The Saba population is from all over the world. The island’s small size resulted in a small number of island families who can trace their family name back to six other families on the island. This means that many of the family names are the same – the most common names being Hassell and Johnson. Most families have Dutch, Scottish and African heritage.
The residents also descend from the Irish, who were exiled by King Charlies I of England in 1625 after he transferred their property to his Scottish nobles.
Since the opening of the university school for medicine, there have been around 250 residents, including the university’s teachers and students.
Religious affiliation
58% Roman Catholic,
14% Protestant
22% belong to other religious communities, such as Islam, Judaism and the seven days of Adventists
National languages
The national languages on Saba are Dutch, Papiamentu – a Creole language and English
Main place
The main town of Saba is The Bottom – with around 600 residents.
Saba: geography
Area and boundaries
The island of Saba covers an area of 13 km², it is around 5.1 km long and on average 4.3 km wide. The island is the smallest of the former Netherlands Antilles and belongs to the archipelago of the Leeward Islands. Most of the island consists of the extinct volcano Mount Scenery. Saba is lined with cliffs and there are no natural beaches. The island also includes the uninhabited island of Green Island, which lies around 250 m to the north and is mainly covered by tropical vegetation. The island is about 35 km southwest of Sint Maarten. Check topmbadirectory for politics, flags, famous people, animals and plants of Saba.
The climate is tropical, the daytime temperature averages around 25 degrees Celsius.
Borders
The island has no direct neighbors and therefore no national borders.
Coastline
Saba has a coast to the Caribbean with a length of around 15 km.
Longitude and latitude of Saba
The island of Saba extends over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ). The arc minutes are rounded up or down:
Δφ = from 17 ° 37 ‘to 17 ° 39’ north latitude Δλ = from 063 ° 13 ‘to 063 ° 16’ west longitude
You can find detailed information on this subject under Longitude and Latitude.
Legal time on Saba
For Saba, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time (without summer time). A minus sign means that it is earlier there and a plus sign that it is later than after CET:
Δt (CET) = – 5 h
Further and detailed explanations of the time can be found under Time zones, time.
Highest sun in “The Bottom”
The Bottom, the capital of the island, is located at a north latitude of around φ = 17 ° 38 ′ = around 17.5 ° N and thus in the tropics.
If the declination δ of the sun has the value of 17.5 ° N, and thus the image point of the sun is above the island or from The Bottom, the sun is perpendicular there. This happens exactly twice a year, roughly 65 days after the 21./22. March and then again 65 days before September 21st.
Attention
If the image point of the sun and thus the declination δ is north of the latitude of The Bottom, the sun is not there at noon in the south, as in our latitudes, but in the north. In this case, the sun moves from east to north to west, where, like us, it sets.
Further and detailed explanations can be found under Sun position
Mountains
The highest mountain on the island is – with a height of 877 m – the Mount Scenery.
Green Island
The small island Green Island is located about 250 m off the northern coast of Saba and is uninhabited.
Caribbean
The island of Saba is located in the Caribbean – about 35 km in a south-westerly direction from the island of Sint Maarten – and thus at the northern end of the Lesser Antilles.
The Caribbean
The Caribbean is a marginal sea of the Atlantic and lies between the islands of the Caribbean and the American continent. In the west, Mexico and other Central American states border the Caribbean. In the south of Colombia and Venezuela. The border in the east and north form the following islands or archipelagos starting from Venezuela in a semi-circle to the “actual” Atlantic: Trinidad and Tabago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba.
The deepest point in the Caribbean is the Cayman Rift between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with a depth of 7,680 m. Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean forms the “American Mediterranean”.
