British Virgin Islands Population, Main Cities and Geography

By | January 27, 2023

British Virgin Islands: population

Population

Population

According to Countryaah website, Slightly less than 30,000 people live in the British Virgin Islands, the vast majority of whom are on the island of Tortola. The population density is about 199/km².

Age distribution

About 22% belong to the population group of 0 to 14 year olds.

About 73% belong to the group of 15 to 64 year olds and

about 5% belong to the group of people who are 65 years old or older.

The birth rate of 15 people per 1,000 residents contrasts with a death rate of 4.46 per 1,000. This results in a population growth of 1.97%. The literacy of the country’s population is 97.8%.

Religions

The predominant religion is Protestant Christianity, to which about 86% of the population profess. These are divided into a wide variety of Protestant currents (33% Methodists, 17% Anglicans, 9% members of God’s Church, 6% Seven-Day Adventists, 4% Baptists, 2% Jehovah’s Witnesses and 15% others). 10% of the population profess Roman Catholic Christianity. 2% belong to other religions and another 2% are non-denominational.

Ethnic groups

The vast majority of the population, around 84%, is of West African and therefore black ancestry. About 7% belong to white races and 5.5% to mixed races. 3.5% of the country’s population come from the East Indian region.

National languages

English is the official language and the language of communication. In normal everyday life, however, a form of Creole is also spoken. German language skills are hardly to be expected.

Road Town, Spanish Town

Road Town

The capital Road Town, which is located on the island of Tortola, has a population of around 9,500. This means that Road Town is also the largest city in the British Virgin Islands.

Spanish Town

The second largest city in the island kingdom is Spanish Town on Virgin Gorda, where around 2,000 people have settled.

British Virgin Islands: geography, map

Islands

The British Virgin Islands, which belong to the group of the Leeward Islands (in the eastern Caribbean), are a 151 km² island kingdom consisting of around 60 tropical islands. Some of the islands are up to 20 km long and some are tiny. Only 16 of them are actually inhabited. Most of the islands are of volcanic origin and are quite hilly. Only Anegada differs geologically from the other islands, because this island consists primarily of coral stone. The tiny islands in the south of the archipelago are delimited from the larger ones in the north by the Francis Drake Channel. Check topmbadirectory for politics, flags, famous people, animals and plants of British Virgin Islands.

The four main islands are

Tortola

The main island of the British Virgin Islands is 54 km² in size. About 14,000 people live on the 20 km long and 5 km wide island, on which the capital Road Town is located.

With the 521 m high Mount Sage, the island has the highest point in the Virgin Islands. The remains of primeval rainforests on Tortola are also interesting.

Virgin Gorda,

the third largest island, covers an area of 21 km² and is a major tourist destination of the Virgin Islands because of its interesting geological formations.

The highest point on the island is the 418 m high Gorfa Peak.

Around 3,950 people live on the island.

Anegada

The second largest island is the only coral and limestone island and also the flattest of the British Virgin Islands.

It is 38 km² and is populated by about 200 people.

Jost Van Dyke

The smallest of the four main islands at 8 km² is of volcanic origin and very hilly. The highest point on the island is Rouch Hill, 312 meters high.

About 260 people live on the island.

Other islands

In the following, all islands of the British Virgin Islands are listed by name, with the four largest already shown at the end of the table and shown in bold letters:

Beef Isla Bellamy Cay Buck Isla Carvel rock Cockroach Isla
Cooper Island ** Dead Chest Cay Dead Chest Isla Diamond Cay Dog Islands
Drowned Isla East Seal Dog Isla Eustatia Isla Fall Jerusalem Isla Frenchman’s Cay
George Dog Isla Ginger Isla Great Camanoe Great Dog Isla Great thatch
Great Tobago Isla Green Cay Guana Isla Indians, The Little Anegada
Little Camanoe Little Cay Little Jost Van Dyke Little Seal Dog Isla Little Sisters
Little Thatch Little Tobago Little Wickmans Cay Marina Cay Mosquito Isla
Nanny Cay Necker Isla Norman Isla Old Jerusalem Isla Oyster rock
Pelican Isla Peter Isla Prickly Pear Round skirt Salt Isla
Sandy Cay Sandy Spit Scrub Isla Spanish Isla West Dog Isla
Whale rock Anegada Jost Van Dyke Tortola Virgin Gorda

** In 2007 a German couple anchored their sailing boat in a bay on the island. While the man stayed on board, his wife Brigitte B. from Berlin went for a walk.

