Legacy

A history of El Santuario (The Sanctuary), an island city.

It was the year of the great flood of the Amazon River, Brazil, South America, 1937.  The water had raised to almost thirty feet above basic flood stage.  The Amazon River is normally forty miles wide at its mouth where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean.  It flows with enough force even at normal levels that fresh water can be found streaming fifteen miles out to sea from that river.

It is difficult to imagine its force at thirty feet above flood stage.  It was recorded however that at that time the distance at the mouth of the river had increased to two hundred miles wide.

Even at normal water levels the Amazon was a very wide river even at points a couple of hundred miles inland it was as much as eight miles wide.  The Amazon River was also dotted with many small islands.  Some of them were inhabited with small fishing villages.  Also along the shore lines were other small fishing villages.  There was a minimal amount of agriculture in the areas at that time.  Hunting fishing and gathering was the main way the indigenous populations sustained themselves.

Much of the population had become since the 1500’s a mix of Spanish and Native Indian, for obvious reasons.  The language had also become primarily Spanish with very little original native dialects remaining, again for obvious reasons. Today much of the Brazilian interior has become agricultural. Expanding populations were deforesting and taming the land.  The banks of the Amazon however remain mostly jungle like.

Now the great flood is upon the land, the people are having their island villages washed away, islands being totally covered by water.  Many shoreline villages also being swept away.

Now enters the central figure of this story, one Manuel Del Teugo.  Manuel was twenty eight years old at the time and first mate of a tug boat that pulled barges linked together like freight cars on a train up and down the Amazon from the many Rubber Plantations  along the banks of the Amazon some five hundred miles upstream to Port City’s nearer the mouth of the river.

Normally a tug boat would have the capability of handling as many as fifteen barges under normal conditions.  Conditions were far from normal.  Manuel who had more heart, compassion, and courage than brains, with out asking permission from the tug boat owner; nor any of the barge owners whose barges  were all sitting empty hundreds of miles up stream at a point where flooding was also being a problem.

Manuel in effect stole the tug boat, and not fifteen barges, but thirty barges, and headed down stream with all the speed he could muster.  His thoughts were to rescue as many as possible.

He had seen flooding before, not this bad, but bad enough that he knew the river would have already claimed thousands of lives, and hundreds more would be clinging to flotsam and jetsam, maybe in small canoes, being swept out to sea to perish.

Well if asked in advance, any fool would have said Manuel’s was on a fool’s mission, a suicidal one at that.  They would have said on a river that swollen, trying to move a normal string of fifteen barges would have been difficult in the very extreme, thirty, pure madness.  But nevertheless there went Manuel caring not for self but for others. Not caring much about whether or not he’d get arrested for tug boat and barge stealing either. Not important all things considered he must have thought.

It was a wild ride, one that going upstream would have been impossible, but downstream with a fast moving current the tug boat was able to pull the extra load and maintain a bit of control some of the time.

The current was so fast that the tug boat added very little to the speed of that huge string of barges.  By the way, did you know that each barge was forty feet wide and one hundred feet long.  Yes that pretty large. Times thirty would boggle ones mind.

Of course it wasn’t long, just four or five hours before Manuel started spotting survivors clinging to what was left of their hut or a log, or an occasional uncontrollable canoe.  Naturally stopping wasn’t possible, even cutting the engines wouldn’t have slowed things much.  In fact cutting engines would have meant abandoning control altogether.  The ropes that had tied the barges to their moors were trailing, so as people could reach out and grab them they would haul themselves aboard.  Some had to swim for it.  Some of the swimmers made it, some didn’t.

Even though there was a centering of the water flow as the channel varied, the people clinging to stuff was spread out width wise quite a bit.  Manuel steered left and right trying to get close to survivors.  In the process of swerving one way then another that string of barges started looking like a snake doing a fast slither.

That swerving allowed more people to be saved than if he’d not risked loss of control by doing it. More swimmers abandoned the flotsam they clung to, again some made it some didn’t.  Sad realities indeed, especially for one who made it and watched a loved one fail.

Now Manuel’s original plan was to get on board all he could and simply end up going out to sea with the load.  Then after clearing the forward thrust of the flooding river simply turn and go along the coastline until he could find a place to simply pull in and beach the barges allowing everyone to scramble to safety. A somewhat plausible idea, but it didn’t work out.

Now Manuel had never been all the way to the actual mouth of the river and was not sure of landmarks that might have told him he was getting near as ninety nine percent of them, islands for example, were now under water.  Barges an d tugboats being rather shallow draft craft probably went right over previously visible islands.

