Invasion of Martinique (1674) Martinique, the headquarters of the French colonial venture in the Caribbean. The Dutch believed that the capture of Martinique would enable them to quickly conquer France's other island outposts and rebuild their own war-ravaged network of Caribbean plantations, giving them dominance of the entire Lesser Antilles island chain. To achieve these aims, the Dutch assembled a powerful invasion force under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, widely regarded as the greatest naval commander of the age, whose crushing victories had driven the English out of the war. Under his commanded sailed a fleet of eighteen major warships including his 80-gun flagship "De
Mammals of the Caribbean fauna particularly vulnerable to disruption by humans and the invasive species they introduced. (The large predator niches of the Caribbean islands were formerly occupied by endemic outsize hawks, falcons, caracaras, teratorns and owls—e.g. "Titanohierax", "Gigantohierax", "Buteogallus borrasi", "Caracara tellustris", "Oscaravis olsoni", "Ornimegalonyx" and "Tyto pollens"—all of which are now extinct. Cuban crocodiles also have more terrestrial habits than other extant crocodilians.) Opossums (order Didelphimorphia), the largest group of American marsupials, are of limited diversity in the Caribbean. The large opossum "Didelphis marsupialis" is found on Trinidad and Tobago and in the Windward Islands up to Dominica, being found on Martinique,