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A Brief History of the U.S. Virgin Islands
Although archeologists have discovered traces of the Ingeri (Ancient People) civilization in the Virgin Islands dating back to 3,000 BC, the first real settlers of these islands were the Arawaks (Tainos) who inhabited these islands from 650 AD until 1450 AD. Around the early 1400s the fierce, cannibalistic Carib Indians arrived in the Virgin Islands and wiped out the Arawaks becoming the local inhabitants when the Europeans arrived.
As is so often the case in the eastern Caribbean, the first European to sight the Virgin Islands was Christopher Columbus, the Viceroy of the Indies, set sail on his second voyage to the New World with a fleet of 17 ships arriving at Dominica and working his way to the northwest along the chain of islands in the eastern Caribbean. After being blown of course by southwesterly winds, Columbus anchored off St. Croix, which he named Santa Cruz, Holy Cross, on November 14, 1493 on his second voyage to the New World. Columbus sent a party ashore, the only landing Columbus and his men would ever make on U.S. soil, and the men of the landing party found only Arawak slaves inhabiting the village. Columbus’ men promptly stole a slave from the Caribs and fled back to their ship, but hot on their heels were the enraged Caribs who sent a war party out to attack the Niña in a canoe. When it was over one Spaniard and one Carib lay dead and Columbus, happy to have survived the attack, sailed northeast exploring the United States and British Virgin Islands on his way to Puerto Rico. Columbus named the area El Cabo de Las Fleches, the Cape of the Arrows for it was a poisoned arrow that killed his crewman, and when Columbus turned his bow to the northeast, lo and behold, he discovered the United States and British Virgin Islands.
Columbus named the numerous islands that lay before him Las Islas Virgenes (some scholars say Las Once Mil Virgines) for St. Ursula and her 11,000 martyred virgins. Ursula was a Princess, the beautiful daughter of the King of Brittany, who lived sometime in the 3rd-4th centuries AD. Her father’s kingdom was threatened by a group of Huns and their Prince asker her father for Ursula’s hand in marriage and Ursula, who had taken a solemn vow of chastity and had no intention of marrying the pagan prince, agreed to the union in order to save her father’s kingdom, but with one stipulation. She would gather 11,000 virgins from the two kingdoms and live with them for a period of three years, and legend has it that Ursula used those years to train the virgins as an army. The Princess and her 11,000 virgins went on a pilgrimage to Rome to pledge their allegiance there while the angry Hun Prince went to Cologne to await Ursula and her army. Again asking for her hand in marriage, and Ursula again refusing, the Prince and his Huns killed Ursula and her 11.000 virgins companions creating the martyrs for which these islands are named. St. Ursula is the patron saint of maidens and her feast day, though no longer celebrated except in the Virgin Islands, is October 21.
Columbus claimed the islands for Spain who cared little for the islands, preferring instead to concentrate on the richer islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. Even the British passed the islands by for half a century, considering them too dangerous for navigation. However, for the very reasons the Spanish and British shunned the islands, another group found them quite adequate for their needs. The pirates were happy with the hiding places the islands offered just off the shipping routes and many islands in the archipelago bear piratical names. Little Thatch Island received its name from Blackbeard, Edward Teach, and Norman Island was also the namesake of a buccaneer who is said to have buried Spanish gold on the island. Jost Van Dyke and Bellamy Cay in the British Virgin Islands are also both named after pirate figures.
For over two centuries after Columbus’ discovery of the Virgin Islands, the islands themselves were fought over by the Spanish, French, Danes, Dutch, British, with even the Knights of Malta having a stake in the Virgin Islands at one time. In 1625, English and Dutch settlers set up small communities on Santa Cruz, but invading Spaniards drove off the settlers in 1650. The Spanish soon left leaving the island to Lt. General de Poincy of the French West Indies Company, who claimed Santa Cruz for the French and renamed it St. Croix. In 1653, St. Croix is bankrupt under the French West Indies Company so the French Governor, who had virtually transformed the island into his own private game park, invited the Knights of Malta to settle on the island and run her affairs. The Knights of Malta in turn soon sold the island back to the French who had all but deserted the island by 1695.
