| Existing comment:
Veteran seaman Paul Hurlston who worked at sea for 40 years recalls the lean times: "There was nothing here, nothing. A job at sea was like gold. You didn't even both to ask where the ship w3as going: if they offered you a berth you got on as fast as your legs could carry you." Earlier on, with few imported goods and no way to earn money, Caymanians had lived almost totally by the barter system which didn't end when the cash economy arose. In those early days, the export of thatch rope, made from woven thatch palm leaves, was a mainstay of the economy, and as later as the 1950s it was still being bartered to local merchants for goods that could not [be] produced here. |