The Caribbean Sea - Ports of Call (A-D)

Ports of Call


'''This section is for the purpose of informing the reader of the various islands and ports in the Caribbean at the time of and leading up to 1720. The background information has been taken from numerous sources and if the reader should find any errors or omissions, please contact me for corrective action. I hope this will be of help to those members who are not familiar with the theatre of action in which we find ourselves. The listing is by island name and in alphabetic order. As more data becomes available I shall enter it accordingly. The overall map of the area shows the island marked in red. The island map will show those towns that were active during the period. A brief history of the island and towns leading up to 1720 are included.'''

Abaco


In the northern Bahamas and comprise the main islands of Great Abaco and Little Abaco, together with the smaller Wood Cay, Lubbers Quarters Cay, Green Turtle Cay, Guana Cay, Gorda Cay (Castaway Cay), Elbow Cay, Man-o-War Cay, Stranger's Cay, Umbrella Cay, Walker's Cay and Moore's Island. The first European settlers were Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, who arrived in 1783, as was also the case at Cat Island.

Marsh Harbor is located on the East side of Abaco about midway.

Acklins and Crooked


Located at 22°30′N, 74°0′W. It consisted of a group of islands lying in a shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, of which the largest are Crooked Island in the north and Acklins in the south-east, and the smaller are Long Cay (once known as Fortune Island) in the north-west, and Castle Island in the south. The islands were settled by American Loyalists in the late 1780s who set cotton plantations employing over 1,000 slaves. Crooked Island (76 sq mi). Acklins (120 sq mi).

Andros


The largest island of the Bahamas and the fifth largest island in the West Indies at roughly 2300 square miles (6,000 km²) in area and 104 miles (167 km) long and 40 miles (64 km) wide at its widest point. It is actually composed of three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The island has the world's third largest barrier reef, which is over 140 miles long. There is some evidence that suggests that the first inhabitants of Andros Island were the indigenous Lucayan people. The Lucayans throughout the Bahamas were wiped out mainly by exposure to disease following the arrival of the Spanish in the 1550s. The island was given the name “Espiritu Santo,” the Island of the Holy Spirit, by the Spanish, but is also called San Andreas on a 1782 map. The modern name is believed to be in honour of Sir Edmund Andros, Commander of Her Majesty’s Forces in Barbados in 1672 and Governor successively of New York, Massachusetts, and New England. It is also believed that the island could have been named after the inhabitants of St. Andro Island (St. Andrew or San Andrés) on the Mosquito Coast as 1,400 of them settled in Andros in 1787. Still another theory suggests that the island was name after the Greek isle of Andros, by Greek sponge fisherman. During the 1700s pirates occupied the island. Morgan's Bluff and Morgan's Cave on North Andros are named after the famous privateer-pirate, Henry Morgan. Loyalists and their slaves also settled in Andros in the late 18th Century.

Antigua (Wadadli)


An island in the Caribbean. It is also known as, which means "our own". The island is roughly 87 kilometres (54 miles) in circumference, with an area of 281 km² (108 square miles). It is the largest of the Leeward Islands. The capital is St. John's, at 17° 6' N. and 61° 45' W. The capital is situated in the northwest and has a deep harbour which is able to accommodate large ships. Other leading population settlements are All Saints and Liberta. English Harbour and the neighbouring village of Falmouth, on the southeastern coast is famed as a "hurricane hole" (protected shelter during violent storms) and is the site of a restored British colonial naval station.