On this walk she disappeared without a trace and never reappeared. Even the Berlin police had made an unsuccessful investigation.

Borders, coasts and area

The British Virgin Islands are an island kingdom in the Atlantic Ocean.

You therefore have no national borders with other countries.

But they have a coastline that has a total length of 80 kilometers. In the north lies the North Atlantic Ocean and in the south the Caribbean Sea spreads out.

They cover a total area of 151 km². Of this, 20% is arable land (arable land) and 17% is permanent crops.

Export goods The

main export hits of the British Virgin Islands are fish, fruit, vegetables, rum as well as sand and gravel. Most of these goods go to the American Virgin Islands (USA), Puerto Rico and the United States.

Longitude and latitude

The British Virgin Islands extend over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):

Δφ = from 18 ° 23 ‘to 18 ° 45’ north latitude Δλ = from 64 ° 18 ‘to 64 ° 48’ west longitude

You can find detailed information on this subject under Longitude and Latitude.

Legal time

For the British Virgin Islands, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time without summer time. A minus sign means that it is earlier there and a plus sign that it is later than after CET:

Δt (CET) = – 5 h

More detailed explanations of the time can be found under: Time zones, time.

Highest point of the sun in Road Town

Road Town lies at a north latitude of around φ = 18.5 °.

If the declination δ of the sun has the value of 18.5 ° N, and thus the image point of the sun is exactly above the city or island, the sun is perpendicular there. This happens exactly twice a year, roughly 19 days before June 21st and then again 19 days after June 21st (for details, see the highest solar levels).

Attention

If the image point of the sun and thus the declination δ is north of the latitude of Road Town, the sun is not in the south at noon, as in our latitudes, but in the north. However, this is only the case for a little over one month a year. In this case, the sun moves from east to north to west, where it then sets.

Mountains, elevations

The British Virgin Islands are mostly hilly, with only the coral island of Tortola rising a little in sea level.

Mount Sage

The highest mountain of Tortola and of the entire island kingdom is the 521 meter high Mount Sage, a volcanic elevation in the southwest of the island’s capital Road Town.

Rouch Hill

Another notable elevation is the 312 meter high Rouch Hill on the island of Jost Van Dyke.

rivers and lakes

The British Virgin Islands have very limited freshwater resources. There are some small rivers, but these dry out in the summer. The largest island, Tortola, has a few springs. The main part of the fresh and drinking water supply of the island kingdom is obtained from wells and from areas with a lot of rainwater.

In the west of the island of Anegada there are still some salt lakes.

Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean

The British Virgin Islands are located on the eastern border of the Caribbean to the Atlantic, which means that the North Atlantic Ocean is in the north and the Caribbean Sea expands in the south.

Atlantic Ocean

With an area of around 106 million km², the Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean in the world after the Pacific. It separates America from Europe and Africa. At 9,220 m, it has its deepest point in Milwaukeetief – part of the Puerto Rico trench. Its salt content is on average 3.54% (g/l). Its water volume is approx. 355 million km³.

Coming from the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream crosses the Atlantic to the coast of Norway and has a major impact on the climate in Western and Northern Europe. A detailed description of the Atlantic Ocean here >>>

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a marginal sea of the Atlantic and lies between the islands of the Caribbean and the American continent. In the west, Mexico and other Central American states border the Caribbean. In the south of Colombia and Venezuela. The border in the east and north form the following islands or archipelagos starting from Venezuela in a semi-circle to the “actual” Atlantic:

Trinidad and Tabago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba. The shortest distance from Cuba to Key West/USA is around 165 km.

The deepest point in the Caribbean is the Cayman Rift between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with a depth of 7,680 m.

Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean forms the “American Mediterranean”.

British Virgin Islands Population