" The fishing enterprise could have created a salt works in this manner:
· Build a cofferdam (or “dyke”) on the beach at Smiths Cove, shielding the finger drains area from the sea.
· Excavate the area inside the cofferdam, lay the five finger dams from the cofferdam converging to a common point at around the high water mark, cover the drains with a layer of beach rocks, spread a layer of eel grass and then a layer of coconut husk over the rocks, and finally spread a two foot (60 centimetre) layer of sand over the coconut husk.
· A well would be constructed at or near the point of convergence of the five finger drains (and in fact such a well was excavated by Dunfield in the mid 1960s (3) and he found it to be about 25 feet [8 metres] deep – he found it was a dead end and did not lead to any kind of flood tunnel (15)(16))."
For the full article on the drains and island history concerning a fishing depot....see
Dennis King's article on the "Finger Drains"