticket only only because we drove by Kourou’s old port and saw the sign at the loading area. My other attempts resulted in me being told the tours were fully booked. 

I went online at “promaritimeguyane.fr” to buy my ticket, though their website was not very informative about how my day might unfold. Luckily you have me to tell you if you ever decide to follow my footsteps! First tip: Bring water! I took half a gallon and I drank it all and then I drank some more with my lunch. It was blazing hot on the island and it is not flat. The ride out takes an hour and in that huge catamaran it was quite comfortable.

It was quite windy on the return at 4:30 but the catamaran handled the short period waves without too much jerking.  You leave at 8:30 in the morning from Kourou and are back by 5:30 and Layne elected to keep Rusty company amusing herself with the pool, the air conditioned apartment and the washing machine while I worked up a long sweaty day. 

There is great beauty in these islands nowadays, covered in trees and surrounded at last by beautiful turquoise waters far from the muddy influence of the Amazon River. The prisons were closed down in 1952 and in the 1960s they were bought by, of all people, the European Space Agency, which was being set up in Kourou. I could just see the tip of their rocket monument over the top of the town as we left the mainland behind. 

The reason they bought the islands was because they fall under the shadow of the rocket launch path and they now have the authority to evacuate the islands prior to each launch, which they do, an evacuation enforced by the two gendarmes stationed on the island.  The police and the hotel owner are the only people allowed to stay on the island during a launch such as we watched Tuesday night. Oh and yes there is a full service hotel on Île Royale!

The two young white gendarmes told me they spend ninety days living on the island in the gendarmerie and you can see their white pickup with a blue light on the roof around the island. The gendarmerie:

90 days seems a long time to spend here but they get a free lunch served by the hotel… and I don’t suppose they have to write too many reports, the job every cop hates! The two we met very cheerful upbeat and friendly so I’m thinking they enjoy the work.  

Their main task that I saw was acting as dock masters, helping to tie up and let go the various tour boats at the floating dock. In a murder mystery writer’s imagination I’m sure there would be more action for them but this is reality…

There is also a helicopter pad for emergencies. It all rather reminded me of Fort Jefferson National Park off Key West, except here the island has a strong cell phone signal from a tower near the hotel.

So let’s go back to the history of the Salvation Islands, back in the 17th century before vaccinations when people died in droves from malaria and of course just like in Key West from Yellow Fever, the plague that slaughtered  people in the tropics. 

It starts with 12,000 colonists, almost all of whom died in the first attempt to populate Kourou in the 1760s when France wanted to exploit the wood and gold reserves of this rich abundant land. The survivors found refuge on these mosquito free islands, as did some of the French who fled the British take over of Quebec.  

The idea grew slowly to create a penal colony here but the brick buildings were planned in 1852 to remove undesirables from France and settle them where they could do no harm.  Île Royale was effectively split in two by a wall with the prisoners living on one side with a chapel and a hospital and some barracks, 

…while the administration lived on the other side of the wall protected by a military barracks that overlooked the prisoners. That building’s now a modern hotel where they also serve lunch in a rather pleasant open air dining hall.

There is a buffet lunch from noon to 2pm for $35 plus the servers will bring you drinks. Very civilized and I partook as we shall see. 

It wasn’t until the 1890s that the French government decided to get serious about stuffing prisoners onto these islands, thus creating the body of literature that tells us about the tortures carried out here. Île Royale was happily for me on my visit, the administrative hub and home to 400 least violent criminals. The commandant had a nice home here too, restored in 1996 with a European Union grant, which home serves as a museum inexplicably closed during my visit. 

It’s a nice home with ocean views but I can’t imagine being in charge of a facility where prisoners are chained to their plank beds, inadequately fed and allowed to suffer and die by the thousand. No matter how nice the accommodations I’m not cut out to torture people, not even murderers.  

But luckily for good storytelling there were lots of people ready to guard the people incarcerated here. Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman played much admired roles in the movie “Papillon” if you need a refresher on Devil’s Island. Which is incidentally the third of the three islands, in the photo below it’s the one to the top right. 

I sat and stared at it for a while before it was time to board the boat and all you can see is one building, a cement pad behind it and a lot of coconut palms. They say the building is where Alfred Dreyfus was housed, but he was their most famous prisoner so who knows. 

Photo from Wikipedia. Dreyfus in 1898

No one is allowed on the island they say because landing is too dangerous  but there it is, the place where where Alfred Dreyfus spent five years at the end of the 19th century, so inaccessible they sent supplies over by cable. 

