You
haven’t seen energy in action until you’ve met Tony Snell who, after eight
decades, is still planning his next project.
I met Tony at The Last Resort, built with his late wife, Jackie, some
30+ years ago.Born in Tumbridge Wells,
Kent, and educated at Cheltenham College, Tony volunteered for the RAF when he
was 18.A fighter pilot in WWII, he was
captured in ’43 – shot down in Sicily and became a POW.
He escaped in route from an Italian hospital
to a prison camp in Germany.Author
Paul Brickhill recorded these experiences in “Escape or Die” written about RAF
escapes.
“Nancy, I am finally going to write my
autobiography.I have finished 5 tapes
-without my twenty years as an actor, my
two nightclubs, our boats in England or my one man show around Africa.
Jackie helped write some as we travelled the states & Mexico in a VW bus -
our home in the 60s.In New York I
recorded some songs that I had written while travelling.
The owner of ESP disks produced a record of
mine in exchange for the lease of our newer bus.
I recorded the record, Medieval and Latter Day Leys,
later called Englishman Abroad.
I wrote half of the songs while a friend, Donald Cotton, the author of
the original Dr Who, wrote the others.
Upon
release, Jackie and I went back to England where we bought a 30′ catamaran
named Manito.We sailed to Spain
and gave day charters out of Ibiza in 1966. One of our day charters, Ian
Brakenbury, owned a small fleet in the BVI, with Robin Tattersall, called
Virgin Voyages.Ian and I became good
friends and he convinced us to move to the BVI and run the business for him and
Robin.In ’69 we moved to Road Town
where Virgin Voyages had three boats. Charlie & Virginia Carey (who started
the Moorings) had five and CSY had seven.
Well,
the venture didn’t work out because CSY did our bookings and they would book
their boats before booking ours.Robin
& Ian then sold the boats. Several Canadian surgeons were trying to develop
a resort on Little Jost Van Dyke and needed a caretaker for the property
located there.Jackie and I moved over
and started The Last Resort, a
restaurant next to where the present house is located.
After
our successful first year it went up in flames – literally.
Returning to Spain, we sold our catamaran in
Ibiza, headed back to the BVI and rebuilt The
Last Resort on Bellamy Cay in Trellis Bay where we are now. We took our
generator from JVD.Our furniture had been
stolen so we basically started from scratch, building tables out of old
hurricane shutters. We were living on a houseboat and moved it up to Trellis
Bay.This was in 1972.
There was a derelict building on Bellamy
Cay, which we have leased every six months for 32 years.
The lease has gone up 40 times so we must
have improved it too much.
During
the three decades that followed we had truly eventful lives.
We made our own electricity and later, water
– everything.We travelled the
Galapagos, bought a large derelict hotel in New Hampshire at Lake Sunapee that
now houses 12 apartments, travelled to Bali, buying furniture to sell at our
hotel in New Hampshire, bought a cottage in Sussex and an investment property
in Brighton.As Jackie spoke fluent Spanish,
we travelled Central America, Ecuador and Venezuela. We had a wonderful life
together and I have never regretted a moment.”
Since
Tony has retired, daughter Jessica and her husband, Ben Banford, run
The Last Resort, a sailor’s
favourite.As I said, Tony is one
interesting man and, quite fortunately, is still wonderfully crazy after all
these years.
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