The Banana Islands are one of Sierra Leone's hidden treasures: a small archipelago of turquoise water, forest and fishing villages off the southern tip of the Freetown Peninsula. Their name, which recalls the curved shape of the islands or the bananas that used to grow there, hides a place of quiet beauty and deep history, where snorkelling among shipwrecks sits alongside the ruins of a past tied to the slave trade.
The archipelago is made up of three islands. Dublin and Ricketts are inhabited and joined by an unusual stone causeway you can walk across from one to the other, while Mes-Meheux is uninhabited. Dublin and Ricketts were settled by liberated Africans returning from the Americas, and many of today's residents are their descendants. Under the palm trees you'll find historic churches, colonial tombs and the memory of the time when the islands were a hub of the slave trade.
This guide explains how to visit the Banana Islands: how to get to Kent by road and cross by boat, where to sleep and eat, how to dive and snorkel at the best spot in the country, which ruins and stories to discover, and how to combine the trip with the peninsula's beaches. A remote, authentic destination, perfect if you're looking for nature, diving and history away from the crowds.
The Banana Islands (Dublin, Ricketts and Mes-Meheux) were, together with Bunce Island, one of the hubs of the slave trade in the region. In the mid-18th century the English slave trader James Cleveland settled there, and the area came under the influence of the powerful Caulker dynasty. Between 1747 and 1807, captives were gathered and chained on Dublin before being sent to Bunce to be shipped to the Americas. In 1820 the islands were incorporated into the colony of Sierra Leone and settled by liberated Africans. Today they are a quiet destination for fishing, diving and historical memory.
Read the full history ↓In the estuary of the Sierra Leone River, the Banana Islands invite you to switch off, while the ruins on Bunce Island keep the memory of the Atlantic slave trade.
Read the history of The islands of the estuary →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Banana Islands are a small archipelago off the southern tip of the Freetown Peninsula, in Yawri Bay, a short distance from the coast. There are three islands: Dublin and Ricketts, both inhabited and joined by an isthmus, or stone causeway, that you can walk across from one to the other; and Mes-Meheux, uninhabited and privately owned, which can only be visited on organised trips. Covered in forest and fringed by turquoise water, the group is one of the most beautiful and peaceful corners of the country.
No one is quite sure where the name 'Banana' comes from. Some put it down to the long, curved shape of the archipelago, which is said to look like a banana; others to the banana trees that grew on the islands. Whatever the reason, the name was fixed on colonial maps and has lasted to this day. Curiously, the main island, Dublin, has an Irish name, a sign of the tangled history of European contact along this coast.
Beneath their look of a peaceful paradise, the islands hold a dense and often dark history. Their strategic position off the mouth of the estuary and along the shipping routes made them, as early as the 18th century, a key point in Atlantic trade, including the most terrible trade of all: the trade in human beings.
In the mid-18th century, two European figures settled in this part of the Sierra Leonean coast and shaped its history: James Cleveland, who eventually settled on the Banana Islands, and Skinner Caulker, who stayed on the mainland, in the Kagboro area, near present-day Shenge. Both worked their way into local networks of power and trade, including the slave trade, through alliances and marriages with ruling African families.
The powerful Caulker dynasty, which still has a presence in Shenge, descended from Thomas Corker, a young Englishman who came to Sherbro from London in 1684 to work for the Royal African Company. Corker rose to become chief agent in 1692 and married a princess of the Ya Kumba family, who ruled the shores of Yawri Bay. That union between European trade and local nobility gave rise to an Afro-European dynasty that controlled much of the coast and its lucrative trade for generations.
The Banana Islands were caught up in the rivalries between these powers. There were wars, beheadings and shows of force: in 1785, during one of these disputes, an army was sent to nearby Plantain Island and chief Charles Caulker was beheaded; when the Caulkers regrouped and struck back in 1798, the islands returned to the control of chief Stephen Caulker. It was a violent world in which the slave trade and local politics were closely intertwined.
The darkest chapter in the history of the Banana Islands is their role in the transatlantic slave trade. Between roughly 1747 and 1807, traders who bought captives from warring tribes on the mainland gathered them on Dublin Island, where they were chained and held prisoner until it was time to move them. From there, this 'human cargo' was taken to nearby Bunce Island, the great slave castle of the Freetown estuary, which shipped them to the West Indies and the North American colonies.
In this way, the Banana Islands were one more cog in the slave-trade machinery of West Africa's 'Rice Coast', alongside Bunce and Plantain Island. Thousands of Africans passed through Dublin on their terrible journey into slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. The scars of that history are still visible on the islands: rusty cannons, ruins and colonial graves hidden among the vegetation, silent witnesses to that atrocious trade.
Britain's abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the founding of the Colony of Sierra Leone in Freetown changed the fate of the region. The Royal Navy began hunting down slave ships, and the old slave-trading order on the coast went into decline. A new chapter was opening for the Banana Islands, one marked, paradoxically, by the arrival of free Africans.
Stephen Caulker's son ruled from 1810 to 1820. In that final year, 1820, the Banana Islands were incorporated into the British Colony of Sierra Leone, and the Caulker family moved its base to the mainland, where it established the chiefdom of Bumpe (Bompeh) in the south-centre of the country. Once part of the colony, the islands came into the orbit of the great project under way in Freetown: the resettlement of Africans freed from slave ships.
Dublin and Ricketts were settled by former slaves returning from the Americas and by 'recaptured' and liberated Africans, many of them Christian and literate, who rebuilt their lives as fishermen and farmers. Many of the islands' current residents descend from those free settlers, which gives the island communities a direct link to the history of abolition and the Atlantic diaspora, the same story told in Freetown and on Bunce.
That heritage shows in the islands' churches: the old Zion Free Church, the fruit of Methodist and Anglican cooperation, and the newer, smaller St Luke's, a Catholic church built in 2011. All that remains of the original church is its old bell, cast in England in 1881, which now hangs from a tree. For generations, the islands lived in quiet obscurity, far from the bustle of the mainland.
Today the Banana Islands are one of Sierra Leone's most appealing and authentic destinations: a tropical archipelago where natural beauty and historical memory go hand in hand. Their turquoise waters offer the best diving and snorkelling in the country (colourful reefs and several shipwrecks, including one from 1747 with large cannons and anchors), while their forests hide colonial ruins, cannons, graves and the old churches that speak of their past.
Travellers can stay in simple guesthouses such as Daltons or at Bafa Resort, with its safari-style tents over the water, and spend their days diving, snorkelling, walking the stone isthmus that links Dublin and Ricketts, exploring the ruins with a local guide and sharing the quiet life of the fishing villages. You get there by boat from the village of Kent, at the southern tip of the peninsula, after a short but scenic crossing.
Far from the crowds and with hardly any infrastructure, the Banana Islands keep a remote, genuine character. They combine the appeal of a turquoise-water paradise with the weight of a deep history: that of the slave trade, abolition and the communities of liberated Africans who rebuilt their lives here. In many ways, they are a small-scale version of Sierra Leone's whole Atlantic story.
