Deans Blue Hole

2-6 February 2010— Four days of bicycling and touring Long Island, Bahamas with Arrington McCardy and John Birtzen, while Barbara Langworth drove the SAG wagon (sports & gear)–a clapped out, righthand-drive Mitsubishi wagon that didn’t let us down. We stayed at Arrington’s cousin Marvin’s “Bistro Garden” at Deadman’s Cay, a little B&B with nice accommodations if occasionally spotty on hot water. Delicious omelettes or Bahamian grits and whatever (including sardines, if you insist) for breakfast and our choice for dinner. We opted for grouper, seafood pasta, one night out (our anniversary; mutton and steak at Harbour View in Clarence Town) and more of Marvin’s wife’s seafood pasta Saturday night, made with garlic and oil and piles of crawfish and conch. Transport, accommodations and food cost the two of us under $800.

The Tropic  of Cancer runs through the northern end of the island, so for most of the time we were in the Torrid Zone–and torrid it was. Blazing heat all four days, and we were beat at the end of each day, sleeping ten hours a night. Saturday wound up with a cold front that brought a torrential downpour (unfortunately it did not extend as far north as Eleuthera). Next morning we flew LI-Nassau-Governor’s Harbour via Bahamasair, and landed in cool breezes which are with us yet. (The bikes returned a week later via the Island Link to Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera, and home. We don’t need to see a bicycle for a few days…)

Tuesday 2 February: Up at 4am to catch the sturdy wood-hulled Current Pride at Current, Eleuthera, four hours to Nassau, complete with the usual pea-shucking, hymn singing and non-stop chatter from Bahamian wordsmiths. In Nassau, a four-hour layover, then the overnight Island Link to Simms, Long Island, sixteen hours. Both trips on smooth seas. Note: the first shed on the right on the dock at Potter’s Cay dispenses large portions of $9 conch salad, made with live conch while you wait. Bought baked chicken for onboard dinner. “The movie” was Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in “It’s Complicated” (recommended). Slept the rest of the voyage in cozy bunks.

Wednesday 3 February (45.5 miles): Arrived Simms, L.I. at 9am with barely enough water under the shallow-draft “Island Link” to nudge into landing. Marvin arrived with the SAG wagon for Barbara and we biked north twelve miles to the Adderley Plantation, whose walls, hearth and window openings mostly still stand. Local historians have done a great job cleaving away the bush and labeling all the surrounding plants with common and Latin names and listing their properties as bush medicine. Adderley began in 1790 and is still in the hands of descendants, who hope to keep the remains as they are for history. Back down to Deadman’s Cay in the afternoon against a stiff headwind blowing unnaturally from the south. Only one potcake encounter, and we outran the mutt.

Thursday 4 February (43 miles): Long Island is much flatter than Eleuthera, a lot less traffic, only 4000 population, less spectacular scenery but far more handsome architecture, especially churches. Not as much scenic vistas or shoreline visible from the road, but very friendly locals. We rode south to Dunmores, looking for another plantation lost in the bush, then back to Clarence Town, the “capital.” After lunch, we swam in Dean’s Blue Hole, a giant funnel, the deepest blue hole in the world, with sapphire blue water in the middle. It goes down 663 feet in the middle of a shallow cove no more than wading depth.

Hamiltons Cave

Friday 5 February (15 miles): A morning trip to the Blue Hole, of which we couldn’t get enough. Found many tellin shells unscathed by the surf, including rare sunrise tellins. Back to Deadman’s, then rode south to Hamiltons, about seven miles away, to meet Leonard Cartwright for a guided tour of Hamiltons cave, which is on his property. This is three times the size of our own Hatchet Bay cave and virtually without graffiti or other human destruction, unlike ours—incidentally, this is true of Long Island generally. People take more pride in their houses, however humble. The cave must have been a walk-in condo for the Arawak Indians, with huge galleries and “ceiling holes” open to the sky, giving plenty of light and ways for fire smoke to exit. There’s a freshwater spring, spectacular stalactites, and some stalagmites have formed benches and tables. See photos on the Long Island website.

