Water 7, formerly known as Circle Island, is a sovereign city-state island in Micronesia in the Central Pacific known for its shipwrights. Its nearest neighbor is Guam, 400 miles to the west. In 2016, there were 196,080 residents in Water 7. The island is a rough circle with a 14-mile diameter, covering an area of 196 square miles.
History[]
Previously an uninhabited island, Irish-American ship captain David Dean O’Keefe (1824 – 1901) made landfall on March 23, 1877. His crew, comprised of approximately 70 original crew members and 50 natives of Yap Island, settled the island and established the settlement as Circle Island on June 2, 1877, named for its circular formation.
Over the next 5 decades, the settlement expanded its ship building and repair industry, and trade attracted and encouraged a steady flow of immigrants. The settlement grew to more than 32,000 inhabitants, and the largest and oldest collection of shipwrights, Galley-La Company, devised a blueprint to build 7 docks around the island with connecting waterways throughout the city-state. The docks and canals were completed by the Fall of 1929, and the city-state voted to rename the island to Water 7 on October 4, 1929.
The most well-known ship built in Water 7 worldwide is the Baratie, an ocean-going restaurant and ferry designed by the president of the Galley-La Company, Tom “Iceburg” Cook. The Baratie is helmed by ship captain and celebrity chef hailing from France, Zeff Sanji.
The residents of Water 7 recently celebrated the city’s 140th year anniversary with a festival parade at Galley-La Company’s largest dock, Dock One on June 2, 2017.