Database: Tortuga

A small island off the northern coast of modern day Haiti (Hispaniola in the 17th and 18th century) which, because of its location off the Windward Passage, acted as a convenient center for piracy. The island was first spotted by Columbus, who named it because of its tortoise-like shape on the horizon.

The island later become a successful sugar plantation under Englishman Peter Beckford. Sugar was the main crop produced in the Caribbean until the 20th centurty. Most islands are their own fields and mills to refine it. Labor in those plantation is one of the main reason for the slave trade that funneled men and women from mainly west Africa toward the Caribbean.