Antigua was first inhabited by the Ciboney, which means "stone people" in the Arawak language, whose settlements date at least to 2400 BC. The Ciboney were great craftsmen; they were skilled at making such things as jewelry and stone tools. The Arawaks, who originated in Venezuela, and gradually migrated up the chain of islands now called the Lesser Antilles succeeded the Ciboney. The Arawaks brought farming to the island, cultivating crops of pineapples, peppers, corn, sweet potatoes, guava, cotton, and tobacco. The Carib people drove the Arawaks from neighbouring islands but apparently did not settle on either Antigua or Barbuda. Antigua was stumbled upon by accident in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, who is said to have named it after a church in Seville, Spain, called Santa Maria la Antigua. It remained, however, virtually uninhabited until 1632, when a body of English settlers took possession of it. This settlement was abandoned following attacks by Carib Indians. In 1663 another English group established a settlement under the direction of Lord Willoughby, to whom the entire island was granted by Charles II of England. It was ravaged by the French in 1666, but was soon after reconquered by the British and formally restored to them by the Treaty of Breda. In 1674, Sir Christopher Codrington arrived on Antigua, bringing with him the newest techniques in sugarcane farming -- including extensive slavery. Over the next half century, sugarcane dominated the island's economy, and by the 18th century, there were more than 150 sugarcane processing windmills on the island. It would be difficult to overestimate the impact on Antigua's history of the arrival, one fateful day in 1684, of Sir Christopher Codrington. An enterprising man, Codrington had come to Antigua to find out if the island would support the sort of large-scale sugar cultivation that already flourished elsewhere in the Caribbean. His initial efforts proved to be quite successful, and over the next fifty years sugar cultivation on Antigua exploded. By the middle of the 18th century the island was dotted with more than 150 cane-processing windmills--each the focal point of a sizeable plantation. Today almost 100 of these picturesque stone towers remain, although they now serve as houses, bars, restaurants and shops. At Betty's Hope, Codrington's original sugar estate, visitors can see a fully-restored sugar mill. Most Antiguans are of African lineage, descendants of slaves brought to the island centuries ago to labor in the sugarcane fields. However, Antigua's history of habitation extends as far back as two and a half millenia before Christ. The first settlements, dating from about 2400 B.C., were those of the Siboney (an Arawak word meaning "stone-people"), peripatetic Meso-Indians whose beautifully crafted shell and stone tools have been found at dozens of sites around the island. Long after the Siboney had moved on, Antigua was settled by the pastoral, agricultural Arawaks (35-1100 A.D.), who were then displaced by the Caribs--an aggressive people who ranged all over the Caribbean. The earliest European contact with the island was made by Christopher Columbus during his second Caribbean voyage (1493), who sighted the island in passing and named it after Santa Maria la Antigua, the miracle-working saint of Seville. European settlement, however, didn't occur for over a century, largely because of Antigua's dearth of fresh water and abundance of determined Carib resistance. Finally, in 1632, a group of Englishmen from St. Kitts established a successful settlement, and in 1684, with Codrington's arrival, the island entered the sugar era. By the end of the eighteenth century Antigua had become an important strategic port as well as a valuable commercial colony. Known as the "gateway to the Caribbean," it was situated in a position that offered control over the major sailing routes to and from the region's rich island colonies. Most of the island's historical sites, from its many ruined fortifications to the impeccably-restored architecture of English Harbourtown, are reminders of colonial efforts to ensure its safety from invasion.

Anguilla
image :Anguilla2.jpg

A British overseas territory in the Caribbean, one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It consists of the main island of Anguilla itself, approximately 26 km (16 miles) long by 5 km (3 miles) wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The total land area of the territory is 102 km² (39.4 square miles). Anguilla was first settled in history by Amerindian tribes who migrated from South America. The date of European discovery is uncertain, some sources claim that Columbus sighted the island in 1493, while others state that the island was first discovered by the French in 1564 or 1565. The name Anguilla derives from the word for "eel" in any of various Romance languages (modern Spanish: anguila; French: anguille; Italian: anguilla), probably chosen because of the island's eel-like shape. Anguilla was first colonised by English settlers from Saint Kitts, beginning in 1650. Other early arrivals included Europeans from Antigua and Barbados. It is likely that some of these early Europeans brought enslaved Africans with them. Historians confirm that African slaves lived in the region in the early seventeenth century. For example, Africans from Senegal lived in St. Christopher (today St. Kitts) in 1626. By 1672 a slave depot existed on the island of Nevis. It served the Leeward Islands. While the time of African arrival in Anguilla is difficult to place precisely, archival evidence indicates that a substantial African presence (at least 100) on the island by 1683.

