Have you read the great book "Sugar and Slaves / The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713" by Richard S. Dunn? It was pretty awfully hard to do well there, but some did. If they weren't fighting various pirates and/or legitimate navies of various invading countries (pretty lawless, like the Old West in spades), they had slave rebellions; plus the violent weather which they weren't used to having, fires, earthquakes and tidal waves, just made life there too crazy for many British people to stay long term. It got so hard that many finally left for the Colonies. That's probably why your ancestors ended up in the Carolinas and Virginia. The book is wonderfully annotated besides being full of reader-friendly information.