Columbus, despairing of finding individual names for all the islands
he sighted, called the rocky archipelago which is the subject of this
number of The Mentor, “‘The Virgin Islands,’ after Saint Ursula and her
martyred maidens.” The group designated by this name includes upwards
of fifty islands and islets, several of which are owned by Great
Britain. When Spain ceded Porto Rico, ownership of three of the Virgin
Islands--Vieques, Culebra, and Culebrita--passed to the United States.
St. Croix is not one of this group, according to strict geographical
classification, but, together with the Virgin Islands, is one of the
Leeward Islands group, which comprises, among others, St. Kitts, Nevis,
St. Christopher, Antigua, Guadaloupe and Martinique.
Over a century and a half after Columbus discovered the Virgin Islands,
in 1493, adventurous Danes cast anchor in the harbor of St. Thomas,
but soon forsook this little isle of the southern seas for another
island at the mouth of the Hudson River--the Island of Manhattan, where
the Dutch had settled. The Dutch and the English, the French and the
Spanish, had previously visited the islands we call St. Thomas and St.
Croix when, in 1666, the Danish made another unsuccessful attempt at
colonization. Six years later, the Danish West India and Guinea Company
fathered a settlement from which descended all later colonies.
By the year 1680, over three hundred settlers were established on St.
Thomas. The principal industry was the raising of tobacco. Half the
population was composed of slaves. To further increase their number,
King Christian V of Denmark decreed that natives of Africa be brought
across-seas in ships specially engaged in slave traffic. All the
European countries that had undertaken to develop the agricultural
resources of the West India Islands had found after repeated disasters
that only black men were fitted to work in the tropics. Besides
tobacco, estates were now planted with sugar cane, sprouts of which
were obtained from Tortola, another island of the Virgin group, twenty
miles east of St. John, and owned by the British.
The British still had a jealous eye on the fine harbor of St. Thomas,
and to prevent attacks by them and by the French, who had taken St.
Croix from the Spanish in 1650, the Government of Denmark built, about
1690, a fort and a thick-walled tower overlooking the bay and its
peaked islands. In 1701, a priest, Father Labat, made a voyage to the
islands of America and wrote a book that contained the first lengthy
description of the well-cared-for estates, the streets and neat houses
of St. Thomas. Europe being then at war, and Denmark a neutral nation,
this broad haven at the crossroads of travel was the refuge of ships
escaping pursuit, and boasted a brisk commerce. Many tales of piracy
date from these rousing days of trade and warfare.
St. John was permanently settled by the Danes in 1716. The French,
Knights of Malta, and “miscellaneous rovers” occupied the island of St.
Croix, thirty-five miles south of St. Thomas until, in 1733, France
sold it to Denmark. King Frederick V, in 1755, purchased the Danish
West India Company’s land, forts, buildings, slaves, merchandise and
ships for $1,500,000, and made St. Thomas a closed port. However,
within a decade the former policy as to world commerce was resumed
by order of the king, and during the pre-Napoleonic wars St. Thomas
was the meeting-place of vessels flying the pennants of all the
warring nations. “Things were lively in those days,” writes Mr. Luther
Zabriskie. “Money flowed like water into the coffers of the merchants.
Population increased, the town limits were extended, stores and
dwellings were rapidly built, and thousands of refugees and adventurers
sought these shores for the purpose of traffic.”
But St. Thomas was not to remain a neutral port for long. In 1801,
England blockaded the island and held it for ten months. The British
flag again flew over the islands between the years 1807 and 1815,
as a precaution against seizure by Napoleon. In the readjustment of
nations following the events of the latter year, the group was restored
to Denmark. Once more, St. Thomas became the queen port of the West
Indies, and exacted tribute from the hundreds of ships that plied this
golden lane of commerce between the Atlantic and the Pacific. On the
birth date of American Independence, July 4, 1848, the black bondmen of
the Danish West Indies were freed by decree of the Crown, and forthwith
they forsook their agricultural occupations. The prosperity of the
Danish islands was affected when profits decreased in the production
of cane sugar. The abolition of slavery and the development of the
beet sugar industry both had a share in bringing about this condition.
Formerly, St. Thomas had been the sole port of call for steamers
carrying cargoes of goods that were in demand on neighboring islands,
including Porto Rico. Now other lines of transportation were organized,
and direct communication was established between Porto Rico and the
north. By the year 1866, planters and officials of the Government were
ready to consider the proposals of Secretary Seward that the islands
should become the property of the United States.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 6. No. 13. SERIAL No. 161
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH BY E. M. NEWMAN
CHARLOTTE AMALIE. VIRGIN ISLANDS. DANISH GOVERNMENT BUILDING NOW U. S.
MARINE HEADQUARTERS]
_THE VIRGIN ISLANDS_
_History of the Transfer_