Photo: Fred Hsu (Wikipedia:User:Fred Hsu on en.wikipedia) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A self-guided audio tour of St John in two parts. In Cruz Bay: the public dock first built in 1838, with its cannon from Fortsberg; Frank Powell Park, the town's gathering place; the Battery, the fort of 1735 that is now Government House, and the story of the 1733 insurrection at Coral Bay, emancipation in 1848 and the US purchase of 1917; the Virgin Islands National Park Visitor Center; and the Enighed estate's great house of 1757, now the Elaine Ione Sprauve Library and Museum. Then a drive across the island to the plantation ruins: Catherineberg's tapering windmill tower, Cinnamon Bay, where archaeologists began excavating a Taíno temple in 1998, and the Annaberg Sugar Plantation above Leinster Bay, whose windmill, factory and quarters were built and worked by enslaved people. St John is reached by ferry from St Thomas, where the cruise ships dock.
8 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 70 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 2 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The dock first built in 1838, still St John's main port of entry, with a cannon from Fortsberg now turned to face the sea.
The fort of 1735 that is now Government House, and the story of the 1733 insurrection that held much of the island for months.
The Enighed estate's great house of 1757, burned in the early 1900s and restored by 1980 as the town's library and museum.
A sugar works with an unusual windmill tower, a 37.5-foot masonry cone, plus the remains of its boiling house and rum still.
Danish plantation ruins beside a site where archaeologists began excavating a Taíno temple in 1998, with family tombs in the forest above.
The windmill, factory and quarters of a sugar estate above Leinster Bay, built and worked by enslaved people, with its punishment cell.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 8 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 8 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in St John — Cruz Bay and the Annaberg Plantation, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
8 narration points, including Cruz Bay Ferry Dock, The Battery, Elaine Ione Sprauve Library and Museum, Cinnamon Bay Plantation Ruins and Annaberg Sugar Plantation. That is about 10 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 8 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.