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The Bahamas

The Nassau Guardian

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The Bahamas

#127 Island Profile

The Islands of the Bahamas

Nassau and Paradise Island

National Flag of The Bahamas

Facts at a Glance

Area: 5382 sq miles (13,940 sq km)
Population: 257,000
Capital city: Nassau (pop 190,000)
People: African descent (85%), European descent (15%)
Language: English
Religion: Baptist (32%), Anglican (20%), Roman Catholic (19%)
Government: Independent state within the British Commonwealth
Major industries: Banking, tourism, cement

History

The original inhabitants of the Bahamas were the Lucayans, a tribe of the Arawak Indian group, who arrived near the turn of the ninth century. The peaceful Lucayans lived primarily off the sea, fishing and harvesting shellfish, conch, lobster and mollusks. What little remains of their culture is limited to pottery shards, petroglyphs and words such as canoe, cannibal, hammock, hurricane and tobacco. Christopher Columbus planted the Spanish flag on San Salvador upon his first landfall in the Americas in 1492. Three years later, Spanish colonialists established the first settlement in the archipelago, serving as a terminus for Lucayan Indians enslaved by the Spaniards for shipment to Hispaniola. Within 25 years, the entire Lucayan population of 50,000 was gone, and the settlement was eventually abandoned.

A group of Puritans, free blacks and slaves evicted from Bermuda and North America, arrived in 1659 to found Charles Town (the future Nassau) on New Providence. The town attracted a motley assemblage of sordid elements who earned their livelihood mainly from the salvage trade. When times were slow, 'wreckers' would lure hapless ships to their fate by placing shore lights amid the reefs and then loot the spoils.

During the 17th century, the British Crown sponsored privateers to patrol the waters in and around the Bahamas, enhancing the careers of scores of pirates and making Charles Town buccaneer central. After the town was destroyed by a joint French and Spanish fleet in 1703, the pirates proclaimed a 'Privateer's Republic' without laws or government and made Edward Teach - better known as Blackbeard - their magistrate. This state of affairs lasted until 1714, when Britain signed the Treaty of Utrecht, which removed royal patronage and made the pirates outlaws. For the next century, pirates plundered ships of all nations and raided towns and plantations both in the Caribbean and the Carolinas. The crown's appointed governor (himself a former privateer) eventually triumphed over the pirates, proclaiming, in words that became the nation's motto: Expulsis Piratis - Restituta Commercia ('Pirates Expelled - Commerce Restored'). With the pirates went the islands' main source of income, and those who remained had to scrape by through turtle trapping, salt farming and, most importantly, wrecking. The Bahamas were so poor by 1773 that the government declared bankruptcy.

After America's Revolutionary War, English Loyalists began washing up in the Bahamas by the thousands, tripling the population in three years and introducing two things that would profoundly shape the island's future: cotton and slaves. They set up plantations modeled on those in the US, but the land was ill suited and most of the farms failed within a few years. When the Crown outlawed the slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy began intercepting ships and depositing freed slaves in the Bahamas. Many loyalists left the Bahamas after emancipation, often bequeathing their lands to their former slaves, who, like the free blacks around them, turned to eking out a meager living from fishing and subsistence farming. Full equality and political rights, however, proved more elusive, for the post-slavery era was marked by the continued rule of an elite minority of whites over an under-represented black majority.

For most of the 19th century, the economy muddled along on subsistence agriculture, fishing, wrecking, smuggling and sponging. But the islands' ticket out of poverty began to materialize in the US in the form of a new class of people with money to spend on health-inducing vacations in balmy climes. By the turn of the century, Florida was booming as a tourist destination and the Bahamas caught the spin-off. The trickle became a flood in 1920 when Prohibition took effect in the US, resurrecting Nassau's proclivity for smuggling overnight. The Bahamas were ideally situated for running illicit liquor into the States aboard speedboats, and the Nassau waterfront soon became a vast rum warehouse. The city poured its profits into construction, and hotels blossomed like mushrooms on a damp log. The islands' first casino attracted gamblers and gangsters and a potpourri of the rich and famous, and lesser party animals lured by the prospect of cheap booze. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 sent Nassau into another economic downturn, this time worsened by the Depression.

