INTRODUCTION

In the days of the French ownership and occupation of St.Lucia, the island was divided into eleven districts. These were known as quartiers, later called parishes by the English. Vieux Fort is the Southernmost of these. In the most cases, the names of the Quartiers and the chief town were identical. Thus Castries was both town and Quartier. Vieux Fort was no exception; the name applied both to the town built on the edge of the sea and to the whole area bounded by the other quartiers of Micoud and Laborie (L'islet a Carret).

In most cases the names were derived from a French aristocrat, connected in some way with the island; e.g. Castries, Micoud, d'Ennery but there were exceptions and Vieux Fort was one of these. Soufriere obviously took its name from the solfatara there and Anse-la-Raye from the fish of that name (English "Skate").

Vieux Fort derived its name from a redoubt or fort built by Dutch traders about 1654, but that belongs to history, and the place had been inhabited for many centuries before the Dutch or any other European or African had heard of it.

The district is one of the few areas of flat land to be found anywhere in the island. The town is built where the river of the same name used to enter the sea; but, jutting out into the St. Vincent channel, is an outcrop of land, rising to 729 feet, known as Moul-a-Chique. Geologically, the district would appear to combine the oldest and the newest types of soil formation in St.Lucia; Moul-a-Chique belongs to the island's first physiological region whilst the Vieux Fort plain is the result of a volcanic glacier or mud flow that belongs to the third and latest physiological region.

As we shall see, Vieux Fort figured in the events during historical times, culminating in its important position as an air base, cantonment and port during World War II. Its fertile lands invited settlement and produced a variety of crops which over the years, contributed greatly to the economy of the island.

We must first record what is known about the earliest inhabitants of the area who lived, worked and died there during the many centuries before the New World was discovered by the explorers and adventurers of the Old.