Saba (island)

Saba Special municipality in the Netherlands
flag coat of arms
Motto : "draw Velisque" ( Latin ) "With rowing and sailing"
Official language	Dutch , English
Capital	The bottom
Form of government	Parliamentary monarchy
Government system	Special municipality of the Netherlands
Head of state	King Willem-Alexander
Head of government	Gezaghebber Jonathan Johnson
surface	13 km²
population	1933 (January 2020)
Population density	149 inhabitants per km²
gross domestic product Total (nominal)	2017 $ 47 million
currency	US dollar (USD)
founding	October 10, 2010, through the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles
National anthem	Saba, you rise from the ocean .
Time zone	UTC − 4
License Plate	NL ; Region code S
ISO 3166	BQ-SA , NL-BQ2
Internet TLD	.nl , .bq (currently not used), .an (until July 31, 2015)
Telephone code	+ 599-4

Saba is the smallest inhabited island in the former Netherlands Antilles . Since October 10, 2010, it has been a special municipality (bijzondere gemeente) of the Netherlands in the eastern Caribbean, together with its uninhabited side island Green Island .

The exact meaning of the name Saba is not clear. It is widely believed that the name Saba is derived from the Caribbean word siba for "rock".

geography

Located southwest of St. Martin and northwest of Sint Eustatius, Saba is one of the Leeward Islands . Saba is one of the so-called SSS islands .

The island is of volcanic origin and consists largely of the Mount Scenery volcano . The highest peak of its four volcanic cones rises 877 meters, making it the highest point in the Kingdom of the Netherlands .

The 13 square kilometer island is almost round, measures 4.5 kilometers in diameter and is bordered by cliffs ; there are no natural beaches . About 250 meters north of Saba is the uninhabited, rocky island of Green Island , which is overgrown with tropical plants.

There are four settlements including the capital, The Bottom :  Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap

settlement	Population Census 2001	location	Coordinates
The bottom	462	southwest	17 ° 37 ′ 34.0 ″  N , 063 ° 14 ′ 57.0 ″  W.
Windwardside	418	east	17 ° 37 ′ 41.0 ″  N , 063 ° 13 ′ 53.0 ″  W.
Zion's Hill (Hell's Gate)	283	Northeast	17 ° 38 '28.0 "  N , 063 ° 13' 40.0"  W.
St. Johns	186	south	17 ° 37 ′ 13.0 ″  N , 063 ° 14 ′ 34.0 ″  W.
Saba	1349

Saba is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands , but as an Overseas Territory (OCT) it is not part of the European Union .

climate

The climate is tropical and warm, tempered by cool trade winds from northeastern directions. The daytime temperatures are between 21  ° C and 29 ° C, the night temperatures between 18 ° C and 24 ° C. The annual rainfall is around 1000 millimeters.

Flora and fauna

Although Saba was completely deforested through ruthless deforestation in the course of the colonial period , a species-rich secondary rainforest has developed in the following centuries , which is well accessible through numerous hiking trails. There are no dangerous or even poisonous animals. The only occurring on Saba snake is on the snakes belonging harmless Alsophis rufiventris ( "Red-bellied racer", also called "Saba Racer" or "orange-bellied Racer"), which for the Lesser Antilles endemic is. Anolis sabanus , a small species of lizard from the genus Anolis , is only found on Saba . Because of the high rainfall, mosquitoes are common, especially during the rainy season . A study of the island's avifauna from 2010 to 2012 found a total of 107 different bird species on Saba. More than 30 of these species had not been sighted on Saba before, and it is believed that the majority of them immigrated from nearby St. Martin . The steep coastline of Saba has been designated by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area ; among others nest here Red-billed tropic birds and shed shearwaters in large numbers.

A path (1064 stone steps according to the sign) leads through the rainforest to the summit of Mount Scenery .

The 350 hectare large Mount Scenery National Park covers a large part of the island north and -nordwestens and gives insights into the biodiversity of flora and fauna Sabas.

