Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering the Cayman Islands. The explorer was on his fourth voyage of discovery when his ships, the Santiago de Palos and the Capitana, sailed passed Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. The date was May 10th 1503 and his son Ferdinand noted in his journal "we were in sight of two small low islands filled with tortoises, as well as the sea all about" Columbus and his men didn't stop. Worm eaten and leaking badly their ships laboured on until they had to be beached and eventually abandoned in St Ann's Bay Jamaica.
Some historians question whether Columbus was really the first person to set eyes on the Cayman Islands. In 1499 Queen Isabella of Spain authorized four other voyages to the New World, and there may have been several other unauthorised voyages. A full year prior to the visit of Columbus, the three islands appear on the Cantino map which was published in 1502. Another clue is that there were as many as a million Caribbean and Arawak Indians living in the adjacent coastal areas around Cayman at th etime of Columbus' visit. Archival research suggests that Cayman is a word of Carib Indian origin meaning crocodile. the Cari Indians (Caribs) were proficient mariners and they were known to have made ocean going journeys in canoes up to 80 feet in length. On Columbus' second voyage the explorer met with an old Carib in Cuba who had traveled to Jamaica as a youth. In Jamaica itself, hundreds of thousands of Caribs were living just up wind and up current from Cayman. Is it possible that the Caribs were the first visitors?
In 1655 Admiral Penn and General Venables were sent from Britain by Oliver Cromwell to take Hispaniola from the Spanish. The so called “Western Design” failed as the English did not capture the Spanish stronghold; however they did manage to seize Jamaica. Shortly thereafter, Cayman became a possession of the United Kingdom, following the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1670.
From the time of the earliest explorers Cayman was renowned for the ‘vast herds or fleets’ of turtles, which resorted to the beaches to breed. In the summer, ships of French, Dutch and English origin would often visit to ‘turn’ turtle and secure food and water.
About two hundred years ago, the people of Cayman embraced a strong Christian ethic and this heritage continues to the present day. As a result and despite the celebration of Pirates week at the end of October, the piratical past of Cayman history is downplayed in favour of district heritage days. However, some of the most notorious pirates did indeed visit Cayman and the islands were an ideal refuge for buccaneers. Cayman is remote and isolated, in the northwestern part of the Caribbean, but on the route of treasure galleons returning to Spain laden with gold and silver from the New World. The island offered pirate captains the possibility of finding crews to man captured vessels, a ready source of protein in the form of turtle meat and a quiet location away from the authorities where pirates could hide their loot and careen and repair their vessels following an engagement. Some of the biggest names in buccaneering history including Lowther, Lowe, Henry Morgan and Blackbeard all prowled the coast of the Cayman Islands.