Grenada

Royal Clipper

St. George's Grenada

1.17.22 - 1.17.22 80 °F

Today we anchored off St. Goerge, Grenada. This is a 'bubble' port in that you can't get off the ship unless you are on an organized tour. None of the shore excursions interested us so we spent the day on board, experiencing the brief tropical showers as they passed over the ship.

St. George's is the capital of Grenada. The town is surrounded by a hillside of an old volcano crater and is located on a horseshoe-shaped harbor. St. George's was founded by the French in 1650 when "La Grenade" (Grenada) was colonized by Jacques Dyel du Parquet, the governor of Martinique. The French began their colonization with a series of skirmishes that virtually exterminated the island's native Carib population.

In 1666, a wooden fortification was constructed by French colonists on a promontory overlooking Grenada's natural harbor and named Fort Royale. In 1705, work started on a new star fort on the same site, with four stone-built bastions, to the design of Jean de Giou de Caylus, the Chief Engineer of the "Islands of America" the French West Indies. It was completed in 1710.

Meanwhile, the original colonial settlement at the eastern edge of the harbor called Saint Louis after King Louis IX of France, later known as Port Louis, was found to be subject to flooding and malaria, so a new town was constructed called Ville de Fort Royal ("Fort Royal Town"). When the island was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the new administration renamed it Saint George's Town, after the patron saint of England and Fort Royal was renamed Fort George, after King George III.

The entertainment on board today included mast climbing and swimming off the sports platform on the aft end of the ship. The afternoon brought some beautiful rainbows, we sailed away by moonlight.