The main story on the front page of the 15 May 1975 edition of The Caymanian Compass was about ‘New Hope For Turtle Farming’. According to the article, Mariculture for “some time” had been in financial difficulties and “since the beginning of February” that year, its operations had been funded by several entities. But two secured creditors had not agreed to cooperate in debt-reduction proposals – it was carrying $650,000 of debt – so the facility risked an “immediate winding up”. To prevent that happening, Citibank appointed a receiver to negotiate a way forward to continue operations.
Another front-page headline, ‘Violence Attributed to Cayman Islands’ was actually referring to a “grossly erroneous” Reuters news agency report, that was picked up by The Daily Gleaner, with the Compass noting, “Although for us living here, it was taken as a mistake, yet it was received with a furore as the report naturally sought to tarnish the good name of our country in the eyes of the outside world.” The actual ‘news’ was not described. Governor Thomas Russell called the British High Commissioner in Jamaica requesting he contact The Daily Gleaner to correct the story. Meanwhile, the Reuters reporter responsible for the error had been “severely reprimanded” and the corrected version had been wired to all their subscribers.
A page 3 photo, ‘Jazz is Born’ showed Ed Solomon singing to a capacity crowd at Royal Palms.
The first part of the editorial concerned a ‘Grand Faux Pas’, referring to the incorrect report on violence in Cayman, noting the country is a “peaceful and traditional law-abiding state”, adding the result of the story was damaging to the “good name” of the Islands. It concluded that Cayman would never placed itself in a position where that sort of news would be true.
And lastly, a photo in the second section showed Andy Martin giving Kenneth ‘Stubby’ Bodden a copy of ‘Cayman Cowboy’ (written by Barefoot Man George Nowak), his new record, which was about Bodden.
