The first settlements on Antigua—Arawak, Carib, and English—were at English Harbor. Our second stop on the search for Capt. Styles Lightburn in the Caribbean was

Antigua (pronounced an–ti

–ga). This gem of the mid–Leeward Islands is only 12 by 16 miles, 108 square miles, but this is huge compared to Tortola’s 21 square miles.

Linda and I decided to take a quick tour of the island to get a feeling for its geography and people. We hired Little John at the town pier in St. Johns for a two–hour tour. He was a font of knowledge having been a taxi/tour driver for most of his 55 years. Little John, whose booster seat explained his name, began most of his statements with, “Over here on this island…” to distinguish Antigua from its near neighbors Barbuda, Guadeloupe, Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts, all of which he said he visited regularly in his boat.

St. Johns, the capital of Antigua, is full of brightly–colored homes. “Over here on this island there are 365 beaches, one for each day of the year.”

“Over here on this island during Carnival for ten days no one knows your name.”

“Over here on this island we have 20% white people, most of them Canadians who just moved here.”

“Over here on this island there are 17 villages and one town, St. Johns.”

“Over here on this island we got no wells and no rivers. The government done built a reservoir with pipes to each home.”

“Over here on this island we got no snakes and no wild animals but lots of pigs, donkeys, goats, and few cows.”

During the tour we learned there were 80,000 people on the island, most in St. Johns. The official currency is the Eastern Caribbean dollar, but everyone accepts US dollars and credit cards. English with a Hey, mon twist is the language of choice.

St. Johns, the capital of Antigua, is full of brightly–colored shops. Technically, the country is Antigua and Barbuda, which became an independent nation within the British Commonwealth in 1981. Tourism replaced sugar production as the major industry soon after Castro took over Cuba, probable cause intended.

At the far end of the tour was English Harbour, the first British settlement on the island, eight miles from St. Johns. This was the same place, on the southeast corner between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, where prehistoric peoples once lived as early as 2,400 BC. Archeologists have uncovered many of their beautifully crafted shell and stone tools.

These hunter–gatherers were eventually replaced by the pastoral, agricultural Arawaks who moved from the Orinoco River delta between 35 AD and 1100 AD. They established villages and traded throughout the islands.

A coconut vendor in Antigua uses a donkey as his main means of transportation. The Arawak villagers were conquered by the Caribs, an aggressive band of warriors who sailed north into the islands from what is now Venezuela after 1100 AD. It was this group of “Americans” who greeted Columbus and for whom the area was named. Columbus sighted Antigua in passing during his second voyage (1493) and named it after Santa Maria de la Antigua, a saint of Seville, Spain.

Carib resistance and the lack of water (“no wells, no rivers”) kept Europeans away until 1632 when a group of Englishmen sailed into English Harbour. In 1684, Sir Christopher Codrington brought sugar cultivation to Antigua making the island productive and popular. Within 50 years 150 sugar plantations with cane–processing stone windmills were established and powered by slave labor brought from Africa.

The plantation/slave system lasted for 150 years. The last 50 years interest me because it is possible Capt. Styles Lightburn and his brothers brokered slaves, sugar, and rice between Africa, Antigua, Savannah, Charleston, and Europe during that time.

As we sat on the hill overlooking English Harbour, I could imagine Capt. Lightburn’s ship breaking the eastern horizon loaded to the hilt with slaves bought in Guinea. I could see the ship’s sails being furled as it slowly moved into the tight harbor. And I could hear the watchman sound the bell and shout, “Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!”

All I had to do was find the evidence that it really happened.