Lesser Antilles
The
Lesser Antilles are part of the
Antilles, which together with the
Bahamas form the
West Indies. They are a long chain of islands, wrapped around the eastern end of the
Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the
Atlantic Ocean. The Lesser Antilles are (generally from north to south): the
US Virgin Islands,
British Virgin Islands,
Anguilla (Br.),
Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Antigua and Barbuda,
Montserrat (Br.),
Guadeloupe (Fr.),
Dominica,
Martinique (Fr.),
Saint Lucia,
Barbados,
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,
Grenada,
Trinidad and Tobago, the islands off the coast of
Venezuela, the
Netherlands Antilles and
Aruba (Neth.).
The islands of Bonaire and Curaçao, Sint Eustatius, Saba and the southern part of Saint Martin, form the Netherlands Antilles, with the first two located off the Venezuelan coast and the latter three located in the northeastern corner of the Caribbean.
The Lesser Antilles can be divided into the Windward in the south and the Leeward Islands in the north. However, the Netherlands Antilles are divided into the groups in the northeast and the southwest, with different naming conventions, see Netherlands Antilles.
More westward are the Cayman Islands (Br.) and the Turks and Caicos Islands (Br.).