Peter Island is a
private island located in the
British Virgin Islands
The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...
(BVI). It is about south-west (195 degrees true) from
Road Town
Road Town, located on Tortola, is the capital and largest town of the British Virgin Islands. It is situated on the horseshoe-shaped Road Harbour in the centre of the island's south coast. The population was about 15,000 in 2018.
The name is d ...
,
Tortola
Tortola () is the largest and most populated island of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It has a surface area of with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in ...
. The island was named after
Pieter Adriensen (nicknamed "The Commander") who was the brother of
Abraham Adriensen, Patron of Tortola under the
Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company () was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was gra ...
in the early 17th century. Pieter Adriensen and
Joost van Dyk built a
fort
A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...
and slave pens at
Great Harbour on Peter Island to facilitate
privateer
A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign o ...
ing and the nascent trade in
slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
s from Angola.
In 1968,
Torolf Smedvig purchased most of the land on the island for $950,000. He prefabricated 20 luxury A-frame chalets in Norway. In 1969, two ships with thousands of tons of prefabricated buildings, house trailers, concrete, lumber, plumbing supplies, tractors, earthmovers, cranes, and more came over from Norway. Accompanying them was 20 Norwegian craftsmen and works, who worked with about 30 island workers. It took about ten days to assemble the A-frames on-site. Dredging Sprat Bay made it deeper and reclaimed land for the resort to sit on. All the A-frames, the pool, the lobby, bar, dining room, and hotel offices were all built on reclaimed land. The resort also included a harbor and a marina. Peter Island Yacht Club was marketed as one of the premier holiday locations in the West Indies. It incorporated a hotel in cottage colonial style and plots of land for sale. However, the development was costly and occupancy rates low, leading to significant economic losses. After Torolf's death, the resort was put up for sale in 1978.
In 1978, the Devos family (Amway Corporation), purchased Peter Island after sailing past it several years before. There, they established the resort that exists today and lived on the island to maintain the resort.
Peter Island is the largest private island in the BVI and the fifth largest of the 60 islands, quays, and exposed reefs that comprise the BVI. It was owned by the
Amway Corporation from 1978
until 2001 when full ownership was transferred to the
Van Andel family, co-owners of Amway.
The island is predominantly undeveloped but contains hiking and biking trails on which to discover the tropical flora and fauna indigenous to Peter Island. The beaches face the
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...
, the
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba ...
, and the Sir Francis Drake Channel. Two of the beaches (Honeymoon and White bay) are for use by guests only. The island's biggest beach is Deadman's Bay, a mile-long crescent beach shaded by palm trees with a beach, bar, and restaurant open to day boaters. Deadman's Bay is said to be named for pirates that were marooned on neighbouring Dead Chest island and subsequently drowned swimming to Peter Island, their bodies washed up on shore.
Stephen Blakely, "Norman Island," TravelBeat, Jan. 5, 2009
/ref>
The only hotel, the 52-room Peter Island Resort, ranked in Conde Nast Traveler's "Gold List", and the Travel and Leisure "T+L 500" for 2007, is accessible by boat or helicopter. A 1984 review in the New York Times was critical of the food.
References
External links
*
Peter Island Resort
{{British Virgin Islands
Private islands of the British Virgin Islands