47 Fun Facts About Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

What is the capital and largest city of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines?

Kingstown is the country's only town of any size and its main port, and the ferries to the Grenadines run out of its harbour, so island traffic funnels through the capital.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies in which Caribbean island arc?

The Lesser Antilles. The arc is volcanic, which is why Saint Vincent is rugged and steep with little flat land, while many of the small Grenadines to its south are uninhabited.

The name 'Grenadines' is thought to be a diminutive of which Spanish city's name?

Granada. Spanish sailors probably named the big island to the south after the Andalusian city, whose own name is said to mean pomegranate, and the islets beside it took the diminutive.

Why is Columbus said to have named the island Saint Vincent?

It was the saint's feast day, 22 January; tradition gives the year as 1498. The Spanish name stuck, yet Kalinago resistance kept Europeans from settling the island for two more centuries.

Saint Vincent's national bird, found wild nowhere else on Earth, is what kind of bird?

Parrot. The Saint Vincent parrot lives only in the island's mountain forests, and a breeding centre in the capital's botanic gardens works to raise its numbers.

Which European power first managed to colonise Saint Vincent, in 1719?

France. Its settlers grew coffee, tobacco, indigo and sugar with enslaved African labour until Britain took the island in the Seven Years' War.

What are the Afro-Indigenous people of Saint Vincent who fought Britain in the Carib Wars called?

The Garifuna, once called Black Caribs, descend from island Caribs and Africans who escaped slavery or survived shipwrecks. Planters pushing onto their land for sugar set off the wars.

Who was the paramount chief who led the Second Carib War rebels and is now a national hero?

Joseph Chatoyer died in battle in 1795 while leading the rising against British rule. In 2002 the country declared him its first National Hero.

After the Second Carib War, Britain deported thousands of Saint Vincent's rebels to Roatan, off which country?

Honduras. From Roatan the exiles spread along the mainland coast, and their descendants now live from Belize to Nicaragua, with a language, dance and music listed by UNESCO.

What is the name of the active volcano that forms Saint Vincent's highest point?

La Soufriere fills the northern third of Saint Vincent, which is why most Vincentians live in the southern part of the island.

Saint Vincent's volcano killed about 1,600 people in May 1902, shortly before which Martinique volcano destroyed Saint-Pierre?

Mont Pelee wiped out the town of Saint-Pierre and killed some 30,000 people within days of the Saint Vincent blast. Timely evacuations meant the island's 1979 eruption killed no one.

Ash from Saint Vincent's April 2021 eruption blanketed which island nation to the east and closed its airport?

Winds carried the ash east to Barbados and shut its airport, and its prime minister warned of weeks of ash fall. On Saint Vincent thousands had already been moved out of the north before the first blast.

Who was the first prime minister of independent Saint Vincent and the Grenadines?

Milton Cato, a founder of the Labour Party, led the country into independence and within weeks had to put down a secessionist revolt in the Grenadines. Voters turned him out in 1984.

Weeks after independence, a secessionist revolt broke out on which of the Grenadines?

Union Island. Islanders who felt neglected by the central government tried to break away in December 1979, within weeks of independence, and the revolt was quickly put down with a neighbour's military help.

Prime minister Gonsalves, in office from 2001 to 2025, is known locally by what nickname?

Comrade Ralph. The left-leaning lawyer swept to power in 2001 with 12 of 15 seats and campaigned hard, and in vain, for the country to drop the Queen in 2009.

Saint Vincent's 2009 referendum on becoming a republic needed what to pass, and fell well short?

A two-thirds majority. Only about 43 percent voted yes and some 56 percent no, so the Queen stayed head of state instead of giving way to a ceremonial president.

In 2019 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines became the smallest country ever elected to what?

The UN Security Council. A nation of about 110,000 people beat El Salvador for the Latin American and Caribbean seat and sat at the table through 2020 and 2021.

What is the main feature of the flag of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, adopted in 1985?

Three green diamonds in a V, for Vincent, sit on the wide gold band. They cast the islands as the gems of the Antilles, which is why the flag itself is nicknamed the Gems.

The 1985 flag design by Julien van der Wal replaced the coat of arms and which leaf?

Breadfruit. The 1979 independence flag set the coat of arms on a breadfruit leaf, recalling the tree Britain brought from the South Seas, until a new government had the flag redrawn.

Which British captain brought seedlings of a Pacific staple tree to the capital's botanical garden?

William Bligh. The Bounty mutineers threw his first cargo overboard, so he sailed again and in 1793 landed the young trees at a garden founded in 1765, the oldest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

Which Grenadine island became a celebrity hideaway after Colin Tennant bought it in 1958?

Mustique. Tennant paid 45,000 pounds for a parched island, gave his friend Princess Margaret a villa there after she married, and rock stars such as Mick Jagger and David Bowie followed.

The people of which island may still hunt up to four humpback whales a year under a subsistence quota?

Bequia. Islanders took up whaling in the late 19th century, and the International Whaling Commission still lets the small hunt go on as subsistence whaling, a status some member nations dispute.

Which Hollywood film series shot on Saint Vincent gave the country's tourism a boost?

Sets built at Wallilabou Bay for the 2003 original became a visitor attraction.

Which crop dominates Vincentian agriculture and has repeatedly been flattened by hurricanes?

