Charlotte Amalie, located on St. Thomas, is the capital and the largest town of the United States Virgin Islands. It is the anchor of the subdistrict of Charlotte Amalie that is composed of the town of Charlotte Amalie, the census-designated place of Charlotte Amalie West, and the CDP of Charlotte Amalie East. It was founded in 1666 as Taphus. In 1691, the town was renamed to Charlotte Amalie after the Danish queen Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel. It has a deep-water harbor that was once a haven for pirates and is now one of the busiest ports of call for cruise ships in the Caribbean, with about 1.5 million-plus cruise ship passengers landing there annually. Protected by Hassel Island, the harbor has docking and fueling facilities, machine shops, and shipyards and was a U.S. submarine base until 1966. The town has been inhabited for centuries. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493, the area was inhabited by Caribs, Arawaks, Ciboney and Taíno native peoples. It is on the southern shore at the head of Saint Thomas Harbor. In 2020 the subdistrict of Charlotte Amalie had a population of 14,477 which makes it the most densly populated area in the Virgin Islands Archipelago with the town of Charlotte Amalie as the anchor of "the City". Hundreds of ferries and yachts pass by the town each week.
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