Five centuries of flags over the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, on one map. Spain, the Dutch, France, the Knights of Malta and Denmark each sail in on the ships of their day, raise a flag and sail out again; Britain has flown its flag over Tortola since 1672, and the United States raised the Stars and Stripes over St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix in 1917. Press play, or drag the years.
Taíno farmers and fishers have lived here for a thousand years; Kalinago people are moving in from the south. No European has seen these islands.
Spain claimed them in 1493 and never settled one. The Dutch and English planted St. Croix in 1625; England took Tortola from the Dutch in 1672 and Denmark landed on St. Thomas the same year — and that is the border that still runs between the British and U.S. Virgin Islands today. St. Croix went through Spain, France and the Knights of Malta before Denmark bought it in 1733. Britain occupied the Danish islands twice in the Napoleonic wars. On 31 March 1917 the United States bought all three for $25 million in gold. The map above plays the whole 533 years; the tables below carry every date.
More flags than any other island in the Caribbean. In order, with the years each flew:
Britain also held the island in 1801 and from 1807 to 1815, and from 1695 to 1733 it was empty and flew nothing.
Not a war, a coincidence of dates. In 1672 Colonel William Stapleton took Tortola for England during the Third Anglo-Dutch War; that May the Danish West India Company landed its first colonists on St. Thomas, twenty miles west. Neither ever dislodged the other. Denmark added St. John in 1718 and bought St. Croix in 1733; Britain added Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke by 1680. When Denmark sold in 1917, the line simply changed from Danish–British to American–British.
Who held each island from before Columbus to today. A claimed island was named for a crown that never sent a settler.
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1672 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1672–1801 | Denmark | Denmark settles St. Thomas |
| 1801–1802 | United Kingdom | Britain occupies the Danish islands |
| 1802–1807 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | Denmark gets them back |
| 1807–1815 | United Kingdom | Britain takes them again — for seven years |
| 1815–1917 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | The Dannebrog returns |
| 1917–today | United States | Transfer Day: the U.S. buys the Danish West Indies |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1718 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1718–1733 | Denmark | Denmark takes St. John |
| 1733–1734 | Akwamu rebels | The St. John slave rebellion |
| 1734–1801 | Denmark | French troops return St. John to Denmark |
| 1801–1802 | United Kingdom | Britain occupies the Danish islands |
| 1802–1807 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | Denmark gets them back |
| 1807–1815 | United Kingdom | Britain takes them again — for seven years |
| 1815–1917 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | The Dannebrog returns |
| 1917–today | United States | Transfer Day: the U.S. buys the Danish West Indies |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1625 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1625–1650 | England & Dutch Republic | English and Dutch planters settle St. Croix |
| 1650–1650 | Spain | Spain drives the English off St. Croix |
| 1650–1651 | France | France takes St. Croix |
| 1651–1665 | Knights of Malta | The Knights of Malta buy St. Croix |
| 1665–1695 | France | France's West India Company takes over |
| 1695–1733 | No flag (abandoned) | France abandons St. Croix |
| 1733–1801 | Denmark | Denmark buys St. Croix from France |
| 1801–1802 | United Kingdom | Britain occupies the Danish islands |
| 1802–1807 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | Denmark gets them back |
| 1807–1815 | United Kingdom | Britain takes them again — for seven years |
| 1815–1917 | Denmark (Danish West Indies) | The Dannebrog returns |
| 1917–today | United States | Transfer Day: the U.S. buys the Danish West Indies |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1648 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1648–1672 | Dutch Republic | The Dutch fortify Tortola |
| 1672–1960 | England | England seizes Tortola from the Dutch |
| 1960–today | British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom) | The British Virgin Islands stand alone |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1648 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1648–1672 | Dutch Republic | The Dutch fortify Tortola |
| 1672–1960 | England | England seizes Tortola from the Dutch |
| 1960–today | British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom) | The British Virgin Islands stand alone |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1672 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1672–1960 | England | England seizes Tortola from the Dutch |
| 1960–today | British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom) | The British Virgin Islands stand alone |
| Years | Flag | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1490–1493 | Taíno & Kalinago | Taíno and Kalinago islanders |
| 1493–1672 | Claimed by Spain | Columbus names the Virgin Islands |
| 1672–1960 | England | England seizes Tortola from the Dutch |
| 1960–today | British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom) | The British Virgin Islands stand alone |
The 30 moments the map plays, from Columbus at Salt River to today.
Seventeen Spanish ships anchor at Salt River, St. Croix. A landing party fights the Kalinago there — the first recorded battle between Europeans and Native Americans. Columbus names the chain Las Once Mil Vírgenes and claims it all for Spain; Spain never settles any of it.
Sir Francis Drake leads 27 English ships through the passage between Tortola and St. John on his way to attack Spanish San Juan. The channel has carried his name ever since.
The first European colony in the Virgin Islands: English and Dutch settlers arrive together on St. Croix and grow tobacco side by side, until a quarrel in 1645 leaves the Dutch governor dead and the Dutch gone.
Dutch West India Company settlers build a fort above Road Harbour. Jost Van Dyke already carries the name of a Dutch privateer who used its harbour a generation earlier.
A force from Puerto Rico lands and expels the English colony. Within months the French governor of St. Kitts sends his own men, and the Spanish garrison is gone by the end of the year.
Philippe de Poincy's expedition from St. Kitts seizes the island for France.
De Poincy, himself a Knight of St. John, sells the island to his order. For fourteen years St. Croix is ruled from Malta — the one Caribbean island the crusader knights ever owned.
