If you like books and movies about pirates and their adventures you probably heard the name Tortuga many times. In the last movie trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean island of Tortuga was showed to us as a haven for pirates. In famous writer Sabatini's book series about Captain Blood and the movies based on it, Tortuga is also mentioned as the main base of pirates operations. So what exactly is Tortuga? What is its history and where this island is located?
Nowadays it is a quiet island that belongs to Haiti. A little bit over 20 thousand people live on its small territory which is about 180 square kilometers. It is very mountainous and full of rocks. Yet, it is hugely dense of lofty trees that grow upon the hardest of those rocks. Basically, in translation into English it means a Turtle Island. And it has a very wild history, as it was a major center of Caribbean piracy in the seventeenth century.
Tortuga is one of the first islands that Columbus discovered during his very first voyage into the New World. The island got its name in 1493 from Columbus' sailors because its shape reminded them of a turtle. Spanish colony was set up there and thrived for over a hundred years until it became a part of a dispute between France, England and Spain. Tortuga was changing hands for a while until the island was divided between French and English settlers in 1630. It still did not prevent Spaniards to reconquer the island a couple of times during 17th century, but there were pushed out by settlers in 1638.
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