Sat 6 Feb (20 miles): Arrington visited a friend up north while John, Barbara and I stowed bikes in the car and rode to the end of the island. A stiff southwestern wind was blowing across the beach, and it was too early for Susannah Martinborough, an island character, to open the “Goat Pond Bar.” We  drove back to aptly-named Hard Bargain; while Barbara found another cave, we unloaded the bikes and powered north, thinking we’d have the wind behind us. What we got was the wind off our left flank, gradually working around until it was in our face again. No nasty potcakes this time. What kept us going was the prospect of another helping of conch salad, which we’d had the day before, from roadside vendor, Sean Cartwright, who uses all the right stuff: live conch, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, goat peppers for zest, sour and sweet orange and lime juice, $10 for a big foam bowl. Just superb.  We logged 125 miles slowing down from last year’s pace, making more time to take in the sights. Still we didn’t do all we wanted to do, like exploring the causeway and outer banks road on the eastern side.

Click here for last year’s visit.

I have your book Studebaker 1946-1966 originally published as Studebaker: The Postwar Years. As an employee of the old company at the end in Hamilton, Ontario,  it brought back memories of many old Studebaker hands: stylists Bob Doehler and Bob Andrews were good friends about my age.

I am looking forward to the last chapter discussing how Studebaker went wrong, especially since I also have theories. It would fun to compare notes. I am on a panel in Phoenix/Glendale next June and made a PowerPoint presentation to the Avanti Club in 2006. My grand finali was your a quote from your book: “For many years, Raymond Loewy Associates would be the only thing standing between Studebaker and dull mediocrity.”

P.S. Like you I  owned a 1962 Gran Turismo Hawk, a surprisingly impressive car. I drove it back and forth to Hamilton when we were working on the last 1966 production Studebakers. I put a ‘53 Starliner decklid on it and ‘54 Starliner wheel covers; I thought each addition was an improvement. —B.M., via email

1962 Gran Turismo Hawk: Brooks Stevens' ultimate facelift of the great Studebaker hardtops and coupes, it could be traced back to the 1953 Starliner.

Thanks for the kind words. My GT Hawk was one of the best cars I ever owned: fast yet easy on gas, stylish, fun to drive. It leaked oil and the famous “flexible frame” was a little creaky, but it was a satisfying car, if overly susceptible to the dreaded tinworm.

At the end of my book is a list of what Studebaker did wrong, begininning with chairman Paul Hoffman accepting every union demand after World War II. James Nance, the last president of Packard, who purchased Studebaker in 1954, told me: “The trouble with Studebaker was that they wouldn’t take a strike. Everybody else took strikes after the war and reasonable compromises were reached on wages and benefits. Studebaker didn’t, and they never caught up.”

What Nance and Packard didn’t know when they bought Studebaker—but learned to their horror when Packard’s accountants finally got into the books—was that Studebaker’s break-even point by the mid-Fifties was 50,000 or more cars higher than their volume in their best year on record. A Studebaker designer told me he once priced the 1953 Starliner using General Motors costings—and found that GM could have sold the identical car for $300 less (which was a lot more then than it is now).

Studebaker proved the albatross that dragged Packard down with it, making it impossible for Nance to find the finances to bankroll the highly competitive all-new 1957 line that might have allowed Studebaker-Packard to go on longer than it did.

1953 Studebaker Starliner: Designed mainly by Bob Bourke, it was probably the single most outstanding American auto design of the Fifties, a tribute to Raymond Loewy's vision and eye for talent. (raymondloewy.org)

And yes, Raymond Loewy, for  all his posing as the actual  creator of styling triumphs like the 1953 Starliner and 1963 Avanti, was the key to the cars being as disctinctive as they were. He had an eye for talent and hired and directed fine designers, such as Bob Bourke (Starliner) and Bob Andrews, John Epstein and Tom Kellogg (Avanti).

Studebaker’s sales and marketing people blunted those good designs by inept planning and promotion. In 1953, for example, they built a surfeit of sedan models, finding to their shock that people mainly wanted the beautiful Starliner hardtops and Starlight coupes. Their production mix was the exact opposite of what the public desired.

