The Kingdom of Redonda, as presented by King Leo I of Redonda

The Kingdom of Redonda, as presented by King Robert I the Bald of Redonda

On his second transatlantic journey in 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first in a long line of Europeans to lay claim to an island he named Isla Santa Maria la Redonda, Spanish for ‘St Mary’s Round Island’. Today, it is still known as Redonda.

Columbus didn’t land on the island, probably because of its forbiddingly steep slope, the remnant of an extinct volcano’s cone. Redonda’s highest point measures 296 m, pretty tall for an island this small – reports of Redonda’s land area vary from 1.6 to 2.6 km². The island lies about 55 km south-west of Antigua. It is administered as part of the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda since 1967.

Redonda’s economic relevance to the world reached a high point in the decades after 1860, when its guano deposits were mined for fertiliser, yielding about 7.000 tons annually. This bird-shit-mining period was the only one during which Redonda was inhabited. The population reached its apex in 1901, with about 120 Redondans. The mining operations and the island itself were abandoned during the First World War; Redonda has been uninhabited ever since.

That’s all there is to the official story. Its micronational history starts as Redonda was proclaimed a personal kingdom by a Matthew Dowdy Shiell in 1865. A wholly fanciful claim, which has nonetheless flourished. Currently, there are rumoured to be no less than nine claimants to the Redondan throne.

Shiell was a banker on the nearby island of Montserrat, at present still a British overseas territory. He bought the island when his first son Matthew Phipps Shiell was born. It is reported somewhat unbelievably that the elder Shiell requested and received the title of King of Redonda from Queen Victoria, who granted it on condition that there would be “no revolt against colonial power”.

The younger Shiell (1865-1947) was crowned as Felipe I, the second king of Redonda, on his 15^th birthday. He dropped the last –l of his family name when he moved to England in 1885, where he rapidly found a niche for his short or serialised stories in popular magazines. Shiel became a prolific writer of fantasy and sci-fi novels, short stories and serials, and is the reason why the history of Redonda has had a literary twist to it ever since. The villain in Shiel’s serialised novel The Yellow Danger, Dr. Yen How, is said to have helped shape the better-known Fu Manchu. Shiel’s most acclaimed book is The Purple Cloud, a sci-fi novel about a man who returns from a solo polar expedition to find himself the last man alive. Stephen King has said it was one of the inspirations for The Stand.

In 1931, Shiel befriended the young poet John Gawsworth, who became his literary executor and heir to the throne of Redonda. Gawsworth (1912-1970), a.k.a. Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, a.k.a. Orpheus Scrannel, a.k.a. King Juan I of Redonda, seems to have taken his royal title more seriously than his predecessor – or at least he tried to capitalise on it more. For it seems the semi-permanently bankrupt Gawsworth sold his royal title several times over, which is the main reason why today there are so many different claimants to the Redondan throne.

All this didn’t stop Gawsworth from bestowing the title to his literary executor. This John Wynne-Tyson, an independent publisher, became King Juan II of Redonda in 1970.