History
France started a settlement here shortly after 1722.
The botanical garden, conceived in 1765, is the oldest in the Western hemisphere. William Bligh, made famous from the Mutiny on the Bounty, brought seeds of the Breadfruit tree here for planting, ca 1793.
Kingstown is overlooked by Fort Charlotte on Berkshire Hill, just west of town. Over 180 m above the bay, it is the major early 19th century fortification on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A redoubt accessed by a viaduct, it has guns pointing inland. The British garrison were to use it for holding out against the French while the Royal Navy brought reinforcements from other islands. The British had learnt a lesson when the French invaded the island in 1779, as they landed in Calliaqua, proving that any likely attack on the island would come from any location rather than directly on Kingstown itself. Recently, Kingstown is known as the site for many of the scenes from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean.
Read more about this topic: Kingstown
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)