(Reproduced from the Princess Cruises "Adventures Ashore" port guide)
Christopher Columbus has traditionally been given credit for discovering St. Lucia in 1502, but some relatively new theories challenge this view.
According to one, Juan de la Cosa, a lieutenant under Columbus, discovered the island in 1499. Another version attributes the find to a group of shipwrecked French sailors who allegedly landed here on December 13, 1502, the feast day of St. Lucia on a Vatican globe dated 1502.
At any rate, during the next 300 years, St. Lucia was alternately occupied by British and French forces as they battled on land and sea for control of the West Indies.
In 1802, the Treaty of Paris established France's sovereignty over the island, but by the following year, the two nations were at war again. The 1814 Treaty of Paris ceded St. Lucia to Britain, and the island remained a British possession until 1967, when it became a self-governing associate state of Great Britain. In February 1979, St. Lucia became an independent nation within the British Common-wealth.
A couple of pictures of St. Lucia