In 1666, the Danes claimed St. Thomas under the auspices of the Danish West India and Guinea Company. Within two years, after being ravaged by a hurricane, disease, and English privateers, the colonists returned to Denmark only to return again to St. Thomas in 1671 with a group of 200 settlers, most of whom were prisoners and indentured servants. Almost half of the colonists who set out for St. Thomas died along the way and within six months of their arrival the colony was down to about 30 hardened, strong settlers who established a foothold here and refused to budge. In 1674, Fort Christian had been built and the Danes named their first settlement Taphaus, but you know it by its current name, Charlotte Amalie. The Danes quickly set about importing slaves to work on their plantations and in 1685, seeking to import more and more slaves, the Danes signed a treaty with the Dutchy of Brandenburg to allow the Brandenburg American Company to establish a slave-trading post on St. Thomas. Dutch planters soon joined their Danish counterparts on St. Thomas as well as settlers from Ireland, England, and Scotland.
The early 18th century saw dramatic growth of the Dutch colony in the Virgin Islands. By 1718 the Danes expanded their settlements to St. John and a fort was constructed in Coral Bay by a group of 40 settlers, and in 1733 the Danish West Indies and Guinea Company purchased St. Croix from France. The Danes originally attempted to settle in St. John around 1694 when they formally claimed the island, but the British on nearby Tortola prevented any colonization for years.
Within three decades there was to be a massive slave rebellion on St. John, which left the island in the hands of the slaves for over six months. By 1733 there were over 100 plantations on St. John, up from 40 a decade earlier, and the slave population stood at over 1,100, greatly outnumbering the whites on the island. Several factors contributed to the uprising in 1733. A drought in 1725-1726 caused dissent when water was diverted to the cane fields and plantation homes and away from the slaves quarters and the slave’s own little gardens, so important to the slave’s survival. Many slaves were left to starve to death and some plantation owners gave their slaves a day off to tend to their gardens which actually gave them time to plot uprisings. Over the following years slaves plotted while other slaves turned in the plotters for cash rewards. A series of natural disasters followed, another drought, a hurricane, a plague of ravenous insects, all of which destroyed the precious little food that the slaves were allowed to grow for themselves. Faced with starvation slave leaders conspired and on November 23, 1733 a group of slaves innocently approached the garrison at Coral Bay and once inside the fort took control killing the seven soldiers with cutlasses hidden in the firewood that they were carrying, but missing one trooper who escaped and carried word of the rebellion to St. Thomas. The slaves at the fort fired a cannon three times as a signal to other slaves to act as well. Within hours bands of armed slaves roamed St. John murdering plantation owners, overseers, and their families as more and more slaves joined the revolt. For weeks thereafter St. John was wild, in a state of anarchy, and the fear of rebellion spread to other islands. Governor Gardelin of St. Thomas sent a force of 18 soldiers to St. John to halt the rebellion, but although somewhat successful, failed to do any damage to the majority of the rebels, some 100 or so. By Christmas reinforcements arrived from St. Thomas and 600 French troops from Martinique lured with the promise that they could keep 80%of the slaves they captured. By late winter, outnumbered and demoralized, their numbers dwindling, some slaves surrendered while others committed suicide by shooting themselves or jumping off the cliffs near Mary Point. By August only 15 rebels remained at large and on a promise of pardon gave up only to be executed. The final count had 150 slaves participating in the rebellion, nearly all of whom were killed. If you wish to learn more about the St. John slave rebellion, pick up a copy of Night of the Silent Drums by John Lorenzo Anderson, you can pick one up at MAPes MONDe in Charlotte Amalie. John Michener devotes a chapter in his epic Caribbean to the rebellion on St. John. It is based on fact with a few fictional characters throw in to the mix and is quite informative.