1964 Lark Wagonaire: Brooks Stevens had the clever idea for a sliding rear roof, enabling bulky items to be hauled easily. (autoweek.com)

But Studebaker’s styling was consistently good. Trying to save the rump company in the Sixties, President Sherwood Egbert hired Brooks Stevens, who deftly facelifted the Lark and Hawk, and came up with novel ideas like the sliding-roof Wagonaire station wagon—but these were all reskins of the 1950s models. Stevens and Loewy then offered  exciting ideas for all-new designs for 1966 and beyond, but by then it was too late. Studebaker shut down its main factory in South Bend, Indiana, in 1964, and the Hamilton Ontario plant closed after building the last 1965-66 models. But no—Studebaker didn’t have to fail.

Raymond Loewy, Sherwood Egbert and the 1963 Studebaker Avanti: basis for Loewy's new-generation Studebaker proposals for 1964 and beyond.

I’m currently analysing a few of Churchill’s speeces for an academic paper. After listening to the audio files and reading along I found a lot of paragraphs which were left out in the radio speeches. It’s especially evident in “Their Finest Hour” from June 18th, 1940 where only a fifth of the text made it to the radio. At one point it sounds like the audio file has been edited. Were the audio files full radio speeches or just excerpts? —N.K., Copenhagen

What you are listening to is likely a postwar recording of speeches Churchill made for HMV/Decca, which were edited and truncated in later versions. However, the June 18th speech was rebroadcast in full by Churchill that evening over the BBC.

Levenger’s book, The Making of the Finest Hour, includes a CD containing the full broadcast. But many Churchill Speech CDs, and LPs before them, contained only excerpts. Some of these were taken from the BBC broadcasts, but most were recorded by Churchill years later.

No recordings were permitted in the House of Commons at that time, leaving us with two inferior possibilities: Churchill’s broadcast speeches over the BBC, or in some cases postwar recordings, both of which—said those who heard them in the Commons—lack the fire of the originals.

See Sir Robert Rhodes James, “Leading Churchill Myths: ‘An Actor Read
His Speeches over the Wireless,’” Finest Hour 92, posted on the Churchill Centre website.

Sir Robert noted: ‘Problems then arise from the records, Harold Nicolson lamenting that it was necessary to bully Churchill into broadcasting, and, referring to a June 18th broadcast, “he just sulked and read his House of Commons speech over again.” Nicolson was Information Minister at the time. Churchill never liked broadcasting, but there is no evidence whatever that he was replaced by anyone, and speech researchers have confirmed this.’

Would you happen to have any inside information on when, if ever, the BBC will release “The Valiant Years” documentary in DVD format? Various rumors continue to circulate on the Internet but there doesn’t appear to be any source with definitive information. —H.A.

It has been in the thoughts of many to reproduce Jack Le Vien’s famous documentary. Although a shorter production, “The Finest Hours,” narrated by Orson Welles, has been reproduced on a commercial CD (left), the multiple-part “Valiant Years” has not.

I have “The Valiant Years” on a set of VCRs which a friend recorded from a 90s re-run on the A&E Network. I guess I should convert them to CDs. Of course they are dated. My impression is that they shade heavily into the hagiographic. But the film footage is fantastic. Richard Burton hated Churchill, but this is not apparent in his narrative, or in his later role as WSC in the original “Gathering Storm” production.

I am in the final stages of writing a book on the religious beliefs of post-World War II Presidents. In the chapter on Dwight Eisenhower, I wrote that although Eisenhower asked for the “blessing of Almighty God” on D-Day, few assessments of him would dwell on his religious character: “In fact, Eisenhower’s faith might be more accurately described by Winston Churchill’s remark that he had made “so many deposits in the Bank of Observance” as a youth that he had been confidently withdrawing from it ever since. Can you confirm the quotation? —D.H., Virginia

Happy to assist. From Churchill by Himself, chapter on Religion, citing Churchill’s 1930 autobiography:

Hitherto [until age 21] I had dutifully accepted everything I had been told.…I always had to go once a week to church.…I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since. Weddings, christenings, and funerals have brought in a steady annual income, and I have never made too close enquiries about the state of my account. It might well even be that I should find an overdraft.

–Churchill, My Early Life (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930, pp. 127–28.

He also had a more succinct remark which you may prefer:

I am not a pillar of the church but a buttress—I support it from the outside.”

—Circa 1954. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill vol. VIII (London: Heinemann, 1988, p. 1161. Recollection of Sir Winston’s last private secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Browne.