Aruba


A 32 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, 27 km north of the Paraguaná Peninsula, Falcón State, Venezuela. Aruba has a dry climate and an arid, cactus-strewn landscape. It has a land area of 193 km² and lies outside of the hurricane belt. Aruba's first inhabitants were the Caquetios Indians from the Arawak tribe, who migrated there from Venezuela to escape attacks by the Caribs. Fragments of the earliest known Indian settlements date back to about 1000 A.D. Due to Aruba's mostly distant location from other Caribbean islands and strong currents in the sea which made canoe travel to the other islands difficult, the Caquetios remained more tied to South America than the Caribbean. Europeans first learned of Aruba when Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda came across it in August 1499. Vespucci in one of his four letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici describes his voyage to the islands along the coast of Venezuela and describes an island where most trees are of brazilwood, and that from this island he went to one ten leagues of where they had houses built as in Venice. In another letter he describes an island inhabited by very large people, that as small as it was, first they thought was not inhabited. In 1508 Alonso de Ojeda was appointed as Spain's first Governor of Aruba, as part of "Nueva Andalucia". It remained a Spanish colony for over a century. The Cacique or Indian Chief in Aruba Simas welcomed the first priests in Aruba and received from them a wooden Cross as a gift. Another known Governor appointed by Spain is the Factor Juan de Ampues. A "cédula real" decreed in November 1525, gave Juan Martinez de Ampués, factor of Española, the right to repopulate the depopulated islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. The native under Spanish rule enjoyed a certain measure of liberty, his position being actually better than that of the North European farmer of the period. Ampues was later replaced in 1528 by a representative of the "House of Welser" Aruba has been under Dutch administration since 1647, initially under Peter Stuyvesant. Under the Dutch W.I.C. administration, as "New Netherlands and Curacao" from 1648-1664 and the Dutch government regulations of 1629, also applied in Aruba. The Dutch administration appointed an Irishman as "Commandeur" in Aruba in 1667.



Oranjestad

The town of Oranjestad was built around Fort Zoutman shortly after it was built in 1796. Oranjestad has been the capital of Aruba ever since. The city is named after the first King Willem van Oranje-Nassau (William of Orange-Nassau), the first heir to the Dutch House of Orange.

Aves


Isla de Aves (Spanish for "Island of Birds"), or Aves Island, is a Caribbean islet whose status is the subject of a territorial dispute between Dominica and Venezuela. It lies to the west of the Leeward Islands chain at 15°40′18″N, 63°36′59″W. It is 375 m in length and never more than 50 m in width, and rises 4 m above the sea on a calm day. It is sometimes completely submerged during hurricanes. It is 115 miles southwest of Montserrat, 70 miles west of Dominica and 340 miles north of the Venezuelan mainland. The island is a resting and breeding place for seabirds and the Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas). Its low profile makes it a hazard to navigation, and many ships have been wrecked here. It is not to be confused with the Islas Las Aves to the west of Los Roques group much nearer to the Venezuelan mainland. The island was most likely discovered by Avaro Sanzze in 1584, though it was not settled. It was subsequently claimed for Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Bahamas


