A Forked Volcano with Many Names

Île Fourchue — also written Île Fourche and known in English as Fork Island — takes its name from the way the bay clefts into its southeastern side, a shape so striking that the island was once nicknamed after a split or "forked" hoof. Before that it carried a different identity: seen from afar, the five hilltops look like separate landmasses on the horizon, so sailors called it Five Islands, and the Swedes who once ruled Saint-Barthélemy rendered it as Cing-Îles. The highest of those five peaks stands 103 metres above the sea.↗↗

Underneath the scrub, Fourchue is the remnant of ancient submarine volcanism, ash and lapilli welded into rock and laced with old lava flows. That horseshoe bay you anchor in is widely described as the flooded rim of an extinct caldera — meaning a snorkel around the point is, quite literally, a swim inside a drowned volcano.↗↗

For all its drama, the island has no permanent residents and no facilities of any kind: no water, no shade structures, no restrooms. It is privately owned, and people are welcome ashore only because its owners allow it — the land itself sits outside the marine reserve's protected status. A smaller dependency, the 1.3-hectare Petite Islette off the southwest tip, is recognised as an Important Bird Area.↗↗

An Island Reborn from Goats

The most interesting thing about Fourchue is quietly botanical. The island was used as a goat pen in the 18th century, the animals went feral, and for roughly two centuries they browsed the vegetation down to almost nothing. Botanical surveys recorded 38 plant species in 1980 but only 16 by 2001. The private owners then ran a capture campaign in 2003–04 and cleared every goat from the island.↗

What grew back is dry-country vegetation — Turk's-cap cactus, sea grape, the endemic Agave karatto and the IUCN-listed endangered lignum vitae — and the species count climbed to 89 by 2018. The green haze you see rising from the hills as you approach is therefore about twenty years old, a recovery story you can actually witness from the deck of an anchored boat.↗

A Strange Human Past

For a rock nobody really settled, Fourchue has packed in an improbable amount of history. The earliest claims of ownership date to the 1770s, and around 1790 a Swedish-era merchant named Aaron Ahman built a house here — the only one the island ever had, of which a buried cistern still survives ashore for the curious walker to find.↗↗

In the early 1800s the sheltered bay became a rendezvous for pirates, privateers and slave ships, and a transfer point for contraband arms and gunpowder bound for Spain's rebellious colonies — a "swarm of hornets" that the under-resourced Swedish governors quietly profited from. The island was also the self-imposed exile of Balthazar Biguard, a Marseille refugee of the French Revolution who lived here apart from the world until his death in 1827 and was buried on the rock. Later, unsubstantiated rumours even placed wartime U-boats in the same quiet bay.↗↗

What to Do: Snorkel, Dive and Climb

Day trips reach Fourchue by boat, and it sits comfortably within reach of Gustavia — roughly a 15-minute ride from the capital's harbour for divers and charter crews alike. The protected bay acts as a nursery for marine life, and the reef here is part of a marine park that protects 183 recorded fish species and 51 coral species, among the richest in the French Antilles.↗↗↗

In the water, the headline encounters are turtles: green and hawksbill turtles are frequent throughout the reserve, and snorkellers and divers also report stingrays, nurse sharks, moray eels and endless schools of angelfish and parrotfish around the coral gardens. Divers descend along lines onto reefs of separate rock pinnacles stitched together by sandy corridors, in clear water suitable for all levels.↗↗↗

On land, the activity is hiking — the rough, unmanicured end of it. There is no official trail; you pick your own line up through the dry scrub to one of the peaks, where a short climb rewards you with a 360° panorama framing both Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy against open ocean. If you come in the spring, keep an eye on the water for migrating humpback whales, and at sunset the bay earns its reputation as one of the northeastern Caribbean's most photographed uninhabited anchorages.↗↗↗↗

Know Before You Go

This is a primitive stop, and the charter crews who bring guests here stress exactly that: there is no service of any kind, the walking is genuinely rough underfoot, and visitors who arrive expecting a beach club tend to be disappointed. Go in the morning while it is cool, walk the hills, then come back to the boat and spend the afternoon in the water.↗

Pack for self-sufficiency — drinking water (the island has no springs), sturdy shoes for the loose, rocky ground, sun cover you can carry since the scrub gives no shade, a mask for the snorkelling, and a bag to carry all your rubbish back out. Nothing leaves the island: collecting coral, plants, shells or crustaceans is prohibited, as is touching protected marine species such as turtles and rays, and feeding animals.↗↗

If you are arriving under sail or power, the reserve's rules apply in Fourchue's bay: a maximum speed of 5 knots, ecological mooring buoys strongly recommended, vessels over 25 metres not authorised, and anchoring limited to a maximum stay before you must leave the reserve. Dogs are not permitted. A little local wildlife warning is worth noting too — the island's feral goats are gone, but the resident reptiles include the endemic Lesser Antillean iguana, and visitors who explore the peaks should respect the seabirds that nest on these rocks.↗↗↗