5 Dollars - Elizabeth II First European settlers

Barbados commemorated the 500th anniversary of European contact with the eastern Caribbean a few years late — Columbus reached the region in 1492, but the island of Barbados itself was not formally encountered by Europeans until a Portuguese expedition, likely under Pedro a Campos, touched its shores around 1536. The Spanish and Portuguese largely bypassed it as a settlement site, leaving no permanent population when the English arrived in 1627 to find the island uninhabited.

The English landing at Holetown that year established the first permanent European settlement on Barbados — a distinction the island has marked with more historical pride than the Columbus connection this coin nominally celebrates.