Gros Islet

The Caribs, and possibly the Arawaks before them, lived around the bay, and the name Gros Islet first appears on a French map of 1717. The settlement grew as a Roman Catholic parish: the first priests to come to Saint Lucia settled in the village in 1749. Its good anchorage drew French and British ships, and in 1778 France and Britain went to war again. The Royal Navy captured Saint Lucia, and Admiral George Rodney fortified Pigeon Island between 1779 and 1782, cutting down its trees so that lookouts on Signal Hill could watch the French naval base on Martinique; in 1782 he sailed from here to defeat the French fleet at the Battle of the Saints. A naval base was built at Gros Islet Bay, and for a time the place was renamed Fort Rodney.

Barracks were added on Pigeon Island in 1808 and used until 1901. In 1941, under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, the United States Navy built an air station at Reduit, from which Catalina flying boats patrolled for German submarines until the station closed in 1947.

The modern town took shape after a mangrove swamp was dredged to form Rodney Bay Marina; the excavated earth built the causeway that joined Pigeon Island to the mainland in the early 1970s. Hotels, resorts and villas followed, and between 1991 and 2001 the population rose by 54 per cent, the fastest growth in the country. Pigeon Island became a national park in 1979 and a national landmark in 1992.

Gros Islet is best known for its Friday-night street party, the "Jump-up", when the streets of the old village are closed to cars, bars stay open late and stalls sell local food.

Music on a larger scale comes to Pigeon Island, the home and a major venue of the Saint Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival, held since 1992. Cricket is followed closely: the Daren Sammy Cricket Ground just outside the town hosted matches in the 2007 World Cup, is the home of the Windward Islands team, and was renamed in 2016 after the Saint Lucian who twice captained the West Indies to the World Twenty20 title.

The sea shapes the rest. Each December the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, the world's largest trans-ocean sailing event, ends at Rodney Bay, bringing hundreds of crews to the marina, and the windy Atlantic beaches to the east are popular with kitesurfers. Through it all the village remains Creole-speaking and Catholic, a former fishing community that has kept its own character beside the resort strip.

About 19,400 people lived in Gros Islet at the 2001 census, making it the second-most populous community in Saint Lucia, up from about 13,500 in 1991. It is the newest of the island's towns, the most recent to be promoted from village status, and an important administrative centre for its district, while Rodney Bay has become the district's main financial centre.

Tourism shapes working life. The hotels, resorts and villas around the bay and further north, the marina — one of the largest yachting centres in the Caribbean — the two biggest shopping malls on the island, the restaurants and the nightclubs of Reduit Beach Avenue all employ people from the town and beyond.

The town runs at two speeds. The old village remains a flourishing district of its own, while Rodney Bay, known as the island's entertainment and recreation centre, has its malls, supermarket, casino and restaurants. Minibuses on route 1A link the town with Castries every few minutes, and on Friday nights the village fills for the street party.

Gros Islet eats the island's Creole food: green figs — green bananas — with saltfish, the national dish; bouyon, a thick one-pot soup of red beans, meat, ground provisions and vegetables; accra (saltfish fritters); callaloo soup; breadfruit; and bakes (fried bread). The island's cooking draws on French, East Indian and British influences, with spices such as garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.

The Friday street party is the best place to eat as the village does, with stalls selling local food such as steamed fish and barbecue chicken. For sit-down meals, the strip along Reduit Beach Avenue in Rodney Bay is lined with restaurants and nightclubs, the area's restaurants include Indian and French cooking, and cafés around the marina serve European food to the sailing crowd.

To drink there is cocoa tea, a traditional spiced hot drink, at breakfast, and juices of local fruit by day; Piton, the pilsner brewed on the island since 1992, and rum are the drinks of the Friday night.