1631: 80 hopeful ENGLISH settlers from Barbados to farm tobacco. They put into the west end, Sandy Point, where turtles could serve as an easy food source. Fishermen from Puerto Rico were making regular runs to Sandy Point as well, so they discovered the English after only four months. SPANISH soldiers were dispatched from Puerto Rico by Gov. Sotomayor to eliminate the invaders (Archives, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Letters of the Governor to the King, 12 February, 1632).
1634: French fishermen landed on the west end. Gov. Sotomayor again sent SPANISH troops quickly, and the village was eliminated (from the same archives, letter from April, 1634).
1636: ENGLISH settlers arrived at the west end, built a village, planted tobacco and began logging. New Puerto Rican Governor de la Motta Sariemento sent SPANISH troops, and their village was also eliminated (from the same archive, letter dated April, 1636).
In the museum of Oranjestad, on the island of St. Eustatius, framed and hanging on the wall to your left immediately inside, is their “Founder’s Letter”. This letter, written in 1636, first thanks the king of the Netherlands for his grant of permission for the undersigned families to settle on “his” island of Saint Croix. It continues saying that, after a long and arduous passage, the settlers arrived at the settlement of Bassin (now Christiansted Harbor).
A group of men went ashore to reconnoiter but immediately hurried back to the ships, having found “the island infested withPYRATES.” The settlers quickly put back to sea to find another island upon which to settle. Arriving at the island of St. Eustatius, they found it uninhabited and much more suitable, and asked for his majesty’s permission to settle there, instead (Museum of St. Eustatius, Orangestad).
1638: A group of FRENCH, ENGLISH, and DUTCH settlers cleared land together on the west end of Santa Cruz. They opened trails, built homes, and traded with Carib people in Puerto Rico for two months. A hurricane threw two of their vessels from the west end of Santa Cruz onto the coastal reefs off Coamo, Puerto Rico. Two weakened survivors reached the shore aboard a longboat, and Spanish authorities took them prisoner and interrogated them. A sick Frenchman died within a few days, and they took the other prisoner to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Captain-general Iñigo de la Mota Sarmiento, then Governor of Puerto Rico, wrote of these events on 6 April 1639 (Bonet, p. 371).
1642: Colonel William Caverly arrived in St. Croix with eight hundred settlers to found the British colony of Saint Croix, with their capital at Salt River Bay. After eight months in peaceful possession with farms springing up around the center and west end of the island, Dutch militia from Sint Eustatius landed. In the ensueing battle, Caverly and his Lt. Governor were killed, the rest of the officers hung. The DUTCH colony of Sint Kruis also used the village at Salt River Bay as its capital. “Fort Flammand”, a sand fort, was built on the western side of the harbor entrance.
1645: DUTCH Buccaneers were operating out of Salt River, with 300 men at arms in the colony; Michiel duRuyter, who would become possibly the greatest Admiral of the seventeenth century, lived on Sint Kruis at Salt River for five years, according to Sir James Williamson, a British spy posing as a friendly trader. Other Dutch colonists were gathering salt at Sandy Point. 120 FRENCH colonists were fishing in Bassin. ENGLISH were logging on the northwest coast and at Limetree Bay (a natural harbor on the south of the island) with 300 men capable of bearing arms, and PIRATES of all three nations had mostly settled into Salt River Bay. Small groups of soldiers were embedded with each national group, and all men trained as militia. Young Dutch, English, and French Buccaneers became friends while sailing from St. Croix together against Spain, men who later became Admirals like Jean duCasse, John Benbow, and Robert Blake. Identified were especially de Ruyter and Lifde in the 1640’s, with Alexandre Bras-de-Fer and Daniel Montbars (The Exterminator”) in the 1650’s (Esquemelin, A. O.). (Crouse, p. 21-24; CSP v. 31, #98).
1646: ENGLAND. After Charles I lost the English Civil War and his head, Royalists officers were ushered onto what was left of the British Royal Navy before they could be tried for war crimes. Prince Rupert sent James Ley, the 3rd Earl of Marlborough, with the refugees, who established a colony on Santa Cruz after seizing the island from the Dutch. Rupert’s larger battleships operated out of Charlotte Amalie, and the smaller, more nimble ships out of Salt River. There were no good sources of water on St. Thomas at the time, so ships of the fleet were sailing to St. Croix to fill their water casks from Concordia Spring on the west end. One thousand English colonists settled on St. Croix with Governor Nicholas Phelps (CSP v. 5, p. 1). Fifty-five tobacco farms were cleared and operating within two years, with villages at Basin, the west end, and Salt River, batteries built at Basin and west end, and more cannons put at Fort Flammand in Salt River. Marlborough gave 23-year old Buccaneer Captain Christopher Myngs (ship Elisabeth) charge of defending Santa Cruz against the Spanish. Myngs learned of a rich Dutch convoy from Captain Lifde and left to capture it, leaving 19-year-old Lieutenant Henry Morgan with orders to improve construction of the Dutch “Fort Flammand” sand fort at the western entrance to Salt River Bay. (Calendar of State Papers, v.20, #202).
According to Buccaneer Alexander Esquemelin, Rupert’s PIRATES from Salt River made the waters around Puerto Rico the most dangerous in the world; on St. Croix, the ‘colonists’ were almost entirely just English Buccaneers.
1647: Puerto Rican Governor Fernando de la Riva Aguero sent SPANISHtroops to attack, but encountered more opposition than they were ready for, and sailed home after accomplishing little (Archives in San Juan, letter to the King, 1647; Highfield, Sainte Croix, p. 72. ).
1650, August:SPAIN. Governor Aguilera of Puerto Rico sent a spy to Santa Cruz. After learning that Prince Rupert and his squadron of English privateers had left Virgin Islands waters, and de Ruyter was off sailing as well, he sent Don Lorenzo Perez de Tavora to Santa Cruz with 1200soldiers on five ships. They anchored at Cane Bay, and the troops marched four miles east along the old Indian foot path to arrive at the fort at dawn. On August 20, in a surprise attack, 120 Englishmen were killed and the rest fled into the mangroves (Esquemelin, A.O.). Tavora knew his men could never get the Englishmen out of the swamp, but he also figured that they were not going to enjoy being devoured by mosquitoes and midges. In a bluff, he offered exile or death; the survivors came out of the swamp and left for the English colony on St. Christopher.Other English colonists were rounded up as well, and the entire colony deported to St. Cristopher.
Happy to have their chance again, the DUTCH immediately returned to Santa Cruz from St. Eustatius, sailing in under the cannons of Morgan’s fort at Salt River Unfortunately for them, a SPANISH garrison of 60 men had been left behind in the fort and they opened fire, decimating the Dutch. Survivors swam ashore and were either captured or fled into the bush. (Crouse, pp. 26, 27) (CSP 1652, #47). But after retaking the island the Spanish only left a small garrison, and the next stage was set. THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA, FRANCE, and with them one of history’s great bastards appeared on the scene: Phillippe de Poincy, the “Lord Ozymont”, sent the most dangerous men in the world, pirates like Pierre LeGrand, Charles Martel, Michel de Grammont, Bernard des Jean, Daniel Montbars, “LeBlonde,” and many others who seized the island from Spain and founded the French colony of Sainte Croix. Granted estates–thereby improving their social station–the for the next forty-five years saw them use Salt River Bay, Sainte Croix, as the base from which they plundered the Spanish Main.
