Compleat Angler Hotel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Compleat Angler Hotel was a modest three-story hotel on the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. Built by Mr Henry Duncombe and his wife Helen in 1935 following destruction by fire of their first house, "The Dower Hoouse" on 18th November 1934. The hotel was then damaged by the 1936 hurricane but quickly repaired. Mr Duncombe had been the Island's Commissioner during the American Prohibition Era. It was during that initial Dower House period, when there was no hotel on the island, that the Duncombes, with their two daughters, Patricia and Barbara, would take in visitors such as Ernest Hemingway. The hotel became famous due to its association with Ernest Hemingway, who regularly visited the hotel between 1935 - 1937. It is also claimed that he worked on the novel To Have and Have Not. Hemingway drank at The Compleat Angler between fishing trips in his vessel Pilar in search of marlin, wahoo and sailfish in the pristine waters around Bimini. He almost always stayed in room number 1. Henry Duncombe died in 1949 but the hotel continued under the proprietorship of Mrs Duncombe until she retired and sold the hotel to family friends, the Brown Family, in 1973.
The hotel became a major tourist attraction for Bimini and housed a museum of Hemingway memorabilia including signed copies of his work and numerous photographs.
Generations of anglers followed in the novelist's wake to crack open a beer and play a game of ring-toss after a long day on the water. The Angler was an unofficial museum, with one room devoted to Hemingway's exploits and most of its pine walls decorated with decades' worth of fading photos and newsclips of assorted anglers and trophy fish.
The lodge, with around a dozen rooms, drew plenty of non-fishing tourists as well, including some infamous ones; Lucile Ball, Zane Gray, President Nasser of Egypt but most memorably, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's presidential aspirations sunk in 1987 after an overnight trip there aboard the yacht Monkey Business. A grinning Hart was photographed with Donna Rice, an attractive young Miamian who was not his wife, sitting on his lap on the hotel's pier. A less famous photo of Hart in the hotel's bandstand circulated among political reporters of the day and a Hart photo was displayed prominently in the lodge.
From 1973 the hotel has been owned by the Brown family (a very warm and friendly family), a clan marked by tragedy. Harcourt Brown, who died in 1997 at the age of 83, had five sons. Three died working for their father -- one was electrocuted, one was lost at sea when the family cargo ship went down and one was bludgeoned to death while doing the accounting for the hotel, friends said. The fifth son also died young, of natural causes.
On January 13, 2006, the hotel was destroyed by a fire and the owner, Julian Brown perished in the blaze after leading a guest to safety. Brown's father, Harcourt Brown, bought the inn in 1973. The hotel was constructed in 1935 by Helen Duncombe.
Police said they did not know the cause of the fire.
