The original Hawksbill Creek Agreement, which gave birth to the City of Freeport, was an extraordinary document. Signed August 4, 1955, it ceded 50,000 acres of Crown Land in the vicinity of the Hawksbill Creek area of Grand Bahamaâ at one pound pre acre — the equivalent of $2.80 at the time — to Wallace Groves, the visionary founder of Freeport, giving him sweeping powers to develop the "Port Area."
When he established the Grand Bahama Port Authority, Groves' dream was to create an industrial complex, a business Mecca, so to speak. But the waterfront of the land he was granted was shallow, and to do what he planned required the dredging of a deep-water harbour.
To do this, Groves formed an alliance with Daniel Keith Ludwick, a ebullient shipping magnate who ran a diversified worldwide industrial and financial empire from his headquarters based in New York, and who reports at the time state eagerly embraced Groves' proposal to dredge a deep water harbour because he needed an offshore oil bunkering close to the East Coast to accommodate his own fleet of oil tankers as well as others.
But even though an adequate harbour was being constructed by Ludwick, setting the stage for Freeport's development as a major maritime centre, Groves' dream for the development of an industrial complex was not being realized at the pace he had envisaged. To take his plan to the next level he decided that he needed to attract potential investors, and one financial heavyweight who came to his assistance was Charles Hayward, an Englishman with a substantial fortune amassed from his engineering enterprise.
Hayward was knighted by the Queen in 1974, in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of British industry and for his substantial charitable benefactions. Born in Wolverhampton, England, in 1892, Sir Char-les was apprenticed as an engineer in his early teens and displayed exceptional acumen for the profession that was to become the vehicle he used to accumulate his vast wealth. In fact, at the youthful age of 19, Sir Charles started his own engineering business, with one employee, and by 1924 it had grown into a very substantial engineering entreprise that, among other things, was making 80 percent of the motorcycle sidecars manufactured in England.
The young entrepreneur moved his business to London in 1930 and became involved in other areas outside of the field of engineering, including providing financial backing for promising industrial companies and for the development of new inventions. With such a background, he was clearly the ideal type of investor that Groves was seeking to attract.
But it was the Earl of Ranfurly, the then Governor of The Bahamas, who first brought Sir Charles to Freeport in 1956. An ardent supporter of Groves' plans for the development of Freeport, Earl Ranfurly, according to reports at the time, thought it was a pity that British capital was not involved in the venture and suggested to Sir Charles that he consider investing in the project.
Sir Charles subsequently bought a 25 percent interest in the Port Authority and served as chairman of the board from 1958 to 1968. His son Jack had taken up residence in Freeport during the early days of its development, and today Sir Jack Hayward has a school in Freeport that bears his name, a testament to the remarkable contributions he subsequently made to Freeport's growth and development.
Freeport as a tourist destination was not among the initial goals set by Groves when he was granted the 50,000 acres of Crown Land to develop the Port Area. Indeed, Freeport's foray into tourism, according to reports, was the brainchild of Sir Stafford Sands, who was chairman of the Bahamas Development Board, a forerunner to the Ministry of Tourism, when he persuaded his colleagues in the government to grant Groves the Crown Land.
In order for tourism to successfully be one of the financial pillars of Freeport's development, Sir Stafford devised a way to introduce big time casino gambling in The Bahamas by securing a "Certificate of Exemption" from the Executive Council for Bahamas Amusements Limited, a company formed in 1963, to pave the way for the Lucayan Beach Casino to become the first "major" casino to open its doors in The Bahamas in 1964.
Freeport has come a long way since Groves' pioneering days. The initial 50,000 acres Crown Land grant was later extended to 138,000 acres, and together with an additional 12,000 acres purchased by the Grand Bahama Port Authority from other parties, this forms the 230-square-mile Port Area.
In addition to being one of the world's popular tourist destinations, Freeport's multi-faceted maritime facilities also rank among the best in the world, including the Freeport Container Port, one of the western hemisphere's most ideal transshipment locations, just 65 miles east of Florida's Gold Coast.
Because of its ideal strategic location, Freeport Container Port has developed a reputation as a major transshipment centre serving the eastern seaboard of the United States, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, South and Central America and trade lanes to European, Mediterranean, African, Australian, Far Eastern and Pacific Rim markets. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings Group (HPH), a member of Hutchison Whampoa Limited of Hong Kong, the world's largest port operator, which recognized as good business sense the tremendous opportunities that Freeport's strategic location and deep harbour facilities offered for the extension of its business empire.
The Container Port was developed in partnership with the GBPA, and in addition to the Container Port, Freeport's Maritime Centre has grown to include Freeport Harbour Company, Bradford Marine Limited, Hemisphere Container Repair, and the Grand Bahama Shipyard, which has one of the largest floating docks in the Western Hemisphere.
All this, of course, did not happen by accident. Freeport's sterling reputation as a good place to do business in a variety of areas was carefully cultivated over the years by astute management teams making sound business decisions The driving forces behind its phenomenal growth from the mid-1970s were the late Edward St. George, Sir Jack Hayward, and Sir Albert Miller.
Surely, it is hard to imagine where Grand Bahama in particular and The Bahamas in general would be economically today hadn't Wallace Groves had the visionary idea that gave birth to Freeport with the signing of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement in 1955, and a cadre of equally creative businessmen over the years had not built on that dream and nurtured what in reality today is a thriving business and resort metropolis.
It may help if the parties involved in the current legal dispute over ownership of the GBPA stopped, if only for a brief moment, and reflect on the rich history of Freeport and recognize how critical it is for the future of Freeport and, by extension, the island of Grand Bahama for them to settle their differences as soon as possible. |
