The earliest known settlement on the shores of St. Thomas was of Arawak indians, at the western entrance to the harbor. As you sail into the harbor, to the left there is a small coconut grove where fragments of Arawakan pottery dating to about 600 A.D. have been found.
Columbus sailed into Virgin Island waters on the evening of Nov. 13,1493. The next day, he landed for a few hours on St. Croix at Salt River. That afternoon he sailed north by east toward the "miriad" islands that he named for Santa Ursula and her legendary 11,000 virgins. He entered the St Thomas harbor on Nov. 15 and remained until the evening of Nov. 18, when he set sail toward Puerto Rico.
He carried several captured inhabitants away from the Virgin Islands, including two women who were later exhibited in a cage in Medina, Spain. Peter Martyr writes of going there to see them.
Columbus called St. Thomas "Santa Ana" after the mother of the Virgin Mary and called the large and secure harbor "Serredurra" or "Serraturra," meaning keyhole, because of its protective shape.
The king of Spain launched a "war against the Caribs" following attacks on Puerto Rico (after Spanish vessels had captured 120 indians on St. Croix). By 1515, the Virgins were depopulated, with settlements destroyed and fields spoiled, the explorer Ponce de Leon reported in a letter to the Spanish king. Although the indigenous inhabitants didn't disappear entirely from the Virgin Islands, most were scattered and driven back to other islands of the Lesser Antilles, where they formed the mix of Carib and Arawak populations found by the French in the 1620s.
In the 1640s, the St. Thomas harbor and nearby small islands were settled by the Dutch. The western arm of the harbor was called West Hook or West Peninsular. There are ruins of four small Dutch houses and evidence of tobacco planting on this site, now separated from the main island and called Hassel Island. A half-mile-long stone wall still standing in the center of the island was used for defense against indian raids, which threatened as late as 1723. One of the tobacco planters gave his name to the island: "Thomas's island" became St Thomas.
Small neighboring islands retain historic Dutch names such as Tobago (Dutch for tobacco), Han Lollick, Jost Van Dyke and Buck Island (from the Dutch Pokken Island, where Lignum vitae trees, then known as "pox wood" or "guanaicum" and used as a cure for syphillis, were planted. The local Van Beverhoudt family may predate Danish settlement of the islands, which began in the late 1660s.
The first permanent Danish structures, all fortifications, are still standing: Fort Christian in the harbor center, Blackbeard's Castle on the hill directly above it, and Bluebeard's Castle on the eastern hill flanking the fort. Fort Frederik at the western mouth of the harbor was the fourth Danish fortification built to protect the new colony.
Before 1700, a part of the island was leased to Prussia under Frederik the Elector. The Brandenberg Company trading house, which still stands opposite the Catholic cathedral, is adorned with a red lion face and is the oldest German structure in the New World. It and the four original Danish buildings are among the oldest in the United States.
From its first European settlement until the early 1700s, the St. Thomas harbor was a pirate cove, with ships plundering Spanish vessels sailing out of Puerto Rico. All shipping in the region was at risk. In the early 1700s the French and British cracked down, and under the vigorous leadership of Governor Stapleton of the British Leeward Islands Government, piracy originating out of the St. Thomas harbor was stopped.
From 1700 until the mid-1820s, St. Thomas, with its wide, protected harbor and its proximity to Puerto Rico, was a center of smuggling which grew to an immense level over time. St. Thomas became a funnel for northern European iron goods, first to Puerto Rico then to all of South America. Cutlasses, hoes, plows, clasps, brackets, guns and scythes all went to Puerto Rico and thence to Venezuela in exchange for sugar, silver, leather, organic dyes and other Spanish Empire output.
With Venezuela's independence and an end to Spanish imperial monopoly trade in the mid-1820s, St. Thomas established the largest shipways south of New York and the first coaling stations for steamships in the Caribbean. Its central location and its large harbor led to the establishment on St. Thomas of the North and South American headquarters of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, the Hamburg America Line, the French Line and the Danish Line. It became the hub port of the Americas for steamships, and by the 1850s Charlotte Amalie was the second-largest city in Denmark. Tramp steamers gathered in the harbor awaiting orders via the first transatlantic telegraph cable, in operation between London and St. Thomas before one was laid to New York.
It is for much the same reasons of favorable location and large, safe harbor that St. Thomas today attracts more cruise ship calls than any other port.
One gets a feeling of being able to know St. Thomas at first sight: the harbor entrance with the cruise ship dock to the east, Hassel Island to the west, the town and hills behind it to the north. Out of the harbor mouth is due south. A tour leaves visitors oriented with this simple sense of direction so that one always seems to know where one is when visiting St. Thomas.
Editor's note: Michael Paiewonsky is the owner of MAPes MONDe Ltd., a publishing house specializing in Virgin Islands history. For additional information about its offerings, visit the web site www.mapesmonde.com or send e-mail to m@mapesmonde.com.
