Jost Van Dyke

The island may be named after Joost van Dyk, a 17th-century Dutch settler and former privateer said to have used its harbours as a hideout, though there is no firm evidence for this. The English captured the Virgin Islands in 1672, but Jost Van Dyke was largely ignored until the mid-18th century; a map of 1717 does not show it at all. Sugar works on the ridge above Great Harbour show that some cane was grown and processed, but cotton mattered more: in 1815 about 140 acres were under cotton, and the population of 428 was mostly enslaved. Little Jost Van Dyke, off the east end, was the home of the Lettsom family; John C. Lettsome, founder of the Medical Society of London, is counted among the island's notable people, as is William Thornton, the architect who designed the US Capitol.

After emancipation the population kept growing, reaching about 1,235 by 1853, when a cholera outbreak killed 196 people. Islanders lived by fishing and subsistence farming, worked at the coaling wharves of St Thomas, and made charcoal, which the territory exported to the US Virgin Islands in large quantities between the 1920s and 1960s. Sailing, rowing and boat-building flourished, and locally built "Tortola boats" sailed until motor craft replaced them around the 1960s.

Yachting tourism grew into the mainstay of the economy. In September 2017 Hurricane Irma stripped the hillsides, damaged the school, clinic and petrol stations and destroyed most homes; with little outside help in the first week, residents ran their own recovery from Foxy's on Great Harbour.

Jost Van Dyke is known far beyond its size for its beach bars, and the Painkiller cocktail, created in the 1970s at the Soggy Dollar Bar on White Bay, is its signature. The bar scene is part of the island's identity: in 2017 it was Foxy's, with the island's only major surviving refrigerator and generators, that became the command centre for the recovery. The country singer Kenny Chesney filmed a music video on and around the island for his 2002 song "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" and has mentioned it in other songs.

Beneath the visitor trade is an old seafaring culture. The island's people built and sailed their own boats for trade and social contact with neighbouring islands, and the collective making of charcoal pits — where women might bake bread or roast breadfruit in the heat while men played dominoes — still happens occasionally. The Jost Van Dykes Preservation Society, a local organisation, looks after the trail on nearby Sandy Cay for the National Parks Trust.

The community shares the territory's Belonger identity, English-speaking and Christian, and its traditional fungi music of calabash, washboard and ukulele. Life is informal: most places are restaurant and bar in one, and each keeps its own hours.

The 2010 census counted 298 people on Jost Van Dyke, more than double the 140 recorded in 1991, and the population is young: nearly half were under 35. Great Harbour is the main settlement, and paths and roads link it with the island's other bays and beaches.

Tourism, above all yachting, is the economy. Great Harbour is one of the busiest ports in the territory — nearly 7,000 boats cleared through it in 2008 — and day boats, group tours from the US Virgin Islands and small cruise ships visit the island.

Great Harbour holds the island's clinic, police station and customs office. The ferry shapes the day. The island's primary school also teaches the first two years of secondary school; older students travel to Tortola every weekday to attend high school, catching an early ferry and returning in the afternoon. The slow work of rebuilding after Irma, which destroyed most of the island's homes in 2017, has shaped recent years.

Eating on Jost Van Dyke means eating at its bars, nearly all of which are restaurants too. Great Harbour, White Bay and Little Harbour each have their own, and barbecue nights are a fixture at Foxy's on Great Harbour and at Ivan's on White Bay. Lobster is the prize dish: Harris' Place on Little Harbour is known for big, fresh lobsters and unlimited-lobster nights, served with pea soup, homemade pies, bread and hot sauce.

The rest of the menu follows the territory's island cooking: fresh fish and conch, "fish and fungi" — fish with fungi, a cornmeal-and-okra dish rather like polenta — johnnycake, a fried bread, and roti. Historically islanders roasted breadfruit and baked bread in the heat of charcoal pits.

The drink is the Painkiller: rum shaken with four parts pineapple juice, one part cream of coconut and one part orange juice, served over ice under a heap of grated nutmeg. It was created in the 1970s at the Soggy Dollar Bar at White Bay — perhaps by Daphne Henderson, perhaps by George and Marie Myrick, previous owners of the bar.