Josephus Lambert Hassell

Who is Josephus Lambert Hassell?

Josephus Lambert "Lambee" Hassell was a Saban carpenter and self-taught engineer who, from the 1930s onward, pursued the idea of building a road across the steep volcanic island of Saba, in the far north of this island territory. Dutch and Swiss civil engineers who had surveyed the island concluded that a road was impossible given Saba's extreme terrain, but Hassell disagreed and studied civil engineering through correspondence courses delivered by mail. Cementing of the first stretch began in 1938 between Fort Bay and The Bottom, and that 0.7-mile, 13-foot-wide section, climbing an elevation change of about 653 feet, was completed and inaugurated in 1943. Under Hassell's direction, and using no heavy machinery, teams of local Sabans extended the road to St. John's and Windwardside by 1951 and finally all the way to the remote village of Hell's Gate by 1958, with work continuing on related sections until 1963. The project became known across the Caribbean as "The Road That Couldn't Be Built," and it remains Saba's primary road today, still cited as one of the island's defining feats of self-reliance.

Sources: Wikipedia, "The Road (Saba)" · The Saba Islander, "The Road Which Could Not Be Built" (2016) · Saba Tourism, "History of Saba"