The underwater world near the island was largely protected from environmental damage by the Saba National Marine Park, which was established in 1987, and by strict laws and regulations . Saba and its coral reefs are considered good diving areas for divers . There are some diving centers on Saba that are mainly frequented by day tourists.

population

Saba has 1933 inhabitants (as of January 2020) About 44 percent of the population are Roman Catholic and about 8 percent Anglican ; 19 percent of the population belong to other religious communities (as of 2017/2018). This means that the proportion of the two most important denominations in the total population has decreased by around a third since 1992.

languages

Actually, the official's native language Dutch , but there is English both as colloquial as well as school and official language before. Almost ten percent of the population speak Spanish and only five percent speak Dutch as their first language . About two thirds of the population speak more than one language; around 11 percent of the population also speak the Creole language Papiamentu (all data refer to 2017/2018).

history

Christopher Columbus discovered Saba on his second voyage in 1493, probably on November 13th 1493, but did not go ashore. He took possession of the island for the Spanish crown and named it Isla de San Cristóbal (German "Island of St. Christopher "). The exact date of the discovery is controversial, as Columbus' route through the Lesser Antilles has not been proven with absolute certainty.

In 1632, a group of English castaways landed on Saba and found the island uninhabited; they were probably the first European residents of Saba. In 1635 a French man got lost on the island and annexed it in the name of Louis XIII.

In 1640, Saba was colonized by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) , but ownership changed frequently between the Netherlands, Great Britain , France and Spain over the next few centuries . It was not until 1816 that Saba finally became the property of the Netherlands.

In 1925 the first donkeys were brought to the island as a means of transport; up to this point all goods were transported by porters on the island.

Road construction began in 1938 and the first motor vehicle was brought to the island in 1947.

In 1954 Saba became part of the newly founded autonomous state of the Netherlands Antilles as an "eilandgebied" (island area, a kind of municipality) .

On February 9, 1959, the first plane landed on the island in a breakneck maneuver. The pilot Rémy de Haenen took off from St. Barth and landed on a provisional runway. He proved that an airplane could land on Saba in principle. As a result, the construction of an airport began in the early 1960s , where the first passenger planes landed in 1963.

From 1970 Saba was fully supplied with electricity , in 1972 the port was expanded, a decompression chamber was set up in 1980 and a private medical university was founded in 1992 .

On December 15, 2008, representatives of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles resolved to dissolve the National Association of the Netherlands Antilles with effect from October 10, 2010. Since that day, Saba has been a “special municipality” in the Netherlands, as requested by the population. With the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, its police authority, the Korps Politie Nederlandse Antilles (KPNA), was also dissolved. For the BES Islands, the Corps Politie Caribisch Nederland took its place .

On January 1, 2011, the US dollar replaced the Antilles guilder as legal tender on the island.

From the capital, The Bottom , 900 steps carved into the steep rock lead down to Ladder Bay . Until well into the second half of the 20th century, the only way to enter or leave the island was the arduous ascent or descent via these steps, and all imported or exported goods had to be transported this way.

There are two museums on Saba: The Major Osmar Ralph Simmons Museum in The Bottom displays everyday objects from Saba's history. The Harry L. Johnson Museum in Windwardside is decorated in a Victorian style and offers, among other things, archaeological exhibits of the Caribbean natives from localities in the region.

economy

During the 17th and 18th centuries, sugar and rum were the most important products of the economy, later fishing became more important. The mining of sulfur at the end of the 19th century was never profitable due to the difficult transport over the rough seas and was given up again after a short time. Until the 1990s, “driving license tourism” made a significant contribution to the Sabanian economy. Over the course of each week, around 60 Dutch people traveled to Saba to get their driving license there, which was possible on the small island with only one real road and no traffic lights within a few days and much easier than in the Netherlands. The residents of Saba turn over around 500,000 guilders per year through this type of tourism. The practice was finally banned in 1993 by the Dutch government.

At present, diving and ecotourism is an important industry. Every year around 25,000 visitors come to the island. In addition to the income from tourism, the sale of the famous Saba lace, also known as “Spanish Work”, is an important source of income. In addition, the 300 predominantly American , Canadian and Dutch students at the Saba University School of Medicine, a private medical university, are a not inconsiderable economic factor.

Saba's nominal gross domestic product was $ 47 million in 2017. The island's trade balance is very negative; In 2019, imports worth more than US $ 21 million were compared to exports of just around US $ 200,000.

The currency has been the US dollar since January 1, 2011 , which replaced the Antilles guilder as legal tender on the island; the old currency became invalid (in Saba) within a month.

Infrastructure

Saba Airport

The main road "The Road", built between 1938 and 1958, is 14.5 km long and crosses almost the entire island. There are currently over 800 vehicles registered on the island. The Sabanese use their car even for the shortest journeys, so that at some times there is a real traffic jam in the villages of The Bottom or Windwardside.

