Peter was the first mariner to set out a mooring in the small harbor of Shark’s Wharf, a well-known harbor that today is crowded with about twenty-five vessels on moorings and another seventy at the docks of the two large marinas and four smaller marinas that have been constructed since Peter settled there. He then rented a small plot of land at the entrance to the little harbor, and built a small, two-story dwelling with a porch on the water (where I encountered Mama for the first time in 1968). Behind the house were two trailers for living quarters. And it was there that he established a boat repair business to support the family, including rails for hauling boats and a shed large enough for working under shelter. As he built up the business with the help of Per and his sister Anna, the family became revered members of the boating community, which included many West Indian natives who lived near the shore on the east end of St. Thomas. His know-how and hard work, good-natured disposition, lack of racial or cultural prejudice, and generous assistance to others whenever it was needed won him the respect of everyone. Stories that circulated widely about his voyage to America with the family no doubt also enhanced his reputation. One token of their acceptance and support is the fact that the approximately one-quarter acre where Peter set up his boat business in the early ‘fifties was rented from Sammy Hartman Sr. to the Dohms for the paltry sum of one dollar a month.
Peter soon expanded his business to include a water taxi service. His first water-taxi for transporting passengers to the island of St. John, which was a favorite tourist destination even then, was not a motorized vessel, however, but a sailboat. Although the four-mile trip under sail can take up to an hour because of headwinds and a contrary current, it was the first and only water taxi business on St. Thomas for customers who had missed the regular ferryboat or desired more pleasant accommodations for the trip over, and it could even deliver them directly to their beach hotel. Once again Peter had shown his business acumen in seeing the need, and the commercial benefits, of a water taxi service. The most troublesome part of the journey was entering the harbor of St. John when necessary, which is located on the west end of the island beneath a 1,000-foot mountain that sends willawahs (strong, sporadic gusts of wind) down its slopes, obliging sailors to make several tacks directly into the teeth of unpredictable gusts. And between the gusts a boat could become becalmed and at the mercy of any current that happened to be running. But after many years of sailing throughout Europe and the West Indies, Peter had the necessary skills for dealing with such tricky circumstances. Today almost no one enters the harbor under sail and risks making several tacks with the gusty wind in their teeth. The danger of colliding with any of the numerous boats moored on both sides of the channel is very real. I did it occasionally myself with Molly Bloom, but it was a perilous undertaking.
A short time later Peter acquired a motor vessel that was more suitable as a water taxi. There was one problem that remained, however: the name of the neighborhood on St. Thomas where Peter docked the water taxi. On the maps it was called Shark’s Wharf, hardly a reassuring name for a jumping-off place for tourists yearning to relax in paradise. Peter eliminated the problem by renaming the area “Red Hook,” the name that it bears today both officially and colloquially some 50 years later.
Although it might appear from these bare facts about Peter’s business activities that he had finally succumbed to the businessman’s lust for ever greater riches, nothing could be farther from the truth. He knew that money would never grant him the happiness that he sought, perhaps the world’s most common misapprehension which is most memorably embodied in Horace’s line “The money comes and comes, but always there is something lacking.” Basically, Peter did not feel easy in the role of a settled, ambitious bourgeois. In fact, when a fabulously wealthy gentleman offered to stake Peter for a substantial expansion of his business, Peter declined, saying, “Small business, small headaches. Big business, big headaches.” Thus, he settled for a moderate loan of $10,000 which he used to purchase the motorized vessel for transporting guests to the rich man’s hotel on St. John.
But there was another cockle burr in Peter’s saddle. His loneliness for female companionship during Mama’s long absence had lured him into a liaison with the woman (Hellen Pane) whom he had met on the voyage from New York City to Puerto Rico, accompanied Peter to St. Michael, later moved to St. John with her husband, and purchased land on St. John right on the harbor. Later, before Mama’s return, she had fallen in love with Peter and divorced her husband. And soon Peter and his girl friend were living the sweet life, and not only in the sense of romance. For chocolate was rationed in the States during the war, but was easily available in the islands. So when the U.S. Navy came ashore on leave in St. John, Peter and his girlfriend were waiting to sell them fudge. Peter once calculated that they had made and sold at least a ton of the stuff.
Although Peter was supposed to have ended his romantic relationship before the family’s return, his girlfriend’s attachment to him was not easily severed, and she tried to win him back. Thus, it appears that to some extent Peter lived a real-life version of Alec Guiness’ Captain’s Paradise with a wife in one port and a mistress in the other. Unfortunately, unlike the case of Alec Guinness, the two women were aware of one another’s existence. The result, of course, was acrimony and jealousy, which soured both relationships. Over time the situation became so stressful that Peter felt that the only solution was to move on again in search of peace and sanctuary somewhere over the horizon.
Probably carrying greater weight in his decision to move on was the fact that after 10 years the inveterate wanderer had reached the end of his tether as a sedentary business and family man. Further, his son Per was now old enough to run the business with Mama’s help. But whatever the predominant cause, a decade after the family’s return Peter set sail alone for Tahiti, the dream-destination of all erstwhile vagabonds on land or sea, at the helm of a sailboat called Secret. After all, the South Seas had been on the family’s itinerary 24 years earlier when they had been put off course by Mama’s return to Denmark; and he had tried again and failed when he went aground and lost his boat on his way to Panama. So it was time for the obstinate romantic to make his young dream come true. The year was 1959 and Peter was 52 years old.
His girlfriend, however, was not easily forsaken. When Peter arrived in Panama for his passage through the Canal, he found her waiting for him and took her on board. The two runaways then sailed south and landed in the Galapagos Islands where Peter stayed for awhile with a German family and where he would have been content to live forever. But the law of the Islands prohibited visitors from remaining longer than a short period of time, and so they sailed off together in the direction of the South Sea islands. .
And now the story of Peter’s life reaches another of its operatic climaxes. While the couple was below deck (why they were both below deck I cannot say for sure because Peter never explicitly divulged it to me, but certain hints suggested that they were either making love or arguing), and while the boat was sailing without a captain at its helm, they struck a reef that destroyed the vessel. Peter claimed that his girlfriend had deliberately detained him below deck after she had noticed that the boat was headed for the reef. By destroying Peter’s mode of escape, according to Peter, she had counted on her being able to render him dependent on her wealth, thereby gaining the upper hand with her obstreperous lover. But she had underestimated her quarry. Peter was enraged, and when they boarded a liner for Tahiti to continue their journey, which she had paid for, Peter crawled into his bunk and sulked for the entire voyage without uttering a word. Finally, upon reaching Tahiti, he told her to go to hell and abandoned her once again, leaving her no choice but to return to the West Indies bereft of her headstrong, wayward lover.