Consisting of two thousand cays and seven hundred islands that form an archipelago. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida, north of Cuba and the Caribbean, and northwest of the British overseas territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Although the area may have been populated previously, the seafaring Taino people moved into the Southern Bahamas around the seventh century from Hispaniola and Cuba. These people came to be known as the Lucayans. There were an estimated forty thousand Lucayans at the time of Columbus' arrival. Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World was on San Salvador Island, also known as Watling's Island, in the southern part of Bahamas. Here, Columbus made contact with the Lucayans and exchanged goods with them. Bahamian Lucayans were later taken to Hispaniola as slaves; in two decades, many Lucayan societies ceased to exist, as the population endured considerable forced labour, warfare, disease, emigration and outmarriage. After the Lucayan population was eliminated, the Bahamian islands were virtually unoccupied until the English settlers came from Bermuda in 1647. The Eleutherian Adventurers established settlements on the island of Eleuthera. The Bahamas became a British crown colony in 1718. Some 8,000 American Loyalists and their slaves moved to the Bahamas after 1783 from New York, Florida and the Carolinas. The origin of the name "Bahamas" is ambiguous. It is thought to derive from the Spanish baja mar, meaning "shallow seas"; others trace the name to the Lucayan word for Grand Bahama Island, ba-ha-ma "large upper middle land". Bimini is the gateway to the Bahamas. The island of Abaco is to the east of Grand Bahama. The most southeastern island is Great Inagua. Other notable islands include the Bahamas' largest island, Andros Island, and Eleuthera, Cat Island, Long Island, San Salvador Island, Acklins, Crooked Island, Exuma and Mayaguana. Nassau, The capital city, lies on the island of New Providence. To the southeast, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and three more extensive submarine features called Mouchoir Bank, Silver Bank, and Navidad Bank, are geographically a continuation of the Bahamas.

Barbados


Situated just east of the Caribbean Sea, at roughly 13° North and 59° West, the island lies in the southern Caribbean region, where it is a part of the Lesser Antilles island chain. Barbados is relatively close to the South American continent, around 434 kilometres (270 miles) northeast of Venezuela. Its closest island neighbours are Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to the west, Grenada to the south-west, and Trinidad and Tobago to the south, with which Barbados now shares a fixed official maritime boundary. Barbados's total land area is about 430 square kilometres, (166 square miles), and is primarily low-lying, with some higher regions in the island's interior. The organic composition of Barbados is thought to be of non-volcanic origin and is predominantly composed of limestone coral. The island's climate is tropical, with constant trade winds off the AtlanticOcean serving to keep temperatures mild. Some more undeveloped areas of the country contain woodland and scrubland. Other parts of the interior which contribute to the agriculture industry are dotted with large sugarcane estates and wide, gently sloping pastures, with many good views down to the sea coast. The earliest inhabitants of Barbados were American or nomads. Three waves of migrants moved north toward North America. The first wave was of the Saladoid Barrancoid group, who were farmers and fishermen, arrived by canoe from South America (Venezuela's Orinoco Valley) around 350 CE. The Arawak people were the second wave of migrants, arriving from South America around 800 CE. Arawak settlements on the island include Stroud Point, Chandler Bay, Saint Luke's Gully and Mapp's Cave. According to accounts by descendants of the aboriginal Arawak tribes on other local islands, the original name for Barbados was Ichirouganaim. In the thirteenth century, the Caribs arrived from South America in the third wave, displacing both the Arawak and the Salodoid-Barrancoid. For the next few centuries, the Caribs, like the Arawak and the Salodoid-Barrancoid, lived in isolation on the island. The origin of the name Barbados is controversial. It was the Portuguese that were the first to conquer (discover) and name the island. As early as 1511, the island is referred to as Isla de los Barbados (island of the bearded ones) in an official Portuguese document. It is a matter of conjecture whether the word "bearded" refers to the long, hanging roots of the bearded fig-tree (Ficus citrifolia),indigenous to the island, to bearded Amerindians occupying the island, or to the foam spraying over the outlying reefs giving the impression of a beard. In 1519, a map produced by the Genoese mapmaker Vesconte de Maggiola showed and named Barbados in its correct position north of Tobago. Portuguese conquistadors seized many Caribs on Barbados and used them as slave labour on plantations. Other Caribs fled the island. British sailors who landed on Barbados in 1625 at the site of present-day Holetown on the Caribbean coast found the island uninhabited. From the arrival of the first British settlers in 1627-1628, Barbados was under uninterrupted British control. Nevertheless, Barbados always enjoyed a large measure of local autonomy. Its House of Assembly began meeting in 1639. Among the initial important British figures was Sir William Courten. Starting in the 1620s, an increasing number of black slaves were brought to the isle. 5000 locals died of fever in 1647, and hundreds of slaves were executed by Royalist planters during the English Civil War in the 1640s, because they feared that the ideas of the Levellers might spread to the slave population if Parliament took control of Barbados. Large numbers of Celtic people, mainly from Ireland and Scotland, went to Barbados as indentured servants. Over the next several centuries the Celtic population was used as a buffer between the Anglo-Saxon plantation owners and the larger African population, variously serving as members of the Colonial militia and playing a strong role as allies of the larger African slave population in a long string of colonial rebellions. As well, in 1659, the English shipped many Irishmen and Scots off to Barbados as slaves, and King James II and others of his dynasty also sent Scots and English off to the isle: for example, after the crushing of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685. The modern descendants of this original slave population are sometimes derisively referred to as Red Legs, or locally 'ecky becky', and are some of the poorest inhabitants of modern Barbados. There has also been large-scale intermarriage between the African and Celtic populations on the islands. With the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white settlers, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions where attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. However, an increasingly repressive legal system caused the gap between the treatment of typically white indentured servants and black slaves to widen. Imported slaves became much more attractive for the rich planters who would increasingly dominate the island not only economically but also politically. Some have speculated that, because the Africans could withstand tropical diseases and the climate much better than the white slave population, the white population decreased. This is inconsistent with the fact that many poor whites simply immigrated to neighbouring islands and remained in tropical climates. Nevertheless, as those poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so, and with the increased importation of African slaves, Barbados turned from mainly Celtic in the seventeenth century to overwhelmingly black by the nineteenth century. As the sugar industry developed into its main commercial enterprise, Barbados was divided into large plantation estates that replaced the smallholdings of the early British settlers. Some of the displaced farmers moved to British colonies in North America, most notably South Carolina. To work the plantations, West Africans were transported and enslaved on Barbados and other Caribbean islands.

