English Harbour

The Royal Navy began using English Harbour as a safe haven in the 17th century, valuing a deep, enclosed anchorage that could shelter ships from hurricanes. Fort Berkeley was built on the spit at its entrance in 1704, the Antigua legislature gave the harbour to the King for naval use in 1725, and a naval yard grew up on the eastern shore in the 1730s, then across the bay on the western side, where Nelson's Dockyard stands, in the 1740s. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars there were twin dockyards, a victualling yard, an ordnance yard and a naval hospital, and the commissioner lived at Clarence House on the hillside.

Captain Horatio Nelson arrived in July 1784 commanding HMS Boreas and stayed until 1787; he called the harbour an "infernal hole". Governor Shirley planned the fortification of the heights to the east in 1782, and Shirley Heights was built between 1788 and 1793. After 1815 the base declined: the garrison left in 1854 and the dockyards finally closed in 1889. The land returned to the Antigua government in 1906, and the buildings fell into ruin.

A 1948 study found the main buildings worth saving, and in 1951 Governor Kenneth Blackburne launched a restoration that raised £40,000; the dockyard opened to visitors in 1961. In 1984 it became part of Nelson's Dockyard National Park, and in 2016 the Antigua Naval Dockyard and Related Archaeological Sites became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sailing defines the place. Antigua Sailing Week, founded in 1967, brings about a hundred yachts and thousands of sailors and spectators to the waters off English Harbour at the turn of April and May, and the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, the December charter yacht show and youth championships for Optimist dinghies also use the dockyard. Between events, the two harbours remain a centre of boating and yachting.

Heritage is the other thread. The restored dockyard, Clarence House, the Dow's Hill Interpretation Centre and the ruins of Shirley Heights make up much of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Dockyard Museum tells the story of the base. In the 1980s the old military lookout on Shirley Heights was restored as a restaurant, and its Sunday gathering, with live music, food and drink, draws locals and visitors alike.

Away from the marinas, English Harbour is a small Antiguan community. Most residents are Methodist or Anglican, with Pentecostal and Catholic congregations as well, and church remains at the centre of village life.

English Harbour had 570 residents at the 2011 census, and the wider area includes the neighbouring communities of Cobbs Cross, Marsh Village and Dow Hill as well as Falmouth. About three-quarters of residents were born in Antigua and Barbuda, with others from the United States, Jamaica, the United Kingdom and Guyana.

It is one of the most prosperous parts of the country and a major regional service centre. Most people work for private employers, and the economy turns on yachting: marinas, boatyards such as the slipway on the eastern side of the harbour, provisioning, hotels, restaurants and the tourism of the national park. Land is a recurring issue, and in 2018 politicians urged long-standing squatters to take up a plan letting residents of ten years or more buy their plots for a nominal sum.

The year follows the sailing calendar: busy from December to the regattas of April and May, quieter through the hot, humid hurricane months.

Eating in English Harbour mixes Antiguan cooking with food for the yachting crowd. Restaurants and food shops fill the old naval buildings of the dockyard and the waterfront at Falmouth, and the Sunday gathering at Shirley Heights brings food and drink with live music above the harbours.

The local table is the island's: fungie and pepperpot, the national dish of a cornmeal-and-okra dish similar to polenta with a slow-cooked stew; saltfish for breakfast, often with eggplant, known here as troba; ducana, a sweet dumpling of grated sweet potato and coconut boiled in a wrapping of leaves or foil; and seasoned rice. Antiguan butter bread, a soft buttery loaf from small bakeries, is eaten at breakfast and throughout the day, often with cheese, and souse, a fiery pork soup, is a street food of festival time.

Rum and beer are made locally, including Wadadli beer and English Harbour Rum, and local soft drinks include tamarind, hibiscus and passion fruit juices, mauby and ginger beer.