The Dominican Republic is the largest economy in the Caribbean. It makes up 5/8th of the island of Hispaniola. Christopher Columbus visited the country in his 1492 trip to America. It is much wealthier than its western neighbor of Haiti. Much of the world stays away from Haiti because of political unrest. We visited Haiti in 2003 on our first cruise - but our destination was a contrived village called Labadie that was fenced off from the rest of the country.
Monday we will dock in Puerto Plata. It is a city of 170,000 people. It supposedly has 100,000 hotel beds. It is a major trading city. Their chief product is sugar. They have the third largest gold mine in the world.
See Samana on the map. On July 4th 1942 - a German U-boat torpedoed the USS Norlandia - a freighter that had Merchant Marine Roy Everhart in the engine room. It was 13 miles off the coast of Samana There were only 23 crew on the ship - 19 survived. Everhart did not. I was born 6 years later.
Two life boats made it to the Dominican Republic with 19 on board. When the German Uboat surfaced to finish them off - the captain threw them some brandy - and pointed the way to Samana - 13 miles.
This was the famous Uboat Battle of the Atlantic in 1942.
I do not know how close we will get to the spot - but will acknowledge it just the same.
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