Barbuda


An island in the Eastern Caribbean, and forms part of the state of Antigua and Barbuda. It has a population, most of whom live in the town of Codrington. Barbuda is located north of Antigua, in the middle of the Leeward Islands. To the south are the islands of Montserrat and Guadaloupe, and to the north and west are Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Barts, and St. Martin. The Ciboney were the first to inhabit the island of Barbuda in 2400 B.C., but Arawa and Carib Indians populated the island when Christopher Columbus landed on his second voyage in 1493. Early settlements by the Spanish and French were succeeded by the English, who formed a colony in 1666. The island was leased in 1685 to brothers Christopher and John Codrington, who had founded the town of Codrington. The Codrington family produced food on their land in Barbuda, and also transported slaves as labour for their sugar plantations on Antigua. There was more than one slave rebellion at Codrington during the 1740s, during which slaves rose against tyrannical managers. All the slaves were freed in 1834. In 1719, Codrington and the island of Barbuda had its first census (of both people and livestock), conducted by Sir William Codrington (1715-1790). In the second half of the 18th century, the first map of Barbuda was made. This indicates: - substantial buildings in the Highland area - a castle in Codrington - a fort at River, now known as the Martello Tower - houses at Palmetto, Coco Point, and Castle Hill - eight catching pens - several defensive cannon gun battery units in the south, north, west, and east - two large plantations in the Meadow and Guava area and in the Highlands area Geography - Land area: 160.56 km² - Climate: tropical marine; little seasonal temperature variation. - Terrain: mostly coral limestone islands Elevation extremes: - Lowest point: Caribbean Sea 0 m. - Highest point: Highlands 38 m.

Berry


A chain of islands of the Bahamas, covering about thirty square miles (78 km²) of the north western part of the Out Islands. The Berry islands consist of about thirty islands and over one hundred small islands or cays, often referred to as "The Fish Bowl of the Bahamas". The islands were settled in 1836by Governor Colebrook and a group of freed slaves.

Bimini


Meaning, Mother of Many Waters, Bibi (Mother) and Mini (Waters), is a term and name in the Taino Native Indian language of the Caribbean islands. North Bimini is about seven miles (11 km) long and 700 feet (210 m) wide; its main settlement is Alice Town. Bimini is located about 50 miles (80 km) east of Florida.

