Four hundred years ago, the river Essequibo was regularly raided by pirates, mostly English and French freebooters, plundering the Dutch. Occasionally, they return.
When I was last in Bartica, a gold mining town, I visited the wharf. It was a large barn of a place, full of reflections and smelling of brine. The only person around was an old Indian guard, in a uniform of crumpled claret. He was standing on the wooden stelling, staring into the water. It was here, six months earlier, that about 20 water-thieves had clambered ashore; masked, camouflaged and clattering with guns. First, they rounded up the stevedores, and then they forced them onto the decking, and shot them where they lay.
‘Just here,’ said the Indian, ‘Five men dead.’
The divots in the timber were still ragged and fresh.
‘But what did the killers want?’
The guard shrugged. ‘They just goes robbing round the town …’
I followed the bullet-holes (see photo) out through the wharf into the streets beyond. After shredding the police post, the pirates had stolen a truck, and ridden around blasting at will. For over an hour, Bartica was forced underground, whilst the raiders toured above.
But were they really just robbers? No-one seemed to know. One man told me they were after those that ran this town, the big-shots like ‘Mango man’ and ‘Vulture’. But they never found them, and nor was very much stolen. In the end, eleven people died, and their killers vanished into nothing. Perhaps it was all a warning, or just a blast from the past.