<P> The Irish constituted the largest proportion of the white population from the founding of the colony in 1628 . Many were indentured labourers; others were merchants or plantation owners . The geographer Thomas Jeffrey claimed in The West India Atlas (1780) that the majority of those on Montserrat were either Irish or of Irish descent, "so that the use of the Irish language is preserved on the island, even among the Negroes". </P> <P> African slaves and Irish colonists of all classes were in constant contact, with sexual relationships being common and a population of mixed descent appearing as a consequence . The Irish were also prominent in Caribbean commerce, with their merchants importing Irish goods such as beef, pork, butter and herring, and also importing slaves . </P> <P> There is indirect evidence that the use of the Irish language continued in Montserrat until at least the middle of the nineteenth century . The Kilkenny diarist and Irish scholar Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin noted in 1831 that he had heard that Irish was still spoken in Montserrat by both black and white inhabitants . A letter by W.F. Butler in The Atheneum (15 July 1905) quotes an account by a Cork civil servant, C. Cremen, of what he had heard from a retired sailor called John O'Donovan, a fluent Irish speaker: </P> <P> He frequently told me that in the year 1852, when mate of the brig Kaloolah, he went ashore on the island of Montserrat which was then out of the usual track of shipping . He said he was much surprised to hear the negroes actually talking Irish among themselves, and that he joined in the conversation...</P>

Island in the west indies north of st martin