As in the US, however, war spelled the end of the economic slump. WWII rekindled the tourist industry by bringing thousands of American GIs to the islands for R&R. Wealthy Americans and Canadians seeking a sunny winter retreat began returning to the Bahamas, encouraged by the presence of the islands' new high profile governor and governess, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Formerly King Edward VIII of England, the duke gave the islands a new luster, ensuring that the rich and famous would pour into Nassau in the postwar years. The duke and duchess and their wealthy acquaintances sought to promote tourism as a way of pulling the islands out of the postwar slump, an effort that coincided with the arrival of the jet age and the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which sent travelers in search of a new vacation mecca. Concentrating their efforts on Nassau, local leaders expanded the US air base to accommodate international jets, dredged the harbor to lure cruise ships and launched a massive advertising campaign. They also made the country a corporate tax haven, and tourism and finance bloomed together.

The upturn in fortunes coincided with (and perhaps helped spark) the evolution of party politics and festering ethnic tensions, as the white elite reaped vast profits from the development and tourist boom while the black majority remained impoverished. The black-led Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) took power in the 1960s, bringing the era of white dominance to an end and paving the way to independence. On 10 July 1973, the islands of the Bahamas officially became a new nation, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, ending 325 years of British rule. The PLP's attempts at reform led to a real-estate slump that put the kibosh on home building by foreigners and stalled the economy. Meanwhile, the party's leadership was mired in corruption - much of it linked to a burgeoning international drug trade. After a US-assisted crackdown on drug trafficking in the 1980s and the election of a pro-business administration in 1992 (returned in a landslide 1997 election), the Bahamas began turning itself around.

Culture

The traditional culture of the Bahamas lives away from the American-influenced urban centers of Nassau and Freeport. The islands' folkways stem in large part from the tales, bush medicine, music and religion brought over by African slaves. A popular 'folk' religion is obeah, a system of beliefs governing interactions between the living and the spirit world. It's a less sinister cousin of Haitian voodoo and Cuban santería. The vast majority of Bahamians, however, belong to mainline Christian denominations (though many Anglican priests hedge their bets and mix a little good-willed obeah into their practice). Most islanders are steadfast in their religious beliefs: many taxi drivers and office workers keep a Bible at hand. Church affairs make headline news, while major international events are relegated to the inside pages. The country claims the greatest number of churches per capita in the world.

English, the official language and that of business and daily life, is spoken by everyone but a handful of Haitian immigrants, who speak their own Creole. Most black Bahamians speak both standard English and patois. While the Bahamas has yet to produce a writer of world renown and its visual arts scene has been slow to take shape, the islands have a vibrant musical culture. The country has produced several traditional forms of music, including goombay, a synthesis of calypso, soca and English folk songs; and down-home, working-class 'rake and scrape,' usually featuring guitar, accordion and shakers made from the pods of poinciana trees.

Bahamian kids play basketball with a passion. They live on the basketball court, and most towns have a small court with makeshift stands. Bahamians follow the US basketball (and baseball) leagues with intense fervor.

Attractions

Nassau

Nassau, the nation's capital, is steeped in modern American ways but has an undeniable quasi-Caribbean flavor. It exudes a special charm, imparted by a blend of Old World architecture and contemporary vitality. It's a far cry from the rustic and rowdy village once favored by pirates. The center of touristic affairs is the waterfront, a beehive of activity when the ships disgorge their hordes. The historic downtown has many well-preserved 18th and 19th-century buildings. Parliament Square is surrounded by the country's major government buildings. You can get a taste of the darker side of the city's past by visiting the Historical Library and Museum, an 18th-century building with an underground dungeon, model ships and a museum of Lucayan Indian history. Tropical plant fanciers can browse over 300 species at the lush Royal Victoria Garden. The heart of the shopping district is Bay Street, where you can shop at the largest straw market in the world. The Queen's Staircase, dating from the late 18th century, was built by over 500 slaves who labored for 16 years to carve a gorge-like roadway through the limestone ridge south of downtown Nassau until abandoning it, unfinished, with the abolition of slavery in 1834.

