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GULF OF MEXICO
ISLAN
By Ray M. Thompson • Photos and Map by Tex Hamill
Of the series of islands lying off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Cat Island, seven miles from the Gulfport Small Craft Harbor to the boat pier near the center of its north shore is neither the largest, the smallest nor the closest — but is by far the most intriguing and has provided the setting for some of the most colorful incidents of Mississippi Gulf Coast history.
It was so named in 1699 by a French exploring party, who had never seen raccoons before and mistakenly thought the. curious creatures peering at them from the trees were cats.
This roughly T-shaped isle is about 6 miles long from east to west and about three miles across the top of the T. It has a shore line of over 21 miles, three miles of beautiful Gulf beach frontage, and an area of about 3,000 acres. Its North Point is one of the most attractive pieces of waterfront property in the Deep South and its East Beach is one of the most popular surf fishing
spots on the Gulf Coast. Cat Island has always been famous for its shifting hill of shimmering white sand on North Point which, when the light is right can be seen from the mainland and which at one time towered 60 feet high, a miniature mountain of the world’s finest silica.
In the two and a half centuries since it was first christened and recorded by d’Iberville’s expedition as “Isle aux Chats,” it has casually welcomed and “waved” goodbye to pirates, Swiss mercenaries, English redcoats, Seminole Indians, rum runners and hijackers, World War II army dogs with their trainers and friendly Japs, and generations of lumbermen, turpentine workers, fishermen and hunters and trappers. All of them, at one time or another, came and went for various reasons, all leaving the island the still uninhabited natural paradise it is today. Cat Island is now pro-vately owned and its only permanent resident is Joe Reed, the present caretaker.
But to get on with the story: — Cat Island’s first officially documented dramatic role was in 1757 when it staged the first mutiny in American history.
BLOOD ON THE BEACH
Although the mutineers were thoroughly justified, this did not stop the military authorities from expeditiously executing all they caught. In fact, one of them was placed in his own coffin alive and then sawed in half.
It occurred when Kerlerec, the French Governor of Louisiana at New Orleans during the French and Indian War, sent a detachment of Swiss mercenary soldiers to uninhabited Cat Island to establish a lookout post to watch and warn should any British warship try to sneak up unobserved on New Orleans through the tricky passes that led into Lake Borgne. Unfortunately Kerlerec placed in command of these isolated soldiers a brutal, sadistic and greedy of-(Continued on Page 10)
July—August 1S61
Tell them you saw It in DOWN SOUTH. Thanks!
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