Diamond Rock
Rocher du Diamant
Interesting facts
- The British first occupied the rock in late 1803 from HMS Centaur, and Hood formally entered it in the navy's books as a sloop of war on 7 February 1804.
- Sailors hauled two 18-pounder cannons up to the summit on lines run from their ship, a feat of rigging rather than road-building.
- One 24-pounder, called Hood's Battery, was mounted in a cave about halfway up the cliff face.
- The garrison kept a small herd of goats and flocks of guinea fowl and chickens, slept in caves and ran a hospital in a cave at the base.
- To stave off scurvy the men gathered grass and callaloo leaves growing on the rock.
- For about 17 months the guns of the rock harassed French shipping trying to reach Fort-de-France.
- During the 1805 siege the garrison's stone cistern had cracked in an earth tremor, leaving the defenders short of water as well as ammunition.
- The 107 survivors were taken prisoner, and the court martial that followed cleared Maurice and praised his defence.
- When Martinique was handed back to France in 1815, Diamond Rock went with it.
- Divers explore a deep triangular underwater cavern off the rock, and a French cannon that tumbled from the summit has been recovered from the seabed.
Why it is worth it
Diamond Rock is a sheer, 175-metre block of basalt rising straight out of the Caribbean off the south-west coast of Martinique, so steep-sided that from the shore it looks like a cut gem set on the water. It is a volcanic plug, the hardened core of a vent left behind by the intense volcanic activity that shaped this part of the Lesser Antilles about a million years ago, and it covers just over five hectares. The rock lies about two kilometres from Pointe du Diamant, south of the long beach of Grande Anse du Diamant, at the northern end of the Saint Lucia Channel.
That position gave the island an unlikely naval career. In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, Commodore Sir Samuel Hood landed a garrison on the rock and commissioned it as a "stone frigate", HMS Diamond Rock. Under Lieutenant James Wilkes Maurice, about 120 men hauled heavy guns to the summit and into batteries at the base, commanding the channel between Martinique and Saint Lucia. Royal Navy ships passing the rock were expected to salute it as if it were a commissioned vessel. In May 1805 a Franco-Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve, on its way to the campaign that ended at Trafalgar, attacked with two ships of the line, a frigate, a corvette, a schooner and eleven gunboats. After more than two weeks of bombardment, Maurice surrendered on 3 June 1805, having lost two men killed against far heavier French losses. France held the rock until the British recaptured it in 1809.
Today the rock is left to wildlife. It is recognised as an Important Bird Area for nesting brown boobies, brown noddies and bridled terns, and it shelters the couresse grass snake, which has been extinct on mainland Martinique since 1962 and survives on the rock.
Getting there
Diamond Rock lies offshore from the commune of Le Diamant on Martinique's south-west coast, about 2 km from Pointe du Diamant. The nearest larger town listed for the area is Ducos, about 16 km away, and the nearest airport is Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport (FDF), about 17 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Diamond Rock is a 175-meter-high (574-foot) basalt island located south of "Grande Anse du Diamant" before arriving from the south at Fort-de-France, the main port of the Caribbean island of Martinique. The uninhabited island is about 2 kilometres from Pointe Diamant and its area is 5.3 ha.
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