This is a place of death, decay and despair. The island is now badly eroded being only one sixth the size it was when the island & Fort were named in honour of James VIIth King of Scots (=James IInd of England). The fort is crumbling, the old Baobab trees are slowly dying & the island's well has dried up.

It is however not the current demise of the island but rather its history which makes this a terrible place. On this island slaves were shackled & "stored" prior to being shipped to the Americas & Europe. The slaves were purchased/bartered in exchange for european manufactured goods (such as cloth, knife-blades, copper utensils, muskets, etc) -primarily from local chieftains. The slaves were then shipped across the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic to the Americas where they were sold in exchange for raw goods such as sugar, cotton & tobacco leaf. These raw materials were then shipped back to Europe where they were exchanged for manufactured goods -completing the final limb of a lucrative triangular trade.