This huge gun is all that remains of ‘American Guiana’. By mid-1940, the USA was worried. After years of neutrality, Americans now found themselves being drawn into a new world conflict. Apart from Britain, Europe was almost entirely under Nazi control. Worse, in the Caribbean, Europe’s old colonies were looking decidedly vulnerable.
This huge gun is all that remains of ‘American Guiana’. By mid-1940, the USA was worried. After years of neutrality, Americans now found themselves being drawn into a new world conflict. Apart from Britain, Europe was almost entirely under Nazi control. Worse, in the Caribbean, Europe’s old colonies were looking decidedly vulnerable. If they too fell, it would bring fascism right to the very back yard of the USA.
Among the weak spots were the Guianas. Perched on the coast of north-east Latin America, these little colonies (now Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana) had always appalled Americans. It wasn’t just that they were a mess of swamps and failing Europeans. They were an anomaly, a last vestige of the Old World in America’s sphere of influence. And now they were dangerous. One US newspaper even predicted the invasion of the Western Hemisphere from a base in Cayenne.
It was time to abandon neutrality and establish a presence. On 2 September 1940, Washington signed the ‘Destroyers for Bases Agreement’, under which it would provide Britain with fifty WWI-vintage destroyers in return for a foothold in her colonies. Soon there were Americans in Suriname and French Guiana too. This huge naval gun was part of their defences. Positioned in the mouth of the Suriname River, it’s still there, nested down in concrete, and stamped ‘1917’. Whether such guns would have worried a determined intruder is debatable. They were, perhaps, merely phoney guns in a phoney war.
