By James Aitchison

In 1975, Jack Higgins wrote The Eagle Has Landed, a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill from a Norfolk village.  The movie starred Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, and Robert Duvall.

A brilliant plot?  Yes, and one which had a parallel in 1942.  Authorities feared that Jekyll Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia, USA, would become a target for a German kidnapping.  After all, U-boats had been spotted offshore!

Once world-famous for producing Sea Island cotton, since 1886 Jekyll Island had been an exclusive winter retreat for the rich and famous: J. P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William K. Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, and William Rockefeller all had homes there.  Had the Nazis gone ashore and kidnapped some of America’s richest families, Hitler would have had the US Government over a very expensive barrel.

The island, 11 kilometres long by 2.4 kilometres wide, was a community closed to the public.  And the millionaires’ “cottages” redefined the word. Rockefeller’s humble abode stands three stories high and has a total of 25 rooms. It boasts nine bedrooms, nine bathrooms, seven servant rooms, an elevator, a cedar-lined walk-in safe, and taps for hot and cold salt water on the bathtub in the master bedroom bath.  It is also known as “Indian Mound Cottage”; according to local legend, it was built on an Indian burial ground.

Not to be outdone is lumber baron Frank Henry Goodyear’s winter home, a stucco masterpiece of Mediterranean Revival architecture, with seven rooms and a half-bath on the first floor, and five bedrooms and three bathrooms on the second floor.

Meanwhile, the pseudo-Jacobean Hollybourne Cottage features Flemish gables and patterned stonework.  The home of road and rail bridge engineer Charles Stewart Maurice, it was an engineering feat in its own right: constructed using steel supports and nineteen brick piers in the basement, with trusses to distribute the home’s weight.

In 1942, all this splendour came to an end.  The US Government evacuated the island, and its wealthy residents packed their bags — never to return!

But there is more to Jekyll Island than the displaced elite.  The island’s rich history dates back centuries.  Originally home to the Guale and Mocama Native Americans, Spanish explorers landed in 1510.  Spanish missions were later established, but by 1702 the Spanish were gone, replaced by European and American planters and their slaves, producing cotton, rice and indigo.

And with the planters came the earliest plantation houses, constructed from “tabby”, an indigenous type of concrete.  By burning oyster shells to create lime, the colonists mixed it with water, sand, ash, and crushed oyster shells.  The result was virtually indestructible.

Other barrier islands off the coast of Georgia include the privately owned St. Simon’s Island with its upscale resort and three championship golf courses.

Today, Jekyll Island is owned by the State of Georgia and preserved as a tourist destination.  Its miles of beaches and bike trails lure visitors in their thousands, while the former mansions of the rich and famous let tourists experience the wonders of the Gilded Age — before the island sadly goes under to rising sea levels due to climate change.