Anguilla
After the sun, the rain. Whereas our day in Antigua had been hot and dry, our first sight of Anguilla, the most northerly of the Leeward Islands, was through torrential rain. The island was named by the Spanish for its shape: to those early explorers it resembled an eel.
Anguilla has a population of just 8,000, that of a small township, although its sandy beaches attract nearly ten times that number of visitors annually. A British colony since the seventeenth century, Anguilla became independent in 1962 as part of the new nation - entirely the product of a bureaucratic mind in the Colonial Office in London - of St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla. These three islands were mutually suspicious of each other from the start, to such an extent that the so-called Anguilla Revolution took place on 30 May 1967, when the local inhabitants forced the St Kitts police force off the island and demanded to return to direct rule from London. The Anguilla Revolution provides one of the very few examples of successful resistance to de-colonialism in modern history.
Our first attempt at a beach landing at Prickly Pear Cay had to be abandoned in the face of a mounting swell, the aftermath of a vigorous storm off the eastern coast of the United States. We repositioned the ship to the channel that separates Anguilla from St Martin and were sufficiently protected to enjoy an afternoon on the beach at Sandy Cove, where the added attraction was Smokey's Bar.
After the sun, the rain. Whereas our day in Antigua had been hot and dry, our first sight of Anguilla, the most northerly of the Leeward Islands, was through torrential rain. The island was named by the Spanish for its shape: to those early explorers it resembled an eel.
Anguilla has a population of just 8,000, that of a small township, although its sandy beaches attract nearly ten times that number of visitors annually. A British colony since the seventeenth century, Anguilla became independent in 1962 as part of the new nation - entirely the product of a bureaucratic mind in the Colonial Office in London - of St Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla. These three islands were mutually suspicious of each other from the start, to such an extent that the so-called Anguilla Revolution took place on 30 May 1967, when the local inhabitants forced the St Kitts police force off the island and demanded to return to direct rule from London. The Anguilla Revolution provides one of the very few examples of successful resistance to de-colonialism in modern history.
Our first attempt at a beach landing at Prickly Pear Cay had to be abandoned in the face of a mounting swell, the aftermath of a vigorous storm off the eastern coast of the United States. We repositioned the ship to the channel that separates Anguilla from St Martin and were sufficiently protected to enjoy an afternoon on the beach at Sandy Cove, where the added attraction was Smokey's Bar.
