A Briton who ran a superyacht marina in the Caribbean is thought to have been murdered at his home on St Lucia.
Robert Hathaway, 66, was found by a neighbour at around midday on Sunday. Police have launched a murder investigation.
He had lived on the island since 2001, when he sailed across the Atlantic from Southampton, bought land in Marigot Bay and set up the exclusive local marina for superyachts.
A senior local policeman said on Monday: “We can confirm that the body of a British national has been found where he lived in Grand Riviere, Gros Islet. We suspect his death to be a homicide.
“His body is presently at the local hospital and we are waiting for the forensic report to establish his cause of death. We hope to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible. We will be getting in touch with his family in the UK.”
Born in Codford Saint Peter, Wiltshire, Mr Hathaway spent his childhood living on board a yacht during school summer holidays.
He went to boarding school before going on to read engineering, specialising in hydrodynamics, at Cambridge.
He went on to work for Haringey council in north London as a social worker, remaining in local government for 16 years before taking a sabbatical year at the age of 37.
On return from cruising in the Mediterranean he joined the marine industry, working for a yacht building and repair company near Southampton, where his ex-wife still lives.
In St Lucia, he designed and built a solar–powered catamaran, the first of its kind in the Caribbean, and went on to establish The Marina at Marigot Bay which he managed until 2014.
In 2014, Mr Hathaway spoke to the Telegraph after Briton Roger Pratt was killed on his yacht in St Lucia, having sailed to the island with his wife, who survived the botched attempted robbery.
“(He was) very pleasant, obviously very happy and very relaxed,” he said. “He was on the trip of a lifetime and I knew exactly how he felt because I had done the same thing.”
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said on Monday: “Our staff are in contact with the authorities in St Lucia following reports of the death of a British man.”
Mr Hathaway’s sister, Angela Gough, declined to comment. Their other sibling, Ellen, died in 1981 aged 21.
St Lucia has a murder rate of nearly 20 per 100,000, according to World Bank figures, with much of the violence attributed to drug gangs. The UK rate by the same measure is 1.2 per 100,000.
