Statia - a bit of history
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 14 Dec 2011 23:25
| Statia is a small island, about 5 miles long and about 2.5miles wide. Previously, at the height of it's fortune over 20,000 people lived here but now there are about 3,500. Fort Oranje dominates the cliffs over looking the seafront. his was a defensive fort as the island was fought over by the English and Americans for years. However, at it's height it was under Dutch control. In the 1700's, Statia was a very important island, although small it was the centre of trade in the Caribbean, every slave who came across from Africa as part of the Triangular Trade landed here first, prior to be shipped out to the rest of the Caribbean, America and the UK. At any one time there could be 300 or more ships at anchor here. All along the shoreline there are remains of the old warehouses which lined the waterfront, these were used to store all arriving goods until sale including slaves. The main industry was sugar and coffee and the plantations produced 600,000 pounds of sugar. It was a great place to get rich as smuggling was legal, or at least not illegal, and as a Free Port, countries could trade with each other here even if they were unable to do so under normal rules. By the 19th century, trade was diminishing, and people started to migrate. Also, as most of the seafront warehouses had been built on sand, they started to sink, and a few hurricanes later there was little if anything to be seen of a once thriving trading port. Statia was until recently part of the Netherlands Antilles which in October 2010 were officially dissolved and the 2 smaller islands of Statia and it's next door island Saba became towns of Holland, meaning that being here is the same as being in Holland, all the locals have Dutch passports. The other 2, Bonaire and St Maarten became countries in their own right. Now that Statia is effectively a town in Holland, there have been a lot of works done to upgrade the island and bring the standard of living up to that of mainland Holland, such as ensuring that all houses have running water - when we first arrived we were surprised that all the house had huge water collection tanks in the gardens - this has now been explained. The whole island is very pretty and the town is full of 'gingerbread' style buildings. This is an old Caribbean style and the buildings look like they belong in fairytales and are all brightly painted. A trip around the local museum provided and interesting insight into life here when business was booming. Interestingly, as there were a lot of English people here, their influence can be seen in the furniture used to re-create the house rooms of the era in the museum. We have also been diving while here, the diving is so easy and great fun. There is so much marine life and we even spotted a reef shark out in the blue whilst diving the Charlie Brown, a wreck in the bay which is the remainder of a cable laying ship from an American telecom company. Yesterday's dive was on the lava flows left after the volcanic eruptions which form an almost artificial reef upon which thousands of fish live - one of the day's highlights was the free swimming lobster we saw, it was huge, and made your mouth water!! As the diving was so good yesterday, we decided to have a third dive on a site known as the Aquarium, for good reason, it was like diving in a tropical fish tank, you hardly knew where to look most of the time, we saw lobster, again, an enormous ray covered in sand resting on the sea-bed, and a group of three turtles together which is quite unusual. This was definitely a good dive to finish on and make us want to come back and do some more. We are leaving here tomorrow and at this stage intend to visit Saba next. Saba will be very weather dependant (it is very uncomfortable in northerly winds or swells), but if we don't manage to get there on the way north, we will visit on our way back south to Antigua, fingers crossed for the good weather to continue. We are off to the internet cafe now to post this update and check the weather..... |