His was the case that drove France mad. Dreyfus was found guilty of passing secrets to the German embassy in December 1894 and was sent to Devils Island a disgraced military officer. 

Oddly enough his time on Devil’s Island produced some of the most intense telegraph traffic on Île Royale with the government wanting daily reports on their most famous prisoner. 

The telegraph was operated at that time by a trusty prisoner Guillaume Seznec who spent 14 years in the islands. 

The telegraph tower shown below communicated with another tower in Kourou eight miles across the water. 

It’s known today as the Dreyfus Tower. 

Even though we think today of the three islands as Devil’s Island it was St Joseph that was torture central, the place where recalcitrant prisoners were locked in holes in the ground in solitary confinement. It hasn’t been restored and some of our party took an extra ferry over to go and picnic on the beach. I decided to stay on the main island as the optional three hours (or all day) stay among the ghosts didn’t appeal too much. Indeed the main island has the air of a well restored park. There is the military hospital used by civilians too for its healthy reputation on the fever free island. 

Originally they put the lighthouse on top but they ended up building a separate kerosene burning structure alongside. 

There is the chapel also restored in 1996. 

Mass was compulsory for prisoners until the turn of the 20th century when France formally ended its official connection to the Catholic Church. With that separation the nuns who had lived alongside the chapel moved away and their nunnery became a storehouse. Now in ruins.

Unlike the chapel:

The signs asks for decorum consistent with the chapels function but the iron grille seems sufficient to ensure that. 

And then the prisoner barracks. Until 1929 prisoners were chained to their plank beds at night until more comfortable hammocks were introduced. They housed 400 here in two buildings now used as storage areas. The prisoner hospital was to the right. 

Prisoners sent to Guiana were processed here and many were sent to mainland camps which ironically were far worse places with fever and harsh work conditions killing thousands.  

They did have a guillotine in the courtyard for incorrigible prisoners subsequently sentenced to death but Île Royale wasn’t the worst prison in Guiana.  

I don’t think it was that great either and even after release the prisoners had to settle on the mainland where the government gave them land. The idea was to populate this inhospitable land rather as Britain did with Australia.  

Personally I find the whole thing revolting and I find the idea of staying here…

…even in the prison guards’ restored homes quite grotesque but people do it. Wasn’t I surprised to see fresh linens being prepared for a new intake of guests

Too many ghosts for me. 

And I don’t believe in ghosts. 

But the history of this place is enough to give me the creeps. It’s lovely in sunlight but sleeping here..?

And so I made my way to the dining hall for lunch overlooking Devil’s Island, my situation contrasted with Dreyfus’ was weird enough for me. 

Lunch with a fresh breeze and a paradoxically lovely view. 

Chicken, rice and a plantain hash a bit like sweet potatoes. 

Salad bar. 

Dessert. 

A party of Brazilian tourists took up half the hall. 50,000 people a year visit the island, French Guiana’s biggest tourist attraction apparently. 

So much beauty from so much violence. 

Capuchin monkeys thrive on the island.

The children’s cemetery, where employee’s offspring were buried as disease before the era of vaccinations, spared no one and these weren’t people raised on industrial foods and all that stuff you hear from anti vaxxers.  They just died as a matter of course.  

Prisoners’ corpses were simply dumped into the ocean.  

The generator lives down here, far from the inhabited areas.  

Surf breaking on Île St Joseph supposedly helping to make escape difficult when combined with strong currents making it impossible. 

They say Papillon was actually a mainland prisoner who managed to escape and adapted his narrative to make it seem more exciting by telling stories told to him by actual prisoners on the islands. Either way he publicized the depravity of this place which was no bad thing. 

The cells for the insane. Like anyone was obviously sane in this whole mad prison scheme. 

In French they call them the “alienated” as though from reality. 

The ferry also brings hotel supplies and the gendarmes join in unloading, carrying boxes with the crew. 

The hotel staff have a rusty Renault Movano van which has seen better days (and better tires) but does the job even though the back doors don’t close…aside from the Gendarmes’ Toyota Hilux there are a few ATVs and similar runabouts for on island chores. 

And by the way you can bring your dog to the island as long as it is leashed. Rusty is too old to spend a day in one hundred degrees and enjoy it aside from the fact he’d hate the crossing on the boat. He’s Webb Chiles’ favorite dog but unlike his dogfather he has no interest in the sea.  Sad but true and that’s partly why we’re in a van, unlike some travelers;

A view of Île St Joseph where the solitary confinement took place:

The remains of the Atelier or workshop 

Farewell and adieu