Bananas. Hurricanes in 1980 and 1987 wrecked the plantations, and because so much rides on one export crop each storm shakes the whole economy, which is why governments keep trying to diversify.

Argyle International, opened in 2017, replaced which older airfield on the capital's edge?

E. T. Joshua Airport. Argyle's long runway brought the country its first direct flights from cities such as New York, Toronto and London, and the old terminal has been given over to shops.

Saint Vincent was long the world's leading producer of which starchy crop?

Arrowroot. As sugar declined in the 1800s it took over as the island's leading cash crop by 1900, and its fine starch later found a second use in paper-making.

Six appointed members of Saint Vincent's single-chamber parliament carry which title?

Senators, though there is no senate. Four are named on the prime minister's advice and two on the opposition leader's, and they sit in the same House of Assembly as the 15 elected members.

In the 1840s, indentured Catholic settlers arrived to replace plantation labour from which Atlantic island?

Madeira. Emancipation left the planters short of workers, so they brought in Portuguese labourers from the island in the 1840s and Indian labourers from the 1860s.

Which hilltop stronghold, completed by the British in 1806, looks down on Saint Vincent's capital from some 600 feet up?

Fort Charlotte. The garrison is long gone, and the fort now holds a museum telling the story of the islanders who fought the British for Saint Vincent.

Which Vincentian soca singer, later named his country's Cultural Ambassador, had a worldwide hit with 'Turn Me On'?

Kevin Lyttle. He was working as a customs officer when he put his own savings into recording the song, and its remix reached number two in Britain in 2003.

How did Natasha Mayers, third in the 2010 Commonwealth 100 m, win gold?

Two disqualifications. The winner was ruled out for a false start and the runner-up then failed a drugs test, handing Mayers only the second Commonwealth gold in her country's history.

At the 2024 Olympics, 800 m runner Shafiqua Maloney became the first Vincentian to do what?

Reach an Olympic final. She ran 1:57.66 for fourth place and missed the bronze medal by 0.24 seconds, three years after going out in the heats in Tokyo.

Which was the largest Christian denomination in Saint Vincent's 2023 census, its share up by half since 2001?

Pentecostal. In 2001 the Anglicans still edged them, 17.8 percent to 17.6, but by 2023 Pentecostals stood at 26.4 percent and Anglicans had slipped to 10.5.

Which uninhabited islets in the southern Grenadines became a marine park in 1997?

The Tobago Cays. They stayed in private hands until 1999, when the government bought them, and sea turtles feed and nest around them.

Adonal Foyle left the tiny Grenadine island of Canouan as a teenager and became a first-round draft pick in which sport?

Basketball. Two visiting American professors spotted him as a boy and became his legal guardians; Golden State drafted him eighth overall in 1997 and he stayed ten seasons.

What is the country's court of last resort?

Cases pass through district courts and the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court first.

Which song has been the Vincentian national anthem since independence in 1979?

Saint Vincent, Land so beautiful. Its second verse sets the saint's name aside and hails the island as Hairoun, a Carib name that locals sometimes use for it.

Which bloc founded by Venezuela and Cuba counts Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as a member?

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro launched it in Havana in December 2004 as an answer to a free trade area the United States wanted, and Saint Vincent joined under Gonsalves.

Where on Saint Vincent are the sandy beaches and bays found?

The windward coast is rocky and steep; the island is volcanic, forested and has little flat land.

Which opposition leader became Saint Vincent's prime minister in 2025 after winning 14 of 15 seats?

Godwin Friday. His New Democratic Party's landslide ended Unity Labour's hold on power since 2001 and left Ralph Gonsalves as his party's only member of parliament to keep a seat.

Which hurricane devastated the southern Grenadines on 1 July 2024 and then became the earliest Category 5 storm recorded in the Atlantic?

Beryl. Unusually warm seas let it build so early in the season, and the damage it did in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines came to about 22 percent of the country's yearly economic output.

Vincy Mas, held in late June and early July, is Saint Vincent's what?

Carnival. It once ran before Lent on the church calendar but was moved to midsummer, and Carnival Tuesday in early July is now a public holiday.

What halfway status did Britain grant Saint Vincent in 1969, a decade before full independence?

Associate statehood. Saint Vincent ran its own internal affairs, yet it stayed on the international list of non-self-governing territories until full independence in 1979.

Which 1763 treaty first put Saint Vincent in British hands?

The Treaty of Paris. British planters moved in with enslaved labour, but the hold was shaky: the island was lost in 1779 and only came back to Britain in 1783.

In which sport did Saint Vincent win the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank's international series in 2024 and 2025?

Netball. Saint Vincent kept the 2025 title despite losing its final match to the hosts, Grenada, its only defeat in nine games.

In Saint Vincent's 2023 census, which was the largest faith outside Christianity?

Rastafari, at 0.8 percent of the population. It is shrinking, though, from 1.5 percent in 2001, while the Muslim share doubled to 0.2 percent and Hindus held at 0.1.

As of 2026, Saint Vincent is one of only about a dozen states with full diplomatic ties to which Asian government?

Taiwan, a partner since 1981. The party that won power in 2025 had once vowed to switch to Beijing, but it kept the ties, and Taiwanese money has helped build the international airport and a new hospital.