Saba has a small airport, Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport ( IATA code SAB), which was built in the early 1960s on the island's only major plain . The airport was named after the Minister of Finance and Social Affairs who pledged government financial support to build the airport. The airport's extremely short runway at 400 meters is considered to be one of the shortest commercially used runways in the world, so landing on Saba is a special experience for passengers. The Caribbean airline Windward Islands Airways (Winair) flies regularly to Saba from the neighboring islands of Sint Maarten and Sint Eustatius.

The port of Leo A. Chance Pier (named after a minister of the government of the Netherlands Antilles who provided the funding) in Fort Bay , opened in 1972, has a regular ferry connection with the neighboring island of Sint Maarten and offers anchorages for sailing and motor boats . Since 2010, the daughter boat Erika, which has been decommissioned by the German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People, has been used by the local, still relatively young sea rescue organization Saba Sea Rescue on the often stormy south coast.

The Saba Marine Park Hyperbaric Facility , established in 1980, also provides emergency medical care in the event of diving accidents for the surrounding Caribbean islands with a decompression chamber for four people .

The island has been supplied with electricity by the Saba Electric Company since 2012. Its power plant, which is located about 300 meters north of the port of Fort Bay and commissioned in 2016, has an installed capacity of 4.3  MW . A little more than 9 million kWh of electricity are produced annually; the share of renewable energies in total electricity generation is only around one percent (as of 2017).

Personalities

In the 19th century, the young Mary Gertrude Hassell Johnson was sent to a monastery in Caracas to study, where she learned the handicraft of lace making . After her return, she made the technology known on the island and thus founded a still important branch of the economy in Saba.

The construction of the only street in Saba, appropriately called "The Road" by the locals, was started in 1938 by Josephus Lambert Hassell with a group of locals after the Dutch government had declared the construction of such a road impossible. Hassell, who had acquired his knowledge of civil engineering as an autodidact through distance learning , carried out the first part of the construction project without any special technical aids. The last section of the road was completed in 1958.

Attractions

The ruins of the first settlement , founded in 1640, are in Tent Bay .

literature

• Saba, Dutch Caribbean - The unspoiled queen . Brochure about the island. Saba Tourist Bureau (English, download link on the Saba Tourist Bureau website [WINRAR-ZIP-ARCHIVE; 1.6 MB ]).
• Saba, Dutch Caribbean . Map of the island. Saba Tourist Bureau (English, download link on the website of the Saba Tourist Bureau [WINRAR ARCHIVE; 1.5 MB ]).
• Visitor Information - History of Saba . Saba Conservation Foundation, The Bottom (English, online [PDF; 163 kB ]).
• Visitor Information - The Nature of Saba . Saba Conservation Foundation, The Bottom (English, online [PDF; 310 kB ]).
• M. John Roobol, Alan L. Smith: Volcanology of Saba and St. Eustatius, Northern Lesser Antilles . Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-6984-384-6 (English, available online at www.spaw-palisting.org [PDF; 7.3 MB ]).

Web links

Commons : Saba  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikivoyage: Saba  - travel guide

