By ERIC WIBERG

Folklore and fact intersect with a song named Run Come See Jerusalem, first sung in Andros in 1929, with witnesses and crew writing and performing the music.

To this day, the September 26-28, 1929, hurricane is considered among the nation’s worst. Winds over 140mph churned over Andros for more than 48 hours, causing flood waters of 12-18 feet and connected the east and west of Andros.

Witnesses say the crowded mailboat Pretoria, the subject of the song, sailed west from Nassau completely unaware of the massive storm approaching. District Commissioner Forsyth said it was “the most destructive hurricane in the history of [Mangrove Cay]”. The annual report declared “all crops and most fruit trees, livestock, and poultry on Andros Island perished”. No word was received from Andros as the radio towers were knocked down.

Pretoria was a wood-hulled 43ft schooner built in 1900 for the local sponging and cargo trade by Jeremiah Duncan Lowe Sr of Marsh Harbour. At 22 tons, it had no engine, and was owned by George F Christie of Nassau. She “sank at the entrance to the Fresh Creek Harbour Channel, killing 35 people with only three surviving”.

Wayne Neely interviewed residents who told him that the three men who survived did so by holding the tail of a terrified hog purchased in Nassau for breeding purposes. Without refrigeration, locals would assemble on certain Sundays and divide up fresh pork. The latest hog pulled the men ashore. Until the swimming pigs of Exuma, Neely didn’t believe the story.

If Pretoria is central to the tragedy, then John Roberts of Blanket Sound is central to the song. He was crew on Pretoria; he sang and recorded it, at Fresh Creek on August 10, 1958, 29 years later. John remembered that the Pytoria sank on Wednesday, and on Sunday morning ‘...I had my song ready’. Robert’s claim to creating the song has more credibility than that of ‘Blind’ Blake Higgs (1915-1986), who is from Inagua and was 14 and not on Andros at the time. Run, Come See Jerusalem has been performed by Blake, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and copyrighted by Blake in 1952.

Jerusalem appears at first blush to refer to a vessel, but it really refers to processing the deadly effects of many vessels sunk in a storm. Jerusalem becomes a dreadful reckoning; a place of judgement where lives are extracted and fates decided, and to come see it is to stare into a horrifying abyss. The three-day grind of the 1929 Hurricane sewed a grim harvest of death where friends and family were drowned in a tempest at their very doorstep and in front of shocked family members. Survivors were saved by beasts like pigs, panic-paddling through the water, and helping hands. Others were lost in sinking boats and flooded homes. In short, Jerusalem is not a hull, but hell.

Raymond Pinder and Joseph Spence witnessed many of the events described in the song including the wreckage of the Pretoria. Spence described what the song depicts: how smaller vessels took refuge in the little channels near his home in Small Hope, Andros. But the Pretoria, a two-masted schooner, was too big. He recalls: “…I was in the field, and where my house is up on the hill I could look right out to sea and see every boat comin’ from Nassau. And I saw these three boats comin’. He went in Love Hill Channel, and saw the Myrtle and the Pretoria went down for Staniard Creek Channel. The Pretoria, the schooner, he turned back from Staniard Creek, come up for Fresh Creek. When she come up behind the Cays, the cay is called Goat Cay, I ain’t see it no more.” Spence and Pinder went down the hill to see what had happened. On the beach, they found the dead and their belongings.

Spence recorded the song in Andros with Sam Charteris and in New York with Spiegel for Smithsonian in 1965, and was the subject of a special illustrated feature in the New Yorker in 2018. His sister often sang chorus, “took it to heart, since the succor he had provided trying to save the mariners and retrieving the dead had made such an impression on him in 1929”. The song is also named Pytoria, and A Great Storm Pass Over, by Tappy Toe, a local sponger, in 1935. Sung by McQueen and McPhee and recorded “in McPhee’s living room,” the lyrics are:

“Three sail leaving from the harbor (run come see, run come see)

It was the Myrtle, the Result, and the Pretoria

It was a blessed Sunday morning

Them boat bearin’ down now for Andros…..

….The Result reach in now to Staniard Creek

The Myrtle did go … The wind kept Pretoria on the ocean

…Lord he say that he go on the reef now

Oh lord they run ahead on the bottom

They had 34 souls on board there… But of them only one get saved now

I had a cousin on board her by the name of Johnny

… Little Wheeler …I had a cousin on board her …I had a Uncle on board her

By the name of Rev Jolly Brown …I had a Auntie on board her by name of Etta

Hope God made peace with his soul I hope he gone home to heaven

Lord, I hope he gone home to heaven …. Run Come See Jerusalem”

The refrain is always “run come see, run come see” and “Jerusalem” doesn’t come into in until the final word of the song. Other Andos performers have included H Brown, bass, and Charles Wallace, treble.

New York musician and recording artist Charlie Baum relates how “since the 1920s the great Andros singers have composed ballads about their lives and experiences, in the ballad style”. Many recollect sadnesses such as the songs Harcourt Drowned, Cedric Gone in the Time of the Storm, and Curry Camp Burned Down by Frederick McQueen and Bullard. In July of 1958, “pervasive poverty had caused residents to feel ‘sensitive and dissatisfied’. Many split for Nassau, where work was more plentiful. The ones who stayed found solace in song. ‘Music is the only creative expression of the island’s people, and religious singing and instrumental music have become an intensely important part of their lives’.”

The British tanker Potomac, broke into two on Andros “after documenting the lowest pressure associated with the hurricane”. The steamer Scania was sunk and on October 1, and a British steamer west of Andros observed several schooner masts sticking out of the Gulf Stream, with a vessel attached out of sight but no people.

Pretoria’s final loss remains a challenge to pin down. The Palm Beach Post reported that the mailboat Isle of June saved 20 passengers and 17 drowned when the 35-foot sponging sloop Pretoria, which was trying to seek shelter from a storm in Abaco on 17 February, 1930, sank. It was a sponge boat and all who perished were black Bahamian. We may never know: the records just aren’t as clear as John Spence’s plaintive, haunting voice with strums of guitar and wailing in the background as he beseeches to run come see, run come see ….Jerusalem.