St_Vincent

St. Vincent

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is an irresistible archipelago country offering some of the most exciting cruising in the Caribbean. St. Vincent is by far the largest island of this group, though each of the major Grenadine islands has its own page on this site.

St. Vincent is an island of towering mountains, craggy peaks and dramatic precipices. Everything is dressed in a tangle of dense green forest. St. Vincent's steep and wild terrain was among the last to be settled by Europeans. At the time Columbus sailed through the islands, St. Vincent was inhabited by amber colored Caribs who had migrated from South America and had a more poetic name for the island: Hairoun, which means "home of the blessed." They were a fierce tribe who had wrested the land from the previous and more peace loving residents, the Arawaks. While the other islands were being exploited by the newly arrived Europeans, a slave ship was wrecked off Bequia and the Caribs took the slaves as their own. However, these slaves were a fierce and warlike tribe and gave the Caribs lots of problems. To control this, the Caribs decided to kill all the young male black children. This caused a revolt among the slaves who killed those Caribs they could, stole their women and ran into the hills. They kept the names the Caribs had given them, followed some Carib customs and became known as the Black Caribs. Over the years they took control of the land from the original Caribs and put up fierce resistance to British settlement. Finally, in the late 18th century, they were defeated by a superior British force and shipped en masse to Honduras.

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