Discover St. Vincent and the Grenadines – How the islands came into being….

• By Michael Smart
• December 1, 2014
• 2 Comments

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is part of an island chain in the southeastern Caribbean called the Lesser Antilles, or Windward Islands. Referred to as the “Gem of the Antilles,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines is comprised of St. Vincent, Bequia, Canouan, Mayreau, Mustique, Union Island, and many smaller Islands and Cays. Mainland St. Vincent is relatively young, about 3 million years old.

The Islands sit on, and were formed by the Caribbean tectonic plate, pushed upward by either or both the North American and South American Plates. The seismic activity produced an active stratovolcanic chain geologists call a subduction arcuate chain or belt. This is a fancy way of saying when one oceanic plate plunges beneath another close to a deep sea trench, on the shallow side of the trench a curved line or arc of volcanoes and associated land masses are formed, and pushed above the sea surface. This mechanism gave rise to the Lesser Antilles volcanic island chain, similar to the Aleutian island chain.

The volcanoes are typically spaced a few to several tens of kilometers apart. If you examine a map of the Lesser Antilles, you’ll notice the curved arc of the island chain, with a volcano on every island from St. Kitts in the north, to Grenada in the south. Unlike the other islands with only a single volcano, Dominca, in the middle of the chain, has nine. The volcano on Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and St. Vincent bear the same name, La Soufrière, French for the Sulfurer, to describe the sulfurous odor of the volcanoes.

 
 

Soufrière occupies a central place in Vincentian history and psyche, reflected in the numerous times it is mentioned in the Bequia Mysteries. Soufrière’s eruptions, and the volcanic nature of the soil, shaped St. Vincent’s history, population and culture. It created the black sand beaches along the northern coasts of St. Vincent. The rich, fertile volcanic soil spawned a densely forested interior, which provided refuge and strategic launching pads for the Carib/Garifuna resistance war against European colonization. The soil also supported a variety of crops, including sugar cane and bananas, which remained mainstays of the Island’s economy for many centuries. Escaped slaves from such plantations on neighboring islands found refuge among the Caribs on St. Vincent, intermarrying and expanding the population, eventually giving rise to a new ethnic group, the Garifuna. The abolition of slavery in 1834, and the resulting labor shortage on the plantations, brought indentured Asian, Portuguese, European and East Indian laborers between the 1840s and 1860s, contributing to the admixture of cultures and bloodlines present on St. Vincent today.

La Soufrière’s eruptions have dramatically shaped Vincentian life. The geological record of Soufrière’s eruptions stretch back for hundreds of thousands of years, a major eruption occurring approximately every 100 years. The historical record, though short, illustrates the social and economic impact on the island’s inhabitants. The first recorded eruption occurred on a March day in 1718. A massive eruption, followed by an extended period of earthquakes. Another major destructive eruption occurred on April 30th 1812. On May 7th 1902, a devastating eruption killed 1,680 people and caused severe economic destruction. Hours later, Mont Pelée on Martinique erupted, obliterating Martinique’s port town St. Pierre. After 70 years of quiescence, a small eruption in 1971 created a new lava dome in Soufrière’s crater lake. An earthquake on April 12th 1979, signaled a period of eruptive activity continuing until April 29th. The volcanic explosions lofted ash plumes as high as 18 kilometers, and extruded lava which formed the existing lava dome tourists hike Mount Soufrière to see.

During my time in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I experienced Soufrière’s soft non-eruptive rumbles and occasional spewing of ash, necessitating the tedious chore of clearing and cleaning rooftops and the gutters which direct rainfall to water storage tanks. Living in the shadow of Soufrière, and hurricanes, Vincentians have developed a hardy resiliency.

See all Discover St. Vincent and the Grenadines Posts…

 

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