Blanquilla


Blanquilla is 60 miles north Juan Griego, 70 miles northwest of Porlamar Isla Margarita. Los Hermanos is eight miles southeast of La Blanquilla.

La Blanquilla is a 72-square-mile limestone island shaped like an arrowhead and named for bright white sand beaches a truly delightful island well of the beaten track. It is low lying about 50 feet high. Blanquilla is also the edge of a deep open trench. The wall starts just 65 feet from shore, and plummets straight down more than 3,000 feet. At some spots, including Piedra del Ahogado (The Drowned Rock), coral pinnacles scratch the water's surface. The walls are also rich with black corals, which are increasingly hard to find throughout the world.

Bonaire


An island in the Netherlands Antilles, and as such, is a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Together with Aruba and Curaçao it forms a group referred to as the ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles, the southern island chain of the Lesser Antilles. While Papiamentu, Spanish, and English are commonly spoken, the official language is Dutch. Bonaire has a land area of 288 km² (111 sq. miles). Bonaire's first inhabitants were the Caiquetios, a branch of the Arawak Indians who sailed across from what is now Venezuela around 1000 AD. Traces of Caiquetio culture are at a number of archaeological sites, including those at Lac Bay and northeast of Kralendijk. Rock paintings and petroglyphs have survived at the caves at Spelonk, Onima, Ceru Pungi, and Ceru Crita-Cabai. The Caiquetios were apparently a very tall people, for the Spanish dubbed the Leeward Islands 'las Islas de los Gigantes' (the islands of the giants). Bonaire was claimed for the Spanish by Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. The Spanish did little to exploit the island aside from enslaving the natives and moving them to Hispaniola. By 1526, the island was depopulated. That year, Juan de Ampues, regional governor, turned it into a cattle plantation and repopulated it with Indians. In 1633, the Dutch, having lost the island of St. Maarten to the Spanish, retaliated by capturing Curacao, Bonaire, and Aruba. While Curacao emerged as a center of the slave trade, Bonaire became a plantation of the Dutch West India Company. A small number of African slaves were put to work alongside Indians and convicts, cultivating dyewood and maize and harvesting solar salt around Blue Pan. Slave quarters, rising no higher than a man's waist and built entirely of stone, still stand in the area around Rincon and along the saltpans as a grim reminder of Bonaire's repressive past.

British Virgin Islands


Located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago. The British Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke, along with over fifty other smaller islands and cays. Around fifteen of the islands are inhabited. The largest island, Tortola, is approximately 20 km (~12 mi) long and 5 km (~3 mi) wide. The Virgin Islands were first settled by Arawak Indians from South America around 100 BC (though there is some evidence of Amerindian presence on the islands as far back as 1500 BC). The Arawaks inhabited the islands until the fifteenth century when they were displaced by the more aggressive Caribs, a tribe from the Lesser Antilles islands, after whom the Caribbean Sea is named. (Some historians, however, believe that this popular account of warlike Caribs chasing peaceful Arawaks out of the Caribbean islands is rooted in simplistic European stereotypes, and that the true story is more complex.) The first European sighting of the Virgin Islands was by Christopher Columbus in 1493 on his second voyage to the Americas. Columbus gave them the fanciful name Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Vírgenes (Saint Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins), shortened to Las Vírgenes (The Virgins), after the legend of Saint Ursula. The Spanish Empire acquired the islands in the early sixteenth century, mining copper on Virgin Gorda, and subsequent years saw the English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Danish all jostling for control of the region, which became a notorious haunt for pirates. During the process of colonisation the native Amerindian population was decimated. The Dutch established a permanent settlement on the island of Tortola in 1648. In 1672, the English captured Tortola from the Dutch, and the British annexation of Anegada and Virgin Gorda followed in 1680. Meanwhile, over the period 1672–1733, the Danish gained control of the nearby islands of St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix. The British islands were considered principally a strategic possession, but were planted when economic conditions were particularly favourable. The British introduced sugar cane which was to become the main crop and source of foreign trade, and slaves were brought from Africa to work on the sugar cane plantations.