Elbow Cay

Elbow Cay, 6 miles (10km) east of Abaco's Marsh Harbour, is a scrub-covered islet favored by lizards and feral cats, with a solitary hamlet called Hope Town. It's a quaint place that appears pinned to the ground by a 120ft (37m) candy-striped lighthouse. Although the town is one of the most visited places in the Bahamas, it has taken care to minimize the effects of tourism, boasting nearly 100 well-preserved, gaily painted old homes and all of two narrow, car-free lanes circling the village. You can wander around and enjoy the quiet, or climb the 100 steps of the lighthouse and take in the picture-perfect view. There are several museums in town, including the Wyannie Malone Museum, with displays on Lucayan Indians and Loyalist settlers; and the Cetacean Museum, a tiny place devoted to whales.

Andros

Andros is a rough-edged, wild place, covered with vast swathes of palm savannas, eerie forests of mahogany, pine and palmettos and a huge mangrove wetlands. The primeval forest is so imposing that islanders swear they're inhabited by little red-eyed elves called chickcharneys who prey on those hapless enough to disturb them. The eastern shore has few outposts of civilization: scruffy shacks surrounded by rusty cars and discarded refrigerators are a common sight. Andros is not geared for tourism; apart from those who come to dive the world's third-longest barrier reef, birdwatchers and beachbums are the most frequent visitors. There are some colorful, down-at-heels places on the islands, including a town with a dolphin mascot that returns each season, a dilapidated lighthouse, and Somerset Beach, a gem at low tide. Red Bay, at the northwestern tip of North Andros, is inhabited by descendants of Seminole Indians who are famous for their beautiful basketry.

Cat Island

Long, spindly Cat Island is one of the Bahamas least touched by tourism, where islanders still practice Obeah and bush medicine and make their living from basketry. Pink-sand beaches stretch for miles along the Atlantic coast; the western shore is laced with bonefish-clogged creeks. Swamps, mangroves, scrub and mahogany carpet the interior. The town of New Bight, near the southern end of the island, originated as a free-slave settlement in the early 19th century. Among its claims to fame is the Holy Ebenezer Catholic Church, one of the architectural creations of an apostate Anglican priest named Father Jerome. Jerome also designed the Mt Alvernia Hermitage, a Celtic-Mediterranean fusion perched atop a hill at the end of a stone staircase. The hermitage makes for a stunning 360° view, especially at sunrise or sunset. Just north of town is Armbrister Creek, which is actually a creek-laced mangrove estuary perfect for exploring by canoe (rentable at the nearby Fernandez Bay Village resort). It leads inland to a crystal clear lake called Boiling Hole that bubbles and churns under certain tidal conditions, fueling local fears that it's haunted by a monster. Baby sharks and rays can be seen cruising the sandy bottom.

Long Island

Virtually untapped by tourism, Long Island is the most scenic in the Bahamas. Atlantic rollers crash against the cliffs on the windward coast. Shallow bays indent the western shore. Banana trees and rows of corn stretch along the narrow interior. At the northern tip of the island is Cape Santa Maria, where the western shore is one long white-sand beach shelving into turquoise shallows. Snorkeling is especially good at the reef gardens on the cape's southern end. The island's main base is Stella Maris, the setting for acclaimed scuba diving and sport fishing. The town is essentially an upscale residential community on the northeastern coast, though there are good beaches and tidepools. There's a spectacular beach at McKann's Bay on the western coast, where tall dunes back a wide crescent of sand indented with bird-filled lagoons.

In the center of the island is the commercial hub of Salt Pond, where the biggest excitement is the arrival of the mail boat. Aside from the beautiful St Joseph's Anglican Church, there are few sights here, but you can hike trails through tall dunes overlooking the waters on both sides of the islands. Fifteen miles (24km) south of Salt Pond is Deadman's Cay, where history buffs can poke around the ruins of an old plantation. Immediately south of town are Cartwright's Caves, once used by Lucayan Indians and now home to a colony of bats. Just south of Deadman's Cay is the hamlet of Petty's, home of the famous Wild Tamarind Pottery Studio, where you can browse or buy fine ceramics.