people had no immunity, the southern Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands were completely depopulated by about 1513, and remained so until the 17th century. European settlement From the mid-1600s Bermudian salt collectors began seasonally visiting the islands, later settling more permanently with their African slaves. For several decades around the turn of the 18th century, the islands became popular pirate hideouts. During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783) the French captured the archipelago in 1783, however it was later confirmed as a British colony with the Treaty of Paris (1783). After the American War of Independence (1775–1783), many Loyalists fled to British Caribbean colonies, also bringing with them African slaves. They developed cotton as an important cash crop, but it was superseded by the development of the salt industry, with the labour done by African slaves forcibly imported from Africa or the other Caribbean islands and their descendants, who soon came to outnumber the European settlers. In 1799, both the Turks and the Caicos island groups were annexed by Britain as part of the Bahamas. The processing of sea salt was developed as a highly important export product from the West Indies and continued to be a major export product into the nineteenth century. 19th century In 1807, Britain prohibited the slave trade and, in 1833, abolished slavery in its colonies. British ships sometimes intercepted slave traders in the Caribbean, and some ships were wrecked off the coast of these islands. In 1837, the Esperança, a Portuguese slaver, was wrecked off East Caicos, one of the larger islands. While the crew and 220 captive Africans survived the shipwreck, 18 Africans died before the survivors were taken to Nassau. Africans from this ship may have been among the 189 liberated Africans whom the British colonists settled in the Turks and Caicos from 1833 to 1840. In 1841, the Trouvadore, an illegal Spanish slave ship, was wrecked off the coast of East Caicos. All of the 20 man crew and 192 captive Africans survived the sinking. Officials freed the Africans and arranged for 168 persons to be apprenticed to island proprietors on Grand Turk Island for one year. They increased the small population of the colony by seven per cent. The remaining 24 were resettled in Nassau, Bahamas. The Spanish crew were also taken there, to be turned over to the custody of the Cuban consul and taken to Cuba for