Everyone on every Caribbean Island nearing the proverbial feared-and-revered three-score-and-ten grew-up knowing the Imperial Measurements laid out on the back of our exercise books.
The measurements of yore include ‘a chain’ being ‘22 yards’ and ‘The Queen’s Chain’ therefore being 22 yards from the Sea, or the ever-moving ‘water’s edge’.
Depending on geological factors (weather, current, waves, etc.) The Queen’s Chain can be measured from any point above.
But, by principle, no-one can sell or buy – far-less build-on – that space eternally reserved for public access.
Yards are now measured by meters, but the royal descriptive name remains — and public access is now widened to include fishermen’s rights to ply their artisanal trade at equal distance offshore from any private property or hotel.
Never mind attaining nationhood over four-and-a-half decades ago, the royal claim to the entire periphery of every former English colony’s seashore is still regarded and/or referred to like with majestic ownership – so, after Queen Elizabeth died it automatically became The King’s Chain (even though no-longer a colony).
The name is associated with Britain’s imperial majesty having the reserved right to be able to land boats and troops to ‘defend’ and ‘protect’ their stolen colonial possessions abroad at any time.
Today, it’s still called a ‘chain’, even though it no longer allows London any right or privilege to land naval or amphibious war machines anywhere along any chain.
However, one thing that’s never, ever changed is the knowledge — by almost everyone — that you simply cannot sell The Queen’s Chain.
Yet, Lo and Behold, one gets to hear Saint Lucia’s Tourism Minister (and Deputy Prime Minister) say that a preceding administration seemingly approved the sale of the Queen’s or King’s Chain (depending on the date) to a private developer for construction of a hotel.
Tourism Minister Dr Ernest Hilaire made the significant revelation to the local press on Monday during the Prime Minister’s weekly Press Conference, while discussing two recent developments in Gros Islet and Castries having to do with hotel properties under way within the realm of The King’s Chain.
In the first case, the minister referred to a brazen act by a miserably failed independent challenger at the last (December 1, 2025) General Elections, who’d recorded and posted a ‘reel’ online claiming a fence constructed by a new hotel developer to protect a public facility illegally impeded public access to the King’s Chain.
The protester recorded and published himself as supposedly protecting the public against illegal exclusionary fencing.
No names were mentioned, or reference made to the political character of the individual concerned.
But the minister said that after he heard and saw the complainant’s initial protest online, he personally ensured the gentleman was informed about all the reasons for the temporary fencing by the developers.
However, he revealed, despite the explanations, the gentleman proceeded with his threat to effectively ‘cut’ the supposedly illegal fence.
The minister did admit that the National Conservation Authority (NCA) had failed to make a public statement on the matter – despite, he added, being asked and expected to.
That said, though, none but the ever-conscious eternal observer, retired STAR newspaper Publisher and established author, Rick Wayne, would instantly point out the badly- rejected election candidate (who couldn’t even muster three dozen votes) was simply out to make his way into the news.
But there’s also been some continuing discussion about uncertainty as to whether that particular publicity stunt wasn’t (instead or also) a public infringement of any local law.
It’s left to be seen whether or when the gentleman on show will be informed or warned – and by who or which entity — about the need to properly distinguish between staging a legal protest and knowingly admitting to breaking the law.
But it was the second incident that caught my ears: the minister’s declaration that the King’s Chain was included in a plot of land sold to another developer for a major hotel project approved for the southern end of the Vigie Beach.
Here too, the minister indicated that when he saw and heard of the first protests against the construction of a new hotel in a vacant private area where others long-before existed, he arranged and participated in a public consultation where – he also admitted – he understood and shared some of the expressed concerns and asked the developers to revisit their plan to address the major concerns raised.
But before the developers could ‘wheel and come again’, the complainants – some of whom participated in the consultation — launched a public online petition opposing the project in its entirety.
And here the startling revelation was made that the King’s (or Queen’s) Chain was sold, or the transaction was concluded in such a way as to have led the purchasers to design a hotel plan that included occupation of the space included in ‘the chain’.
As a result, the minister disclosed, the developers had to redesign the proposed (and ‘approved in principle’) hotel’s plan and shape — including bringing it back inland some 100 feet (approximately 22 yards).
But. also having had to cater for the lost space, the developers designed extra floors – leading to the complainant’s now complaining the increased height obstructs the view of hillside residents (in a land where Right of Sight doesn’t legally exist).
Unlike the case of the Gros Islet infraction, the Vigie opposition is being pursued within legal online limits, even though some of the claims and arguments defy history and current reality.
But for the purposes of this column, the matter of public interest that interests the writer most is: how any government can approve sale of a beachside property including The King’s (or Queen’s) Chain.
One is also much less interested in who owned the sold land, than the fact that such a blatant violation of the island’s natural and historical patrimony seems to have escaped the scrutiny of the State.
And here I humbly rest my layman’s case – in both cases.