Historic Virgin Islands Slave Revolt

In 1733, optimism was running high on St. John in the Virgin Islands.. To many who lived in the Virgin Islands, there seemed no limit to how big tiny St. John might grow. But then, in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 23, disaster struck the Virgin Islands in the form of a fierce slave revolt, which gripped the St. John in a horrific nightmare of terror and havoc.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the fateful morning to the lone sentry on duty at the fort in Coral Bay as he watched a small group of slaves slowly making their way up the hillside toward the fort. “Ah, slaves with wood,” he thought as the group drew near. The guard knew it was customary for slaves to bring wood to the fort every Sunday. Sensing nothing unusual, he jumped down from his watchtower and opened the gates. Once inside, the slaves produced cane knives, which had been carefully hidden in their bundles of wood. They pounced on the unsuspecting guard, and quickly hacked him to death. There were seven other soldiers asleep in the guardhouse at the time. They might have been slightly aroused by the scuffle outside, but before they could fully awaken, the rebels had battered down the door, and swarmed down on the defenseless men. Within minutes, the mutilated bodies of six of the seven soldiers lay dead on the floor. One soldier managed to escape and make his way over to St. Thomas, where he spread the alarm.    

Leaving the guardhouse, the rebels mounted the gun-deck and fired two cannon blasts, which signaled the start of the revolt. With the aid of drums and horns made of conch shells, word of the revolt spread quickly around the island. Slaves marched from one plantation to the next, ransacking great houses, setting fire to cane fields, and murdering white masters and overseers.