Antigua Naval Dockyard and Related Archaeological Sites
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How it came to be
English Harbour on Antigua's south coast is a deep, narrow bay ringed by high ground, which sheltered ships from hurricanes and suited their repair. The English colonised Antigua in 1632, and the navy began using the bay as a safe haven. Fort Berkeley, on a peninsula at the harbour mouth, is first recorded in 1704.
In 1725 the first dockyard, St Helena, was set up on the east side of the harbour, and in the mid-1740s work began on the present dockyard on the west side. Enslaved Africans from nearby plantations were sent to build it; UNESCO notes that the dockyard could not have been built without the labour of generations of enslaved Africans. Its purpose was to protect the interests of sugar planters while European powers competed for the Eastern Caribbean.
Many of the surviving buildings date from a building programme between 1785 and 1794. The Royal Navy abandoned the dockyard in 1889 and it fell into decay. The Society of the Friends of English Harbour began restoring it in 1951, and it reopened to the public in 1961. It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2016.
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