The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and north-west of Anguilla. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles and part of the West Indies.
The British Virgin Islands (BVI) are one of three political divisions of the Virgin Islands archipelago located in the Lesser Antilles, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. The BVI are the easternmost part of the island chain. The land area totals and comprises 16 inhabited and more than 20 uninhabited islands. The islands of Tortola, Anegada, Virgin Gorda and Jost van Dyke are the largest. Maritime claims include 12 nmi territorial sea and a 200 nmi exclusive fishing zone. In terms of land use, it is 20% arable land, 6.67% permanent crops and 73.33% other as of a 2005 figure. It has strong ties to nearby U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The Virgin Islands are an archipelago between the North Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Caribbean Sea, geographically forming part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean islands or West Indies.
The history of the British Virgin Islands is usually, for convenience, broken up into five separate periods:
The Leeward Islands are a group of islands situated where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean. Starting with the Virgin Islands east of Puerto Rico, they extend southeast to Guadeloupe and its dependencies. In English, the term Leeward Islands refers to the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles chain. The more southerly part of this chain, starting with Dominica, is called the Windward Islands. Dominica was initially considered a part of the Leeward Islands but was transferred from the British Leeward Islands to the British Windward Islands in 1940.
Virgin Gorda is the third-largest island and second-most populous of the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Road Town, located on Tortola, is the capital and largest town of the British Virgin Islands. It is situated on the horseshoe-shaped Road Harbour in the centre of the island's south coast. The population was about 15,000 in 2018.
Tortola is the largest and most populated island of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It has a surface area of 55.7 square kilometres with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres above sea level.
Peter Island is a 720 hectares private island located in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). It is about 5 miles (8.0 km) south-west from Road Town, Tortola. The island was named after Pieter Adriensen who was the brother of Abraham Adriensen, Patron of Tortola under the Dutch West India Company in the early 17th century. Pieter Adriensen and Joost van Dyk built a fort and slave pens at Great Harbour on Peter Island to facilitate privateering and the nascent trade in slaves from Angola.
Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport, previously known as Beef Island Airport, is the main airport serving the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. The airport serves as the gateway to just about all of the islands within the BVI. The airport is also a gateway for inter-Caribbean travelers headed to the nearby U.S. Virgin Islands. Many travellers fly into Beef Island, with the intention of taking a ferry to the other smaller British Virgin Islands. The airport is located on Beef Island, a small island off the main island of Tortola, to which it is connected by the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge.
Piracy in the British Virgin Islands was prevalent during the so-called "Golden Age of Piracy", mainly during the years of 1690-1730. Privateering was also widely practised in the jurisdiction throughout frequent colonial wars, not least by emancipated slaves who, with in preference to back-breaking labour in the fields for pitiful wages, took enormous risks to capture fortunes on the seas with the sanction of the Crown. In 1808, Patrick Colquhoun, a prize agent for the Territory spoke of "the most daring outrages which are frequently committed by people of colour."
Eustatia Island is a 30-acre island of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in the Caribbean. The word "Eustatia" is a Greek derived word meaning, "good place to stay." The entire island, and a small neighboring island, Saba Rock, are under the same long term lease. The island is regularly featured and photographed for several publications and was listed as one of the top 20 most beautiful islands in the world in the December 2004 issue of Islands magazine.
Nanny Cay is an island of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. It is made up of three cays originally known as Big Cay, Little Cay and Miss Peggy Cay. In the 1970s these were consolidated into a single land mass for a marina and resort development. It is connected to Tortola by a short bridge. A marina, hotel, restaurants, condominiums and townhouses have now been built on Nanny Cay.
The Caribbean bioregion is a biogeographic region that includes the islands of the Caribbean Sea and nearby Atlantic islands, which share a fauna, flora and mycobiota distinct from surrounding bioregions.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the British Virgin Islands:
The Caribbean, is a subregion in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America to the west, and South America to the south, it comprises numerous islands, cays, islets, reefs, and banks. It includes the Lucayan Archipelago, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles of the West Indies; the Quintana Roo islands and Belizean islands of the Yucatán Peninsula; and the Bay Islands, Miskito Cays, Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina, and Corn Islands of Central America. It also includes the coastal areas on the continental mainland of the Americas bordering the region from the Yucatán Peninsula in North America through Central America to the Guianas in South America.
The colony of the British Virgin Islands has issued its own stamps since 1866. The first Post Office was opened in Tortola in 1787. At the time postage stamps were not yet invented, and it was not until 1858 that a small supply of adhesive stamps issued by Great Britain depicting Queen Victoria were utilized by the local Post Office. These stamps were cancelled by an A13 postmark and are extremely rare so cancelled.
VI Airlink is an airline from the British Virgin Islands, with its license issued under the British Overseas Territory's air requirements. It is the only airline with airplanes registered in the B.V.I. It operates mostly chartered short-haul flights throughout the Caribbean from its base at Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport on Beef Island, using a fleet of three aircraft.
Atlantic Air BVI (AABVI) was an airline based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in the Caribbean which started up in 1992 with one Short 330-200 (VP-LVR) commuter turboprop aircraft. AABVI ran a service between Tortola, BVI and San Juan, Puerto Rico, with five round trip flights a day operated seven days a week. On 6 May 1993 the Short aircraft experienced an aborted take off from Tortola and ran off the end of the runway into Trellis Bay. There were no serious injuries.
Hurricane Dorian caused relatively minor damage across the eastern Caribbean in late August 2019. Originating from a westward moving tropical wave, Dorian organized into a tropical cyclone on August 24 and reached the Lesser Antilles on August 26 as a tropical storm. Turning northwest, the system unexpectedly intensified to a hurricane as it struck the Virgin Islands on August 27. Antecedent to the storm's arrival, local governments across the archipelago issued tropical cyclone warnings and watches, readied public shelters, closed airports, and placed emergency crews on standby. Many of the threatened islands were still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria in September 2017 and fears arose over embattled power grids. In the areas first affected, impacts were limited to gusty winds and modest rainfall. Effects were greater in the Virgin Islands where wind gusts reached 111 mph (179 km/h); however, damage was light. Multiple landslides occurred across the islands and Puerto Rico with only a handful of structures suffering damage. One person died in Puerto Rico while preparing for the storm.
