ABSTRACT
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Caribbean Sea was a uniting medium for the Caribs, Arawaks and Amerindian people as they travelled via canoe to and fro a polyglot of islands in search of food, trade and community. The region also served as a pleasure periphery and a space of convalescence for many of the region’s colonisers. Goulbourne (2009, p. xiv) recalls that the Caribbean was “a significant destination for the world’s population: for settlement, colonisation, nativising, and of course, for visits and for gazing.” The pre and immediate post independence era also witnessed increasing migration among Caribbean nationals travelling within the archipelago in search of family and most notably employment and improved quality of life (Thomas-Hope, 2001; 2009). This mobility was mainly by sea, using commercial shipping.
