Peter Island Resort
British Virgin IslandsPh 770-476-9988 Fax 770-476-4979 800-346-4451
History floats through the Virgin Islands like an old ship, anchoring long enough at Peter Island to unload its rich heritage of pirates, plantations, and a private island hideaway that is now a premier British Virgin Island resort.
Christopher Columbus discovered the Virgins on his second voyage to the New World in 1493. As he sailed through Sir Francis Drake Channel, Columbus named the enchanting and untouched chain of islands after St. Ursula's 11,000 followers, who chose death in fourth-century Cologne rather than submit to the marauding Huns.
Once Spain claimed the region, outlaw privateers routinely attacked her ships, homeward bound with riches from the New World. The hilly Virgin Islands, with countless nooks and bays, proved ideal hiding grounds for buccaneers like Henry Morgan, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Francis Drake, whose name claims the channel between Peter Island and Tortola.
Dead Chest Island, the visual focal point of Peter Island's Deadman's Bay, is the storied site where Blackbeard marooned 15 mutinous men with only a sword and cask of rum -- spawning the musical memoir "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum." The bay is named for the unlucky souls who washed up on its shores. Nearby Norman Island is thought to be Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," and scavengers still scour its caves for buried treasure.
In the late 17th century, pirates gave way to planters when a group of slave traders from Brandenburg, a small German state containing Berlin, first settled Peter Island after plans to build a plantation on St. Thomas failed. Initially, the Brandenburgers intended to build a warehouse and start a large settlement. They built forts around the island to protect it from the Danes, who controlled St. Thomas and other Caribbean islands.
In the meantime, the Danes ordered Colonel Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, to prevent Germans from settling any of the Virgin Islands. He eventually drove the Brandenburgers out of Peter Island.
Although the sugarcane plantation boom at the turn of the 18th century passed over Peter Island because of its unsuitable soil, several Tortolan planters with slaves successfully introduced cotton. Soon after the first harvest, the plantations expanded and required more slaves. Little more was known about this period in Peter Island lore until historians recently discovered an old trunk in a dusty garret in London. The findings included a batch of letters chronicling a fascinating story of Peter Island in the 1770s.
The story is about John Bethel, a Peter Island planter and relative of the Codringtons. Bethel came to Barbados in his early twenties and moved to Tortola to marry an older woman. He later began a passionate affair with a beautiful mulatto girl named Princess, and his wife uncovered the truth.
To avert public scandal and vindicate her honor, Mrs. Bethel sold Princess to another Peter Island planter. Several years later, Bethel inherited his family's fortune, bought all of Peter Island's plantations and slaves, and gave his beloved Princess her freedom. Unfortunately, the correspondence never revealed the outcome of this romantic triangle.
The decline of the plantation system, compounded with the abolition of the slave trade, brought about the complete decline of Peter Island, which soon returned to its natural, primitive state. During that same time, Methodists introduced formal religion to the area. In 1855, manufacturers set up an alternative coaling station for the steam packets, still visible from Peter Island in Great Harbour. The Peter Island station proved to be an excellent alternative, since St. Thomas, the largest coaling center in the Caribbean, fought regular bouts with yellow fever.
A product of planters, pirates and fierce storms, hundreds of sunken ships litter the British Virgin Islands. The most famous, the British iron steamship R.M.S. Rhone, went down in 1867, during one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the area. She first tried to anchor in the protection of Peter Island's Great Harbour Bay, but the Captain decided to abandon 300' of chain and his 3,000-pound anchor and try to reach open waters.
The 310' long Rhone crashed upon rocks of nearby Salt Island and the boilers exploded the ship into two parts - the bow section and the stern. Only a few of the 125 people on board survived. Today, the Wreck of the Rhone is a world-renowned Scuba diving site, best known as the backdrop of the adventure movie "The Deep".
The Rhone's massive chain and anchor can still be found by Scuba divers near Great Harbour, and had the Rhone stayed in the protection of the bay, she probably would have survived the hurricane since the high hills of Peter Island would have protected her from the storm.
Another hurricane tore through the islands in 1916 and all but destroyed the group of houses established on Peter Island. Settlers introduced a few small tobacco plantations in the early 1920s, which survived until retired British diplomat John Brudenell-Bruce established a large home on the island a decade later.
Brudenell and his family lived an uncomplicated life on Peter Island until he then accepted a Legislative Council position in the '50s and moved to Tortola. There, his wife Sigrid and daughter Diana opened the first "Little Denmark," the largest gift shop in the B.V.I. at the time.
In the late '60s, Norwegian millionaire Torolf Smedvig fell in love with Peter Island and purchased most of the land. He shipped a set of luxury A-frame chalets to the island from Norway, and assembled them on Sprat Bay along with a clubhouse and marina, which became Peter Island Resort. Smedvig operated the British Virgin Island resort until his death in the late 1970s, at which time two Michigan-based entrepreneurs purchased it. Peter Island is now privately owned by JVA Enterprises.
Today, Peter Island draws guests to its romantic seclusion, its untouched beauty and world-class resort atmosphere. Named one of the "Best Places to Stay in the World" and "Top 20 Islands" in the world by Conde Nast Traveler, the private resort recently completed an extensive, multi-million dollar renovation to recapture the charisma and natural charm exclusive to the British Virgin Islands.
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