Around this same time the pirates discovered the Virgin Islands and the early governors of St. Thomas gave their approval for the use of their island as a pirate refuge, which would benefit the local merchants who would profit from the open sale of pirate loot on the city streets. In fact, the famous pirate Bartholomew Sharp is said to have retired from the Sweet Trade in 1696 and settled on St. Thomas to become a planter. Sharp later wound up serving life in prison for his deeds after his “retirement.”
By the mid-1700s the pirate business was declining and legitimate trade was taking its place in the shops along Main Street, then called Dronnigens Gade, in Charlotte Amalie, and in 1764, St. Thomas was declared a free port by Danish King Frederick V. Charlotte Amalie was originally established in 1691 by the Danes and named Taphaus. The town was renamed Charlotte Amalie after the coronation of King Christian V in 1730 in honor of the new Queen of Denmark.
The late 1700s found St. Croix one of the wealthiest islands in the Caribbean. Her massive, and numerous (around 400) sugarcane plantations brought great wealth to the immigrant planters from Barbados, England, and Denmark. By 1802, there were over 30,000 slaves on St. Croix that over the following years revolted several times before gaining their freedom in 1848. In 1801 the British wrested control of St. John from the Danes for a period of one year and returned again in 1807 to reclaim the island, this time for 7 years.
As St. Thomas began an era of free trade with piracy ceasing to be part of the island’s economy, the slave trade rolled right along. The British banned the slave trade in 1802 and by 1814 most European countries had done the same. Emancipation in the British lands came about in 1834 and on July 3, 1848. General Peter Von Sholten, under pressure from slaves led by Gottlieb Buddhoe, freed the slaves in the Danish Virgin Islands. Today July 3, Emancipation Day, is still celebrated as heartily as July 4.
In 1839, Charlotte Amalie became the Caribbean base for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which brought many visitors to the shores of St. Thomas every year. A huge shipyard on Hassel Island was built and St. Thomas became of hub of Caribbean shipping and American Civil War blockade running with the resulting economic boost, but this financial boom would not last long.
Without slave labor the plantation owners profits dropped considerably changing the entire economic outlook of the Virgin Islands. To make things worse, the advent of steam ships ended the need to stop in the Virgin Islands, and in particular Charlotte Amalie’s deep harbor. In the mid-1900s, St. Thomas was ravaged by a cholera epidemic, a hurricane, an earthquake, and a harbor destroying tidal wave, all of which contributed to the end of a very prosperous era for St. Thomas. But sad as the economy was the strategic location of these islands did not go unnoticed as World War I approached. On March 31, 1917, the United States bought the Virgin Islands, now called the United States Virgin Islands, from Denmark for $25 million in gold to prevent the islands from being used as an Axis submarine base and to protect American’s Panama Canal interests. The U.S. quickly named Charlotte Amalie as the capital of the USVI and developed parts of St. Thomas into a military base. A decade later the United States conferred citizenship upon the Virgin Islanders and the Organic Act of 1936 granted a bit of self-rule to the U.S. Virgin Islands and gavethe islanders the right to vote.
The depression years at the beginning of the 1930s plunged the economy of the U.S. Virgin Island into despair causing Herbert Hoover to declare them an “effective poorhouse.” As the fifties came around the islands were being discovered by cruise ships and the tourism industry, the boon and the bane of the islands.
Today, St. Thomas is a tourist mecca and the old Danish warehouses are now filled with boutiques and restaurants, part of Charlotte Amalie’s duty-free shopping zone. St. John is much more laid back than St. Thomas, in part due to Laurance Rockefeller who feared the island would be overrun by development and donated 5,000 acres of land to the National Park system in 1956. Today 2/3 of St. John is under the protection of the Virgin Islands National Park. The once mighty plantations of St. Croix are now mostly just ruins preserved as historic sites. The rainforest on St. Croix is not to be missed as is the diving and snorkeling off Buck Island.
The future of the USVI is still to be written, some islanders want independence, some opt for statehood, and some are happy with the way things are. But for us boaters, the USVI are, and will remain, part of the greatest sailing archipelago in the world, a charterboat paradise and an unforgettable destination.