St Vincent & the Grenadines

The flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines features green diamonds that represent the many lush islands, blue for the brilliant sky and gold for the warmth of the people. Visitors are welcomed with open arms, not for their tourist dollars, but with the genuine warmth of a people who are proud of their country and heritage. The flag is sometimes called the Gems and you can see why as this necklace of precious islands that adorns the southern Caribbean waits to welcome you.

A collection of 32 enchanting islands and cays, the independent nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines stretches out over 60 miles in the southern Windward Island chain and is one of the last truly pristine and un-spoilt areas in the Caribbean. Located 100 miles / 161 km west of Barbados, the lack of a major international airport has preserved this island group from tourist exploitation and major resort development.

The majority of the population lives in the coastal areas and main valleys of the large island of St Vincent. English-speaking and predominantly Christian, Vincentians have a long history of traveling and working around the world but always come back home. This tropical island is alive with history and interest for the visitor from its 250-year-old botanical gardens in the south to its 4,000 ft / 1,219.2 m. high volcano in the north. Black and white sand beaches, gushing waterfalls, crystal clear water and the vibrant colours of its vegetation await you as you discover this extraordinary island.

Some of the more popular Grenadine islands, from north to south, include Young Island, Bequia (Beck-way), Mustique (Mus-teek), Canouan (Can-nu-wan), Mayreau (My-ro), Union Island, Palm Island and Petit (Petty) St Vincent. With a total population of less than 10,000, these islands offer the get away from it all vacation that you have been dreaming of.

Bequia, only 9 miles / 14.5 km to the south, is the yachting centre of the Grenadines, a normally sleepy island of waterside restaurants, bars, shops and guesthouses that comes alive in the season. See our Bequia page for more information on Bequia.

Eight miles / 13 km further on, Mustique has been developed into an exclusive haven for the rich and famous where the likes of Mick Jagger, Bryan Adams, David Bowie and British royalty own palatial homes and can often been seen hanging out at the famous Basil’s Bar.

Canouan island, home to the luxurious Raffles Resort with its casino and golf course, is another 8 miles / 13 km down the chain, Only 3.5 miles / 5.6 km long and very narrow in places, Canouan is a quiet, peaceful, crescent shaped island with long sandy white beaches.

Saltwhistle Bay in Mayreau is a popular stopping point for visitors to the famous and pristine Tobago Cays marine park. At only 1.5 miles / 2.4 km in length, one short road, no airport and a population of fewer than 200, this island is castaway heaven.

Union Island is the southernmost point of entry into St Vincent and the Grenadines and has a thriving population of 1900 engaged in marine, tourism and other commercial activities. It is high, rocky and dry everywhere except in the thriving bars and hotels.

Palm Island and the beautiful, privately owned, Petit St Vincent are home to ultra-luxury resorts that for years have been the well-kept secret hideaways of the world’s elite.

A Potted History of The Grenadines

Bequia, of course, shares much of its history with the island group to which it belongs; so you may like to also read our section on Bequia’s History.

The state of St Vincent & the Grenadines consists of the island of St Vincent and a number of island dependencies in the north part of the Grenadines archipelago. St Vincent was possibly visited by Columbus in 1498 and named by him. Carib Indians aggressively prevented European settlement on St Vincent until the 18th century. African slaves (whether shipwrecked or escaped from St Lucia and Grenada and seeking refuge in St Vincent) intermarried with the Caribs and became known as Black Caribs. Beginning in 1719, French settlers cultivated coffee, tobacco, indigo, cotton and sugar on plantations worked by African slaves.

In 1763, St Vincent & the Grenadines became a British possession under the Treaty of Paris. In 1779 the territory was seized by the French, but in 1783 restored to Britain under the Treaty of Versailles. Conflict between the British and the black Caribs continued until 1796, when General Abercrombie crushed a revolt. More than 5,000 black Caribs were eventually deported to Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras.

