Lieutenant Brown ordered to investigate the vanished Pelican islets

PELICANS (les). Three small islands situated in the bay of Port au Prince. The newspaper Le Nouvelliste of 2 August 1917 announced that they had subsided and had disappeared beneath the waves to a certain depth. There was a real danger for local navigation. It was therefore important to signal clearly the position of these swallowed islets so that small boats would not come to run aground there. Already, boats coming from the Arcahaie had struck the shoals and been damaged. The subsidence of these islets was due to the cutting of trees and to excavations of sand that were too continuous. The phenomenon had occurred as a result of the recent seismic shocks. Lieutenant Ed. Brown of the Coast Guard of the Gendarmerie of Haiti received instructions from the chief of the American occupation, on 5 August, to make an inquiry into the disappearance of these three small islands forming the banks of the Pélican. The northeast winds and violent currents had swept away the summit of these islands, which emerged at low tide. Lieutenant Brown had placed at the extreme northeast point of these…

Rouzier tells this under the entry PELICANS (les).