Canouan, Grenadines

Canouan is an island in the Grenadines Islands belonging to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is a small island, measuring only 5.6 km (3.5 miles) by 2.0 km (1.2 miles) and has a surface of 7.6 km² (2.9 square miles). The population is about 1,700 people.

A barrier reef runs along the Atlantic side of the island. The highest point on the island is Mount Royal. Two bays, Glossy and Friendship, separate the southern side of the Canouan Island. Canouan lies approximately 40 km (25 miles) south of St. Vincent.

Some time prior to 200 BCE a cultivated tribe called the Arawaks reached the island using dug-out canoes. These new residents brought plants, animals, and basic farming and fishing skills with them. They lived in peace for 1,500 years until a tribe of fierce fighters called the Caribs invaded and killed the Arawak men and took off with their women.

More than 200 years after Columbus laid eyes on St. Vincent, the Europeans established a kind of permanent settlement. Its mountainous and heavily forested geography allowed the Caribs to defend against European settlement here longer than on almost any other island in the Caribbean.

After the Caribs were defeated on other islands they joined slaves who had escaped repression on Barbados by following the current and trade winds westward to St. Vincent, as well as those who had survived shipwrecks near St. Vincent and Bequia.

The mixed descendants of the island warriors and the freed Africans, who became known as the Black Caribs, had a common distrust and disgust for the Europeans, and proved to be a fearsome foe. The Caribs feared complete domination so they allowed the French to construct a settlement on the island in 1719. The French brought slaves to work their plantations. By 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle officially declared St. Vincent and its surrounding islands to be a neutral island, controlled by neither Britain nor France. The two countries continued to contest control of the islands, however, until they were definitively ceded to the British in 1814.

In 1951 universal adult suffrage was introduced in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in 1979, it became an independent state within the British Commonwealth with a democratic government based on the British system.

All pictures are © Dr. Günther Eichhorn, unless otherwise noted.

Canouan, Grenadines

Wave action on rocks on the way to Canouan. (691k)

Approaching Canouan. (661k)

Colorful houses at Canouan. (707k)

View of Charlestown, the main town on Canouan. (895k)

View of Charlestown, the main town on Canouan. (822k)

The new marina at Canouan. It is an impressive marina, they hope to attract yachts due to the fact that it is usually not in the path of hurricanes, and quite sheltered, so insurance rates for ships harbored there are better as on other Caribbean islands. (712k)