The Knights sell St. Croix to the French West India Company; in 1674 it passes to the French crown.
In the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Colonel William Stapleton's force from the Leeward Islands takes Tortola. Virgin Gorda and Anegada follow by 1680 — the British Virgin Islands begin here.
The Danish West India Company's ship Færøe lands Governor Jørgen Iversen and a handful of colonists at the harbour that becomes Charlotte Amalie. Two European powers now hold the Virgin Islands, twenty miles apart — the split that still exists today.
Governor Adolph Esmit openly shelters pirates at St. Thomas, buying their plunder and refusing to hand them over. For a generation the harbour is a known haven in the Golden Age of Piracy.
The French crown ships the remaining colonists to Saint-Domingue and leaves the island empty. For 38 years St. Croix flies no flag at all.
Planters from St. Thomas raise the Dannebrog at Coral Bay and lay out the first estates. Britain, which also claimed the island, protests and lets it go.
For 750,000 livres the empty island changes hands, and the three Danish islands are complete. Within a decade St. Croix is the sugar capital of the Danish West Indies.
Enslaved Akwamu people seize the fort at Coral Bay and hold St. John for six months — one of the earliest and longest slave revolts in the Americas. French troops from Martinique end it in May 1734.
Two hundred soldiers from Martinique retake the island for the Danes.
Denmark opens St. Thomas to ships of every flag. The harbour turns into the trading crossroads of the Caribbean — neutral, busy, and rich on everyone else's wars.
With Denmark drawn into Napoleon's wars, a British fleet takes St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix without a shot. They are handed back the following February.
The Peace of Amiens returns the three islands to Denmark.
Denmark sides with France after the bombardment of Copenhagen, and the Royal Navy returns. The Union Jack flies over the Danish islands until April 1815.
After Napoleon's fall the islands go back to Denmark, which keeps them for another century.
Slavery ends across the British Empire. Tortola's plantations were already failing; most estates are abandoned within a generation and the land passes to the people who worked it.
Eight thousand enslaved people march on Frederiksted, St. Croix, and Governor-General Peter von Scholten declares every unfree person in the Danish West Indies free from that day.
Denmark agrees to sell St. Thomas and St. John for $7.5 million. Within weeks an earthquake, a tsunami and a hurricane hit the islands, and the U.S. Senate never ratifies the treaty.
$25 million in gold — the most the United States has ever paid for territory. At 4 p.m. in Charlotte Amalie the Dannebrog comes down and the Stars and Stripes go up, with the USS Hancock in the harbour and a U-boat war on in the Atlantic.
Four years after the transfer the territory gets the flag it flies today: a white field, the golden eagle of the Great Seal holding an olive branch and three arrows, between a blue V and I. It goes up on all three islands.
Laurance Rockefeller gives 5,000 acres of St. John to the United States. Two thirds of the island becomes a national park.
Separated from the Leeward Islands, the BVI becomes its own colony, and on 15 November 1960 raises the flag it flies today — the Blue Ensign with the badge of St. Ursula and her lamps. A 1967 constitution brings elected government; today it is a British Overseas Territory.
The U.S. Interior Department hands Water Island, off Charlotte Amalie, to the U.S. Virgin Islands government — the fourth Virgin Island.
St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix and Water Island are the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke and Anegada are the British Virgin Islands. Cruise ships and ferries cross the line every day.
Dates follow the standard histories of the Danish West Indies and the British Virgin Islands (the Danish National Archives' West Indies records, the U.S. National Park Service's Salt River and Christiansted histories, the BVI Government's history pages). A date given as c. is known only to the year or the decade. Pre-1493 dates are archaeological; the first Taíno settlements are older than 1536 years.
Denmark. St. Thomas (settled 1672), St. John (1718) and St. Croix (bought from France in 1733) were the Danish West Indies for about 250 years, until the United States bought them on 31 March 1917 for $25 million in gold. Britain occupied them twice during the Napoleonic wars, in 1801 and from 1807 to 1815.
Because two countries settled different islands in the same year. England took Tortola from the Dutch in 1672, and Denmark landed its first colonists on St. Thomas that May. The British islands stayed British; the Danish islands were sold to the United States in 1917. The border between them has not moved since the 1670s.
Seven: Spain, the Netherlands and England (who settled it together in 1625), France, the Knights of Malta, Denmark and the United States. Britain also held it briefly in 1801 and 1807–1815, and from 1695 to 1733 the island was abandoned and flew no flag at all.
The treaty was signed in 1916 and the islands were handed over on Transfer Day, 31 March 1917, for $25 million in gold — about $600 million today and the most the United States has ever paid per acre for territory. The purchase was driven by fear that Germany would take the Danish islands and use St. Thomas harbour as a U-boat base.
Yes. On his second voyage Columbus anchored at Salt River Bay, St. Croix, on 14 November 1493 and sent a boat ashore for water. It met a canoe of Kalinago people and the two sides fought — the first recorded battle between Europeans and Native Americans. He named the islands after the legend of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins.
Taíno (Arawak-speaking) people farmed and fished the islands for at least a thousand years; Kalinago (Carib) people were moving in from the south by the 1490s. Spanish slave raids and disease emptied the islands within a century of Columbus, so the European colonists of the 1600s found them uninhabited.
Yes. The BVI is a British Overseas Territory: the King is head of state, a governor represents the Crown, and an elected government runs the islands. It has had its own flag since 1960 and its own constitution since 1967. The U.S. Virgin Islands is an unincorporated territory of the United States; its people are U.S. citizens.