It was not until 1717 that, acting under instructions from the Danish West Indian Company, Governor Erik Bredal—arriving in an armed vessel carrying five soldiers with an officer, sixteen negro slaves, and twenty planters—set the flag of Denmark on St. John’s soil and, having duly fired a salute and drunk the king’s health, erected a fort overlooking Coral Bay. But while the little garrison remained loyally to guard this addition to the Danish possessions, the faint-hearted planters withdrew to the more secure shores of St. Thomas until it might be seen how the dreaded British would take the move. And they had not long to wait. No sooner was word carried to the Leeward Islands that the Danes had had the temerity to place their flag upon a fort on St. John than a man-of-war was despatched to St. Thomas, demanding, with dire threats, that the Danes at once withdraw their claims and abandon the fort. But, apparently, stout old Governor Bredal had inherited some of the Viking spirit as well as blood, and instead of meekly acceding to the British demands he promptly sent to Denmark a request for one hundred soldiers to augment his little garrison on St. John. With this reinforcement the Danes felt quite secure, and by 1720 thirty-nine planters were established on the island. From this nucleus the colony rapidly grew, for the land was fertile and the grants given the settlers were larger than in St. Thomas. By 1733, or only thirteen years after the first real settlement was established, St. John had a population of nearly thirteen hundred, of whom two hundred were whites and the other one thousand and eighty-seven negro slaves. Oddly enough, these settlers were not Danes but Dutch, and to-day the majority of local names and the family names of the few remaining inhabitants are largely Dutch. But in that same year, 1733, other and more serious troubles than the British beset the islanders, for in November the inhuman treatment accorded the slaves resulted in a bloody revolt. And if we look at the old records we can scarcely blame the negroes, and can almost forgive the fiendish savagery with which they carried on their hopeless struggle for freedom.