Salvation Islands

(Local Name: Îles du Salut) The Îles du Salut are a group of tropical islands best known for the notoriously brutal penal colony, establish in 1852, which they accommodated.

Îles du Salut are comprised of three islands, Île Royale, Île St Joseph, and the Île du Diable, the site of the infamous "Devil's Island" penal colony from 1852 to 1953.

Located in choppy, shark-infested waters they supported a convict population of almost 2,000. Today the islands are developed for tourism but for the prisoners (the most famous of whom was Alfred Dreyfus, the French Army officer falsely convicted of treason) it was "a true excursion into hell".