Montserrat
In January 2018 I went on a sailing ship cruise through the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean with Sail Windjammer on the S/V Mandalay. Montserrat was one of the stops on this cruise. We arrived in Montserrat from Terre-de-Haut. After a land tour to Plymouth and some snorkeling in the north of Montserrat, we continued on to Nevis, part of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
See the Montserrat Entry in Wikipedia.
Montserrat is a Caribbean island, specifically in the Leeward Islands, which is part of the chain known as the Lesser Antilles, in the former British West Indies. It is a British Overseas Territory, part of the Commonwealth of Nations. Montserrat measures approximately 16 km (10 miles) in length and 11 km (7 miles) in width, with approximately 40 km (25 miles) of coastline. Montserrat is nicknamed "The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean" both for its resemblance to coastal Ireland and for the Irish ancestry of many of its inhabitants.
On 18 July 1995, the previously dormant Soufrière Hills volcano, in the southern part of the island, became active. Eruptions destroyed Montserrat's Georgian era capital city of Plymouth. Between 1995 and 2000, two-thirds of the island's population was forced to flee, primarily to the United Kingdom, leaving fewer than 1,200 people on the island as of 1997 (rising to nearly 5,000 by 2016). The volcanic activity continues, mostly affecting the vicinity of Plymouth, including its docking facilities, and the eastern side of the island around the former W. H. Bramble Airport, the remnants of which were buried by flows from volcanic activity on 11 February 2010.
We made an excursion into the exclusion zone to visit Plymouth. It is eerie to see the abandoned city, buried in ash and volcanic debris.
All pictures are © Dr. Günther Eichhorn, unless otherwise noted.
The total number of pictures online on my website from Montserrat is 30
Page last updated on Tue Apr 23 15:33:03 2024 (Mountain Standard Time)
Montserrat - The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean - Buried by a Volcano on aerobaticsweb.org
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