Caicos


Caicos and Turks Islands are a British Overseas Territory consisting of two groups of tropical islands in the West Indies at 21°53′N, 71°47′W. The islands of the Turks and Caicos were first populated by Carib Amerindians but, shortly after the islands' discovery - depending on the source, on 12 October 1492by Christopher Columbus, who would have claimed them for Spain, or by Juan Ponce de León in 1512 - Spanish explorers began raiding the archipelago for slaves. Though many nations controlled the islands, official settlement did not occur right away. For several decades around the turn of the 18th century they became popular pirate hideouts. Bermudian salt collectors were the first to settle the Turk Islands in 1678 or 1681. In 1764 - 1783 they were under French occupation. After the American Revolution many loyalists fled to British Caribbean colonies, including (in 1783) the first settlers on the Caicos Islands; cotton became an important crop briefly. In 1799 both island groups were annexed by Britain as part of the Bahamas. There was a great deal of political turmoil surrounding the ownership of the Turks and Caicos even within the British empire: Bermuda had been in effective possession of them for a century, though, under British law they were the common wealth of all British citizens. Spanish and French forces seized the Turks in 1706, but Bermudian forces expelled them four years later in what was probably Bermuda's only independent military operation. For many years, the Bahamas (itself originally settled by Bermudian puritans in 1647) and Bermuda fought for control of the archipelago. The spatial arrangement of the islands around the large Caicos Bank (with an area of 7,680 km²) resembles an Atoll, with the six large islands in the west, north and east, and a few tiny reefs and cays in the south. The unofficial capital of the Caicos Islands is the village of Kew on North Caicos. Four of the six main islands are inhabited, plus two of the smaller islands: Main islands, from West to East: West Caicos, Providenciales, North Caicos, Middle Caicos, East Caicos, South Caicos, Ambergris Cay. Inhabited smaller islands, in the Caicos Cays between Providenciales and North Caicos: Pine Cay, Parrot Cay.

Cat


One of the central Bahamas, boasts the highest point. Its Mount Alvernia rises to 206 ft (63 m) and is topped by a monastery called The Hermitage. The first European settlers were Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, who arrived in 1783. The island may have been named after Arthur Catt, a pirate, or the name may refer to its one-time large population of feral cats. Historically, the island gained wealth from cotton plantations. Until written accounts were found, Cat Island was thought to be Guanahani or San Salvador, the first island Christopher Columbus reached when he discovered the Americas. Many local historians claim that Cat Island residents were the first to see Columbus. The great explorer himself was believed by some to have been welcomed here by the peaceful Arawaks.

Caymans


A British overseas territory located in the western Caribbean Sea, comprising the islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. The Cayman Islands were first sighted by Christopher Columbus on May 10, 1503 during his disastrous fourth and final voyage to the New World. He named them Las Tortugas after the numerous sea turtles there. The first recorded English visitor to the islands was Sir Francis Drake, who landed there in 1586 and named them the Cayman Islands after the Neo-Taino nations term (caiman) for crocodile. The first recorded permanent inhabitant of the Cayman Islands, Isaac Bodden, was born on Grand Cayman around 1700. He was the grandson of the original settler named Bodden who was probably one of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers at the taking of Jamaica in 1655. The islands, along with nearby Jamaica, were captured, then ceded to England in 1670 under the Treaty of Madrid. They were governed as a single colony with Jamaica.

