Montserrat is a tiny British island in the Caribbean with an Irish nickname, a shamrock passport stamp and a capital city buried under volcanic ash. Here are 14 facts about Montserrat, from the eruption that emptied half the island to the recording studio where Dire Straits made their biggest album.
Montserrat at a glance
Where: the Leeward Islands, about 40 km southwest of Antigua
Status: British Overseas Territory
Area: about 102 square km (39 square miles)
Population: fewer than 5,000
Currency: Eastern Caribbean dollar
1It is a British Overseas Territory.
Montserrat is one of 14 British Overseas Territories. King Charles III is head of state and is represented by a governor, while the island elects its own government and premier. Montserratians have been British citizens since 2002.
2Columbus named it after a Spanish monastery.
Christopher Columbus sailed past the island in 1493 and named it after the Abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat, near Barcelona, whose jagged mountain it reminded him of.
3It is called the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean.
From the 1630s, Irish Catholic settlers moved to Montserrat from nearby St Kitts and from Virginia, and many local surnames are still Irish. With its green hills and Irish heritage, it became known as the “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean”, and visitors still get a shamrock stamp in their passport.
4St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday.
Montserrat is one of the very few places outside Ireland where 17 March is a public holiday. It also marks a different anniversary: an uprising by enslaved Africans planned for St Patrick’s Day in 1768, which was discovered and crushed. The week-long festival celebrates both Irish and African heritage.
5Its flag shows an Irish symbol.
The flag is a British Blue Ensign with the island’s coat of arms. The arms show Erin, the female symbol of Ireland, in green, holding a cross and resting on a golden harp.
6Its volcano woke up in 1995.
The Soufrière Hills volcano had been quiet for centuries when it began erupting on 18 July 1995. It has been active on and off ever since, and is watched around the clock by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.
7Nineteen people died in 1997.
On 25 June 1997, pyroclastic flows, avalanches of hot gas and rock, swept down the volcano’s slopes and killed 19 people in villages that had been evacuated but where some residents had stayed or returned.
8Its capital is a ghost town.
The old capital, Plymouth, was buried under metres of ash and mud from 1995 to 1997 and abandoned. It remains the official capital, which makes it the only capital in the world that nobody lives in. The government now works from Brades in the north, and a new capital is being built at Little Bay.
9Half the island is off-limits.
Most of the southern part of Montserrat, including Plymouth, lies in an exclusion zone where nobody is allowed to live. Day tours with a guide take visitors to look over the buried town from a safe distance.
10Two-thirds of its people left.
About 11,000 people lived on Montserrat before the eruption. Around two-thirds left, many of them to Britain, and fewer than 5,000 live there today.
11The island is getting bigger.
Volcanic deposits have built up new land along the south and east coasts. Parts of the coastline now reach hundreds of metres further into the sea than they did before 1995.
12Some of the biggest albums of the 1980s were recorded there.
In 1979, the Beatles’ producer George Martin opened AIR Studios Montserrat. Dire Straits recorded Brothers in Arms there, and the Police, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones all worked there. The studio closed after Hurricane Hugo hit the island in 1989.
13It is home to a frog called the mountain chicken.
The mountain chicken is one of the world’s largest frogs, and was once hunted for food. It is now critically endangered after a fungal disease wiped out most of the wild population. The island’s national bird, the Montserrat oriole, lives nowhere else on Earth.
14Getting there takes a small plane or a ferry.
The old airport was destroyed by the volcano. Today visitors arrive by ferry from Antigua, or on small planes landing at John A. Osborne Airport, which has one of the shorter runways in the Caribbean.
FAQs about Montserrat
Is Montserrat part of the UK?
It is a British Overseas Territory, so it is under British sovereignty but not part of the United Kingdom itself. It has its own government and laws.
Is the Montserrat volcano still active?
Yes. The Soufrière Hills volcano has been much quieter since its last major activity around 2010, but it is still classed as active and is constantly monitored.
Why is Montserrat called the Emerald Isle?
Because of its green, hilly landscape and its history of Irish settlers, which left Irish surnames, place names and traditions such as the St Patrick’s Day holiday.
What is the capital of Montserrat?
Officially, Plymouth, which was abandoned after the eruptions of the 1990s. In practice, the government works from Brades, and a new capital is being developed at Little Bay.
Sources and further reading
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