In 1834 slavery was abolished. The resulting labor shortages on the plantations attracted Portuguese immigrants in the 1840s and east Indians in the 1860s. Conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant agricultural workers, as depressed world sugar prices kept the economy stagnant until the turn of the century.

In 1871 the group became part of the Windward Islands Colony and in 1956 a member of the Federation of the Windward Islands. In 1958 St Vincent joined the Federation of the West Indies and in 1969 it attained full internal self government. Finally in 1979 it became an Independent Sovereign State within the Commonwealth. The population is about 120,000.

For more detailed histories, see The World Factbook and Wikipedia.

A Potted Geology of the Caribbean Isles

The islands of the West Indies are the summits of a submerged mountain chain originating near Venezuela and continuing westwards in an arc towards the mountains of Honduras. The chain divides in Hispaniola, one branch passing through Jamaica and the other through Cuba and the Cayman Islands.

Geologically, the Caribbean Sea consists of two main basins separated by a broad, submarine plateau. The Caribbean’s deepest point (24,721 feet / 7,535m below sea level) is in the Cayman Trench lying between Cuba and Jamaica. The water is clear, warm (75°F / 24°C) and less salty than the Atlantic. The basin has a very low tidal range (circa 1 foot / 0.3m). The Caribbean Sea has an anticlockwise current; water enters through the Lesser Antilles, is warmed by the sun and exits via the Yucatan Channel, where it forms the Gulf Stream.

The Caribbean Sea is geologically separate from the North and South American continents. Together with Central America, it forms a tectonic plate that is moving east at about 1.6 in / 4 cm per year past the southern boundary of the North American plate. At the same time the North American and South American plates, which lie under the continents and the eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean, are moving westward.

Most of the Caribbean islands are close to the boundaries of the Caribbean plate. At plate boundaries the rock of the plates moving in different directions grinds together; this is why most parts of the Caribbean experience earthquakes from time to time and why there are a number of active volcanoes in the region.

The oldest rocks in the Greater Antilles are Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, formed about 70 million years ago when the Caribbean plate was moving north. There is intense faulting and fracturing of the crust as the Caribbean plate moves east; this faulting has thrust these three large islands up above sea level.

Large areas of Puerto Rico and Jamaica are covered by limestone formed about 30 million years ago when this part of the earth’s crust was below sea level. Jamaica is now being gradually tilted to the south—the north coast is being pushed up above sea level and the south drowned. Off the coast of southern Jamaica, there are large areas of relatively shallow sea that were land when sea levels were about 98.4ft / 30m lower than they are now, during the ice ice ages of the past million years.

Cuba and the Bahamas are part of the North American plate. Southern Cuba is mountainous and strongly affected by the plate boundary; but the rest of Cuba and the Bahamas are geologically quite stable and are formed mainly of limestone. The Bahamas are on a section of crust which has been stretched and weakened over the past 120 million years as the North American plate moved away from the African plate and the Atlantic Ocean became wider. For the whole of this period, the Bahamas has formed a shallow tropical sea. Evaporation from the warm sea surface causes the concentration of calcium carbonate in the water to become very high, so tiny grains of this mineral, ooliths, form and collect on the sea bed. These grains form a rock known as oolite. The Bahama Banks are a platform of oolite several kilometres thick. During the glacial periods, sea levels fell and the Banks became enormous islands. Sand dunes which formed in the ice ages solidified and remained above sea level when the ice melted and the sea rose again, to form the present-day Bahama islands.

To the south, Trinidad and Tobago were joined to the South American mainland when sea levels were low in the ice ages, hence the richness and variety of their plant and animal life. The boundary between the South American and Caribbean plate actually runs through north Trinidad, so these islands are another earthquake zone.

The Windward Islands, part of the Lesser Antilles, are the inner string of islands which extend from Martinique to Trinidad. They lie along the eastern boundary of the plate and are entirely of volcanic origin. This area is the most volcanically active because it lies over a subduction zone, where the Caribbean plate is being pushed east, over the edge of the Atlantic portions of the North American and South American plates. The western part of the deep-cleft island of Guadeloupe also belongs to this zone.