As this procession of barges moved forward, Manuel saw he was coming close to what looked like a wee bit of an island.  It had a somewhat rocky prominence jutting above the water almost five feet, with a little greenery on it.  It was about forty feet across and appeared to have about twenty stranded persons on it.  They were what was left of the original inhabitants, but Manuel thought they were survivors who managed to get onto it from their flotsam.

Manuel didn’t realize that it was what was left showing of a modest hill on the largest island near the mouth of the Amazon.  He thought  he  could just kind of sail near it so to speak and those people could jump on board  the barges.

Well now that’s when the horrible crunching sound was heard as he tore the bottom out of his tug boat as it grounded on rocks and such that were part of the submerged portion of the island.  The rest of the string of barges he was towing wanted to keep going as the current dictated.  But he was grounded but good and was like unto an anchor to the string of barges.

The current drew the barges on down but the tugboat held fast and the current then whipped the barges in towards that rocky prominence and much more grinding sounds were heard as the barges got hung securely on the submerged rocks.  The tremendous force which had whip slung  the barges onto the rocks, wasn’t sufficient to pull them back off.  So there they sat, high and dry, but going nowhere.  The barges having heavy steel bottoms were not damaged in being grounded.  They remained float worthy.

There they would be until the river went down and hopefully some passing vessel might rescue them.  Conversations with the people who were already on that rocky prominence  made it obvious of what was under this pile of barges.  More flotsam piled up against the barges and was hauled on board and used as materials to make shelters from and provide firewood.  Along with the flotsam came small stranded animals including lots of rodents.

The critters thought they had found safety, but discovered they were merely a menu item.

After the water subsided, some of the barges were left fairly level on solid footing, others had a tilt towards the riverside. As it became apparent that the island was actually sizable, about three miles across; decisions were to be made.

The survivors had already lost their homes and would have to rebuild somewhere in any case, decided, why not here.  After all a head count revealed about one hundred and seventy souls, and it was obvious the island could support a fishing community three times that number.

They began working hard and an industrious bunch they were.  Some fished to provide food for the community and others set about leveling the barges where they sat.  Many stones and much sand and dirt was removed from the upside of the barges that were tilted, and moved to what had been the down side, thus leveling them out and providing an initial bit of solid footing.  That would have to be and was, made even more solid and secure over the next few months.

Someone suggested that the barges be secured in a fashion that would keep them where they were but allow them to raise up and lower if the water came up again in the future..  Not an easy task either, it was however accomplished but took almost three years to complete.

Meanwhile some one suggested they needed someone to be in charge of the new community.  That was agreed upon readily, but some else said, but first let’s name our community.  That’s how the city of El Santurio (The Sanctuary) came about.  The new leader was by a landslide was Manuel.  Whose title changed from Chief to Mayor as the city came into prominence.

The little community soon had crude but effective housing.  A wee bit of agricultural efforts were started on what little tillable ground there was.  Then slowly word spread of the little community of barges and started to become a bit of a tourist attraction.  This necessitated going to the waters edge which was now about two miles from the ring of barges, and putting in a dock to accommodate visitors.

We all know how when a place starts to get attention, the money boys start to get interested.  They in droves came out to make overtures and offers to develop the little place into their idea of a gold mine.  Well the residents of the little community were interested in making the place more attractive to tourists, but they were also savvy about their own interests.

The best deal the money boys could make was to pay for and build the restaurants, sleeping facilities and souvenir shops up from the barges as potentially floating bases.  That the residents would have sole ownership and one hundred percent of the profits from operating such.  The architecture was a delightful blend of French and Spanish influence.

The money boys weren’t terribly happy about the deal, but it was the best one they could cut.  So how did they make a profit themselves?  Quite simple really, they had sole ownership of the tourist boats that took people to and from El Santurio. Yes they charged a stiff fee to haul tourists to and from, and there were a lot of tourists.

Now that’s how the local money boys made out.  But whoa! Here come the really big money boys with a lot more grand foresights about what this place could be.  They were the Shipping Magnates from that part of the world.  They knew there was a continual need to expand seaports to handle the coming and going of goods from all over the world.  Brazil was growing in population and popularity.

So, and I don’t know all the legalese of it, but they leased the rocky floor of the river which wasn’t all that deep at normal levels.  They leased it for a one mile circumference around the island.  They put in heavy concrete sea walls near the island proper to protect it from future flooding.

Which I’m told only occur about every seventy years. Then out from that came long docks extending to deep water, piers and warehouses were built.  The entire area is now three times the size of the original, and its one of the busiest major seaports today, in Brazil.  The residents and their descendants continue to make out like bandits and there is talk of erecting a statue to the founder, Manuel.