Rogue Planet

Visiting Bannerman's Island

Jen Carlson

Oct. 14, 2008 -- What's more intriguing than an abandoned island with a rotting castle sitting just north of New York City? Bannerman's Island sits in the Hudson, just about 50 miles north of here, and American Heritage explains "this island fortress was once the private arsenal of the worlds largest arms dealer," Frank "Francis" Bannerman. Living in Brooklyn at the time of the Civil War, he purchased "government surplus equipment at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard" for the family business, and eventually Francis Bannerman Sons became the world's largest dealer in military goods, with the weapons exceeding the family's store space in Manhattan (occupying an entire block at 501 Broadway) and three huge Brooklyn warehouses. 

This is where the island comes in! He bought the island [6.5 acres] in December of 1900 for fifteen hundred dollars from a private owner and bought seven acres more of underwater land in front of the island from the state of New York. He ringed the submerged area with sunken canal boats, barges, and railroad floats to form a breakwater. On the island Bannerman built a huge arsenal styled after his idea of a Scottish castle. On a hill in the middle of the island he built a smaller castle as the Bannerman family home. And they lived happily ever after on a "virtual powder keg" (with just a few fatal live ammo accidents)! By the 1960s the castle was decaying, and in 1967 it was sold to New York's Taconic State Park Commission, with all remaining arms and munitions disposed of. Soon after a fire broke out and ruined the decaying structures even more. These days the Hudson River website warns: "Do not attempt to visit...it is a very treacherous combination of buried hazards and dangerous wall conditions." Tod Seelie recently braved the island, however, and came out of it safe and sound, and with these images. 

[gothamist.com]

The World's Most Dangerous Nine Holes

(AFP) — Mohammad Afzal Abdul says he has been jailed twice for playing golf: once in the early 1980s after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then again by the hardline Taliban government more than 10 years later.

Both times he was accused of being a spy because he mixed with foreigners at the Kabul Golf Club, which sits under the steep wall of the Qargar Dam and looks down a gently sloping valley towards the capital.

Abdul, now the pro at Afghanistan's only golf club, doesn't rule out his hobby landing him in jail again.

The extremist Taliban, who banned all sport including even kite-flying, were removed from government in 2001. But now, as an insurgent movement, they often accuse any Afghan who associates with foreigners of spying -- and have killed several.

"Even right now, I feel some danger," Abdul says in a dusty room, surrounded by donated clubs for hire and caps and t-shirts embroidered with the club logo for sale. "But I won't leave," he says.

"This is a place for fun and people need it. People always need to have a good time, even during war."

Abdul says he spent two months clearing the nine-hole course of military hardware that remained after the 1990s civil war between the commanders who had months earlier driven out the Soviet invaders.

"Everything was destroyed, there were tank tracks, guns and weapons," he says.

Then the Taliban built bases in the area and the golf course and the dam -- now one of Kabul's favourite picnic spots -- were abandoned.

Today it has been cleared of landmines, but it is still a bit of a wreck.