• Public Entity Saba. Official website of the government of Saba.
• Saba Tourist Bureau welcomes you to the island of Saba. Saba Tourist Bureau website.
• Saba University School of Medicine. Official website (English).
• Saba Conservation Foundation - Preserving Saba's natural and cultural heritage. Saba Conservation Foundation website.
• Anna Rojer: Biological Inventory of Saba - results. ( Memento from July 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Inventory of the flora and fauna of Saba. November 1997, archived from the original on July 17, 2009.
• Dawn II - The Saba Ferry Schedule. Website of the operator of the ferry connection Saba – Sint Maarten (English).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Invoeringswet openbare lichamen Bonaire, Sint Eustatius en Saba (Law on Public Administration Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba). Hoofdstuk 2b. De taal in het bestuurlijk verkeer (Chapter 2b. The language in administrative dealings). In: Overheid.nl. Nederlandse Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, accessed on November 1, 2017 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Caribbean Netherlands; gross domestic product (GDP). In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), December 12, 2019, accessed on June 20, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Country code top-level domain. Current ccTLDs. In: ICANNWiki. Retrieved November 1, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Internetextensie .AN as of July 31, definitely uit de lucht. In: Versgeperst.com. July 7, 2015, archived from the original on July 8, 2015 ; Retrieved November 9, 2017 (Dutch). 
5. ↑ Stephen R. Conn: What's Up On Saba? Tiny Caribbean Island Has Few People But Lots Of Vertical Adventure. In: Chicago Tribune . Tribune Company , March 14, 1993, accessed November 1, 2017.
6. ↑ Francis Vierbergen (ed.): Geo data 2001 Saba & Sint Eustatius - Socio-economic aspects placed in a spatial context . Central Bureau of Statistics, Willemstad May 2007, p. 17 , Table 1: Population by gender, sex ratio and zone, Saba (English, online [PDF; 1,2 MB ; accessed on November 1, 2017]).
7. ^ ^{A b} Visitor Information - The Nature of Saba . Saba Conservation Foundation, The Bottom (English, online [PDF; 310 kB ; accessed on November 1, 2017]).
8. ↑ Anna Rojer: Biological Inventory of Saba - results. The Fauna - Amphibians and Reptiles. November 1997, archived from the original on July 17, 2009 ; accessed on November 1, 2017 (English). 
9. ^ Robert Powell, Robert W. Henderson: Conservation Status of Lesser Antillean Reptiles . In: Iguana - Conservation, Natural History, and Husbandry of Reptiles . tape 12 , no. 2 . International Reptile Conservation Foundation, June 2005, pp. 62–77 (English, available online from ircf.org [PDF; 2.5 MB ; accessed on November 1, 2017]).
10. ↑ Study reveals large number of new bird species for the island of Saba. In: naturetoday.com. Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance, May 8, 2019, accessed November 4, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Nederland is a nationaal park rijker: Mount Scenery. In: bonaire.nu. Bonaire Nieuws, December 31, 2018, accessed March 27, 2019 (Dutch). 
12. ^ Caribbean Netherlands; population, sex, age and country of birth. In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), June 5, 2020, accessed on June 16, 2020 (English). 
13. ^ Caribbean Netherlands; Religious denomination, personal characteristics. In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), April 4, 2019, accessed on June 20, 2020 . 
14. ↑ Francis Vierbergen (ed.): Geo data 2001 Saba & Sint Eustatius - Socio-economic aspects placed in a spatial context . Central Bureau of Statistics, Willemstad May 2007, 1: population issues of Saba, p. 20–21 , 1.4: Religion (English, online [PDF; 1,2 MB ; accessed on June 20, 2020]).
15. ^ Caribbean Netherlands; Spoken languages ​​and main language, characteristics. In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), April 4, 2019, accessed on June 20, 2020 . 
16. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Visitor Information - History of Saba . Saba Conservation Foundation, The Bottom (English, online [PDF; 163 kB ; accessed on November 1, 2017]).
17. ↑ The Netherlands Antilles dissolved. In: eurotopics . Federal Agency for Civic Education , October 11, 2010, archived from the original on July 20, 2011 ; accessed on November 1, 2017 . 
18. ↑ How does the conversion to the US dollar work? In: Frequently asked questions. De Nederlandsche Bank - Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba, archived from the original on July 20, 2011 ; accessed on November 1, 2017 (English). 
19. ↑ The Ladder. In: beautiful-saba.nl. Retrieved August 8, 2019 (Dutch). 
20. ↑ Haro Hielkema: Antilles Island Saba: de keerzijde van een 'rijbewijsparadijs'. In: trouw.nl. May 1, 1992, accessed August 21, 2019 (Dutch). 
21. ↑ Jeannette van Ditzhuijzen: Universiteit voor alternatief rijbewijstoerisme. In: trouw.nl. January 11, 1996, accessed August 21, 2019 (Dutch). 
22. ↑ Tourist information. In: saba-news.com. Retrieved June 20, 2020 (English). 
23. ^ Caribbean Netherlands; import and export values ​​per island. In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), May 12, 2020, accessed on June 20, 2020 . 
24. ↑ Will Johnson: Captain Leo Chance Pier. In: thesabaislander.com. November 3, 2018, accessed December 17, 2018 . 
25. ↑ Decommissioned daughter boat ERIKA on the way to the Caribbean. Press release of the German Society for the Rescue of Shipwrecked People. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013 ; accessed on November 1, 2017 . 
26. ^ Welcome to Saba Electric Company. In: powerupsaba.com. Saba Electric Company NV, accessed June 20, 2020 . 
27. ↑ Power Plant on Fort Bay goes offline; new state-of-the-art plant goes live. In: sxm-talks.com. February 9, 2016, accessed June 20, 2020 . 
28. ^ Caribbean Netherlands; connections and production of electricity and water. In: StatLine. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), 23 August 2019, accessed on 20 June 2020 . 

Coordinates: 17 ° 38 ′ 13 ″  N , 63 ° 13 ′ 26 ″  W.