Cayo
(see Isle of Pines)

Charlesfort


A mid-sixteenth century French outpost in Port Royal Sound, Charlesfort was the first French settlement in the present day United States. In early 1562, Gaspard Coligny de Châtillon, the Admiral of France, dispatched the Norman mariner Jean Ribault to lead two royal ships and 150 men to survey the east coast of North America and locate a site for a future French colony. Landing near modern Jacksonville, Florida, Ribault established relations with a number of native peoples as he took his ships north to Port Royal Sound. Impressed by the apparent potential of this area for a colony, Ribault, before returning to France, left behind more than two dozen volunteers, who constructed a small wooden fort which they named after their king. From here they intended to explore the area while waiting for Ribault to return with supplies and more settlers. However, civil war in France prevented Ribault from resupplying Charlesfort. Over the next fourteen months, mutiny, conflict with the local Indians, and shortages of food threatened the survival of the fort, and it was decided to abandon the area. Attempting an Atlantic crossing in an open boat, the survivors had been reduced to cannibalism by the time they were rescued by an English ship. A few months later, Coligny sponsored a second and larger French colonization attempt, on the St. John's River in Florida, which lasted a year before being captured by Spanish troops.

Cozumel


(Mayan: Island of the Swallows) is an island in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, opposite Playa del Carmen. The main town on the island is San Miguel de Cozumel. The island is about 48 km (30 miles) north-south and 16 km (10 miles) east-west, and is the largest Atlantic island of Mexico. It is about 20 km (12 miles) from the mainland, and some 60 km (36 miles) south of Cancún. The vast majority of the population of Cozumel lives in the town of San Miguel, which is on the western shore. The rest of the island is low, flat, and densely vegetated. The Maya are believed to have first settled Cozumel by the early part of the 1st millennium AD, and older Preclassic Olmec artifacts have been found on the island as well. The island was sacred to Ix Chel, the Maya Moon Goddess, and the temples here were a place of pilgrimage, especially by women desiring fertility. There are a number of ruins on the island, most from the Post-Classic period. The ruins of San Gervasio are located approximately at the center of the island. The first Spanish visitor was Juan de Grijalva in 1518, and in the following year Hernán Cortés came with a fleet and destroyed many Maya temples. Some 40,000 Maya lived on the island then, but smallpox devastated them and by 1570 only 30 were left alive. In the ensuing years Cozumel was nearly deserted, used as a hideout by pirates from time to time.

Cuba


The island of Cuba (the largest of the Greater Antilles), and several adjacent small islands. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean at the confluence of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Cuba is south of the Bahamas, west of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Haiti and east of Mexico. The Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south. Cuba is the most populous country in the Caribbean. Cuba was a Spanish possession for 388 years, ruled by a governor in Havana, with an economy based on plantation agriculture and the export of sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe. It was seized by the British in 1762, but restored to Spain the following year. The Spanish population was boosted by settlers leaving Haiti when that territory was ceded to France. As in other parts of the Spanish Empire, a small land-owning elite of Spanish-descended settlers held social and economic power, supported by a population of plebian creoles, mixed-race (Mestizo) small farmers, laborers and African-descended slaves.



Capital of Cuba: Havanna

Curaçao


An island in the southern part of the Caribbean Sea off the west coast of Venezuela. The island is the largest and most populous of the three so-called ABC islands (for Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao) of the Lesser Antilles – specifically the Leeward Antilles – and belongs to the Netherlands Antilles. Curaçao has a land area of 444 square kilometres (171 square miles). The original inhabitants of Curaçao were Arawak Amerindians. The first Europeans to see the island were members of a Spanish expedition under the leadership of Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. The Spaniards decimated the Arawak with diseases such as smallpox and measles. The island was occupied by the Dutch in 1634. The Dutch West India Company founded the capital of Willemstad on the banks of an inlet called the 'Schottegat'. Curaçao had been previously ignored by colonists because it lacked many things that colonists were interested in, such as gold deposits. However, the natural harbour of Willemstad proved quickly to be an ideal spot for trade. Commerce and shipping -- but also piracy -- became Curaçao's most important economic activities. In addition, Curaçao came to play a pivotal role in one of the most intricate international trade networks in history: the Atlantic slave trade. The Dutch West India Company made Curaçao a center for slave trade in 1662. Dutch merchants brought slaves from Africa to the trading area called Asiento. From there, slaves were sold and shipped to various destinations in South America and the Caribbean. At the height of the trade large numbers of slaves were traded here.