History of the Kingdom of Redonda

Redonda is a tiny island of about 200 acres in the Caribbean at latitude 16” 56’ N. longitude 62” 21’ W. among the group known as the Leeward Islands. It is fifteen miles NNW of Montserrat and thirty-five from Antigua, by whom it is administered. 

The island is the cone of an extinct volcano, rising almost vertically 970 feet from sea level and was first visited in ancient times by the Arawaks, followed by the Caribs, who called it Ocanmanru. In 1493 Christopher Columbus sailed past it (but did not land) and named it Santa Maria Rotonda.

It remained virtually uninhabited, except for visiting reef fishermen, until 1865, when Matthew Dowdy Shiell, a partly Irish Montserration trader, claimed it and declared it a Kingdom whose first king would be his newly-born son, Matthew Phipps Shiell, by his freed-slave wife, who had previously produced eight daughters.

In 1872 the British Government annexed the island and declared it to be a dependency of Antigua, then a British colony. The Act of Annexation was also deemed not to have affected the sovereignty vested in Shiell and the British Colonial Office tacitly admitted his claim, presumably to gain his co-operation in the exploitation of the extensive and valuable guano deposits left by centuries of boobies, which had already begun.

On his fifteenth birthday Matthew Phipps Shiel (who at some point dropped an l from his surname) was crowned King Felipe 1 on the island by Bishop Mitchinson of Antigua. He subsequently became a well-known writer in London and had some thirty novels to his credit; one of them, The Purple Cloud, becoming a classic of science fiction that, years later, was made into a film starring Harry Belafonte.

In 1899 a hurricane destroyed the buildings of the guano mining industry and about 1912 the last shipment of phosphate was made and mining ceased.

King Felipe died in London in 1947 and was succeeded by the poet John Gawsworth, who was crowned King Juan 1. He was well-known and a respected figure in London literary circles and very generous with Redondan titles, ennobling, among many others, such luminaries as Diana Dors, Dirk Bogarde, Fabian of the Yard, Victor Gollancz, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen, Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell and J.B. Priestley. 

Sadly, Gawsworth gradually succumbed to alcoholism and became poor, which led him to begin distributing knighthoods in return for a round of drinks at his favourite hostel in London, the Alma, and very possibly making rash and unfulfilled promises regarding the royal title itself (see Pretenders to the Throne). In 1958 he advertised in the personal columns of The Times a “Caribbean Kingship with Royal Prerogatives – one thousand guineas.” It provoked considerable controversy, legal arguments and putative offers of considerably more than the one thousand guineas asking price but, presumably in the face of all the fuss, King Juan settled for the small but continuous liquidity to be had at the bar of the Alma.

Some of this material comes from The Quest for Redonda and The Works of M.P. Shiel, both published by A. Reynolds Morse and from Poet/historien Steve Eng, Gawsworth’s biographer; it was he who said of Gawsworth 


Whatever else he was, recall
He was a Bookman, after all,
And, at his quietist, a poet too.
Redonda… wine,,, the sordid rest
Ignore for now – extol the best
For there was good in Gawsworth, as in you.

On his death bed in 1970, his sobriety at last controlled by a ferocious ward sister, Gawsworth appointed as his (and M.P. Shiel’s) literary executor the publisher Jon Wynne-Tyson; along with the appointment, unknown to Jon, came the succession to the throne of Redonda. He accepted the role as King Juan 11 with reluctance and kept a low profile for twenty-seven years but in 1984 wrote and published So Say Banana Bird, a novel which anonymously featured Antigua and Redonda and in 1979 visited Redonda with the Duke of Nero Rocca and a group of scientists. They planted an ‘ecological’ flag – blue for the sky, brown for the rock and green for the grass on a white background, which is still the flag of the Kingdom, now incorporating the Coat of Arms.

In 1997 Wynne-Tyson and his wife visited Antigua and met Bob Williamson, a long-established writer, graphic designer, artist and cartoonist with a very colourful background (see H.M. Robert the Bald, fourth King of Redonda) and, over tea, expressed his desire to abdicate his position as King. Bob asked him who his successor was to be and he replied that the front-runner was a wealthy Spaniard by the name of Xavier who had bought the royal regalia at a Sotheby’s auction for, reputedly, twenty-three thousand pounds sterling. Bob pointed out to him that the British had spent thousands of lives and millions of pounds kicking the Spanish out of most of the Caribbean and that it would be very wrong to give part of it back to them. His reply was “Oh heavens, I didn’t think of that.”

Following Bob’s expression of interest the king wrote to him, saying “You should prepare your square-rigged schooner, drive her downwind to Redonda, plant your flag, give an inflammatory speech to the boobies, that you are now the supreme ruler. Be worthy of the Realm.” Accordingly Bob did exactly that on May the 31st 1998 along with his then consort and sixty-one followers. They landed on the rock-strewn beach with great difficulty and he was formally declared by Cardinal Sin of Antigua (and now Redonda) to be the fourth Monarch of Redonda, King Robert the Bald (after an ancestor). 

Thirteen stalwarts climbed a dangerous 60 degree 600 foot gully and on to the 970 foot King Juan’s Peak, past the sad remnants of the Post Office (established by Antigua in 1978 to issue stamps and later wrecked by another hurricane), the barrack buildings of the 200 guano/phosphate miners, broken down cisterns, a bakery, the manager’s house, rusting machinery and the huge buckets of the counterweighted cable lift systems installed by Victorian engineers. They duly planted the flag and all the followers, now citizens, were ennobled on the return voyage and had their passports stamped.

On June the 26th 1998 the Historical & Archeological Society sponsored an illustrated lecture at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda given by the King, accompanied by Cardinal Sin and Viscount de Gavre of St. Petersburg (a title named after the Russian home port of the Royal Yacht “St. Peter”).

Since that time King Robert has designed a Coat of Arms, established an annual literary competition with a cash prize, the Royal Redondan Yacht Club, which has a Booby on its burgee and holds regular meetings in Antigua (where he lives) and also, perhaps just a little tongue-in-cheek, the Royal Redondan Navy and Air Force. He has done more than any of his predecessors to publicise and preserve the delightful anachronism of the Kingdom whilst continuing to promote the previous king’s view of Redonda as being “A symbol of all the unspoiled places that should be spared the depredations of mankind.” The Duke of Bayview has said “Redonda is a kingdom of the mind – a sympathetic and welcoming refuge for people whos finer sensibilities are offended by the mindless materialism, unbridled greed and soul-destroying competition which have become hallmarks of the age.”

To promote interest in the Kingdom among the British the first English Consulate of Redonda has been established at the Wellington Arms, Park Road, Freemantle, Southampton; the Consul is the landlord, Sir Robert Beech.

Written by Cardinal Elder and Earl of Fytton, Kingdom of Redonda, June 2007.

You can see a videocast made by the Daily Echo of the ceremony by clicking here.

Click here to visit King Roberts official website