A unique island in a vital waterway
Navassa Island is a small uninhabited island in the Jamaica Channel of the Caribbean Sea about 90 nautical miles south of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, about 30 nautical miles west of Haiti, and about 60 nautical miles northeast of Jamaica.
It is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States, but is also claimed by Haiti.
It was discovered during Christopher Columbus’ voyage of 1504.
Despite a claim by Haiti dating back to 1801, the island was claimed in 1857 for the United States by Peter Duncan.
His claim was based on the Guano Islands Act of 1856, providing a basis of US annexation of uninhabited islands containing commercial deposits of guano (i.e., bird shit).
Guano was mined on the island from 1865 to 1898.
During that time, guano was a major source of phosphate and nitrate for fertilizer.
The mining was primarily done by black laborers from Baltimore, with a small number of white supervisors.
Pay was low and conditions were hard.
In 1889, a violent labor dispute resulted in the death of five supervisors.
Eighteen of the workers were returned to Baltimore, tried, and convicted of murder.
Following a grass-roots petition drive, President Benjamin Harrison commuted the death sentences to imprisonment.
The guano-mining company went bankrupt with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898.
With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, vessel traffic in the area increased dramatically.
The US Lighthouse Service constructed and operated a lighthouse on Navassa Island to improve safety for passing vessels.
The lighthouse was automated and the light keepers removed in 1929.
The light was eventually dismantled in 1996, whereupon administration of the island was transferred to the Department of the Interior.
The island is now a National Wildlife Refuge and is considered to be a center of Caribbean biodiversity.
Haitian fishermen occasionally fish in offshore waters.
Rumors have it that drug smugglers use the island as a drop-spot.
The native birds, meanwhile, are slowly rebuilding the guano deposits.