Beyondships Cruise Destinations
  • Cruise Destinations and Ports
  • Beyondships Home Page
  • Cruise Travel News
  • Beyondships Cruise FAQs
  • What's New
  • Cruise Ship Profiles
  • Cruise Articles
  • Cruise Interviews
  • Cruise Links
  • Cruise Home Page
  • Canada New England Cruise Destinations
  • Caribbean Cruise Destinations
  • Cruise Ship Tours
  • Notices
  • Beyondships Art
  • Privacy Policy
  • Althorp
  • Blenheim Palace
  • Broadlands
  • Stratfield Saye
  • Hever Castle
  • Hatfield House
  • The Vyne
  • Osterley Park
  • Chatsworth
  • Highclere Castle
  • Beyond Downton Abby
  • Chiswick House
  • Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
  • Kew Palace
Cruise ports and destinations
Caribbean cruise destinations
St Thomas home page
St. John home page
St. Croix home page
Tortola home page

Cruise destination:



ST. THOMAS 

(Caribbean Cruises)


Fort Christian, St. Thomas, USVI
Fort Christian, St. Thomas, USVI
 Above: Fort Christian was dedicated in 1678 and is one 
of the oldest structures in the Virgin Islands.  It was built 
as part of the Danish colonial fortifications. 


Below: Charlotte Amalie still has many Danish colonial buildings​.  
Colonial building, St. Thomas, USVI
St. Thomas, USVI
Above:  A monument at Havensight recalls the days when Charlotte Amalie was an important trading port for 
sailing ships


Below: A WPA era mural in the main post office in Charlotte Amalie also pays tribute to the island's maritime history. 
Post office mural, St. Thomas, USVI
Below: A statue of St. Thomas educator, historian and author J. Antonio Jarvis.
Statue of J. Antonio Jarvis, St. Thomas, USVI

Brief History

 The earliest inhabitants of St. Thomas are believed to have 
been the Ciboney Indians who settled there around 1500 BC.  
They were displaced by the Arawak people who were in 
turn conquered by the Caribs.

During his second voyage to the New World, Christopher 
Columbus came across the islands and named them the 
Virgin Islands in honor of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins.  
Contact with the Europeans was a disaster for the Caribs and
within a few decades very few were left on the island.   

According to local legend, during the second half of the 16th
Century, English privateers led by Sir Francis Drake used St. 
Thomas as a base for raiding the Spanish Treasure fleets 
that  were carrying gold home from Spain’s New World 
colonies.  Legend also has it that in the coming centuries the
island was a base for pirates.

In the 1657, the Dutch West India Company established a 
post on the island.  However, by 1666, Captain Erik Neilson 
Smith with the support of the Danish King Frederick III was made the official governor of St. Thomas and by 1672 the Danish West India Company had acquired the entire island.

The Danish company’s plan was to bring Danish convicts to 
the Virgin Islands to work on sugar plantations.  These 
convicts from Northern Europe proved unsuited for the heat 
and disease of the tropics and so the Danes began to import 
African slaves for the plantations.  This unfortunate scheme 
was successful and some 200,000 slaves were brought to the
Danish Virgin Islands.  While the other nearby Danish 
possessions of St. Croix and St. John maintained a plantation 
economy, St. Thomas became an important center in the 
slave trade holding some of the largest slave auctions in the 
world.

The island came under direct control of the Danish 
government in 1754, becoming a Royal Danish colony.  Its 
port city, Charlotte Amalie, is named after the wife of King 
Christian V.

In 1792, Denmark announced the cessation of the slave 
trade. In part due to a slave revolt in St. Croix in 1833, 
slavery was abolished in 1848.  As a result of this and the 
discovery of the sugar beet, the sugar cane plantations were 
no longer viable and the economy of the islands went into 
decline.

St. Thomas with its fine natural harbor did have strategic 
value and the Danes entered into discussions with the 
Americans to purchase the Danish Virgin Islands in the 
1860s.  Nothing came of these discussions until the outbreak
of World War I.  Concern that Germany might acquire the 
islands and establish a naval base there thus threatening not 
only the Caribbean but also the Panama Canal, led the United 
States to purchase St. Thomas along with St. Croix and St. 
John for $25 million in 1917.  The three islands along with a
number of smaller islands then became known as the United 
States Virgin Islands.

Underscoring its strategic importance, St. Thomas was  
administered by the U.S. Navy for more than a decade.   
During this time, inhabitants of the Virgin Islands gained U.S. 
citizenship  (1927).  In 1931, administration of the island 
was shifted to the Department of the Interior.  A few years 
later, a legislature called the Senate was established.

In 1954, the U.S. Virgin Islands became an official territory 
of the United States. Full home rule came in 1970 and the 
islands elected the governor for the first time.
For more on cruising to St. Thomas

Visit our St. Thomas home page
Click here for other Caribbean cruise destinations
 
Cruise destination - - St Thomas (Caribbean) -  Brief History
Beyondships.com
​(Cruise ship profiles, pictorials, reviews and interviews).

BeyondshipsArt.com
(Museum profiles, Art reviews, and Original art)
Beyondships LLC
Notices
Privacy Policy
Beyondships Cruise Ship Pictorials and Reviews
(Photos, videos and reviews of cruise ships)
Beyondships Cruise Ship Photo Tours
(Photo tours inside cruise ships)