Greetings From Bloody Bay!

Negril, Jamaica is a very small but widely dispersed beach resort town located across parts of two Jamaican parishes. Negril’s beach, also called Seven Mile Beach, has been rated as one of the top ten beaches in the world by many travel magazines. The sand is pure and white while the water is clear and turquoise. The beach’s length is the stuff of legends – it is actually a little more than four miles in length, but tourists and travel writers insist on the “seven mile” label given to it many years ago.

Negril, September 1984

The name Negril is a shortened version of Negrillo (Spanish: Little Black Ones), as it was originally named by the Spanish in 1494. The name is thought by some to be a reference to the black cliffs south of the village. Another theory holds that because there was a vast population of black eels along Negril’s coast, the Spaniards called the area Anguila Negra which was shortened to Negrillo and then to Negril.

At the north end of Seven Mile Beach is a little bay called Bloody Bay. Although pirates used this stretch of beach  to come ashore, the “bloody” label is actually a reference to when Negril was just a whaling port and fishing village on the west end of Jamaica.