PreviousThe Bahamas salutes its past
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The Bahamas salutes its past
Colourful heritage goes back to the last ice age
When Columbus finally reached the New World on Friday, Oct 12, 1492, after 69 days at sea, his 15th-century “giant leap for mankind” was to step from the Santa Maria’s armed launch on to a dazzling white beach in The Bahamas.
The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Queen Isabella later named him, fell to his knees in gratitude, kissed the ground and named the place San Salvador—Castilian for Holy Saviour.
Columbus was astonished by both the island and the friendly native people who gathered to welcome him—they having arrived by canoe 800 or 900 years before he did. He wrote in his journal that the native Lucayans, a subgroup of Arawak Indians from South America, were a handsome people, “in their original simplicity … stark naked as they were born, men and women.”
After he had seen a few more of the islands in the nearby baja mar—the “shallow sea” that probably gave The Bahamas its name—he wrote that the beauty of the place surpassed any other on earth; in his words, “… as much as the day surpasses the night in splendour.”
Twentieth-century space travellers agreed with The Great Navigator, although not in such flowery language. They didn’t need adjectives. Photos taken by astronauts aboard the Mercury spacecraft revealed the amazing clarity and beauty of Bahamian waters.
It’s estimated today that about 40,000 Lucayans were living in The Bahamas when Columbus arrived. In one of the darkest episodes of colonial expansion in the New World, Spanish conquistadors abducted these first Bahamians to work in the mines of Hispaniola. There, from disease and the harsh conditions of slavery, the Lucayans were wiped out in the time of a single generation.
By the time Ponce de Leon arrived in Grand Bahama on his voyage in 1513, he found the islands were devoid of people. The empty Lucayan villages and fields were already reverting to bush.
In fact, The Bahamas lay untouched by human settlement for more than 100 years, bypassed by the Spanish and English, who sought lands with more resources. The French did establish a colony on Abaco in the late 1500s, but it was quickly abandoned and left no trace. Lasting settlement did not begin until the 18th century. In Grand Bahama, settlers did not arrive until the early 1800s.
Sun, sea and sand
As mariners know, the Tropic of Cancer runs through the middle of The Bahamas, which lies between latitudes 20º 50’ N and 27º 25’ N and longitudes 72º 37’ W and 80º 32 W. This keeps the islands delightfully warm, even in the harshest winter months. They are “the isles of perpetual June,” as President George Washington is said to have once described them.
While there is much more to The Bahamas than sun, sand and sea, the landscape and the balmy climate exert a strong appeal for millions of people. Today, in a time of polluted oceans, rivers and air, photos of The Bahamas’ pristine environment make it appear to be a paradise.
When asked why they like The Bahamas, most visitors put our colourful water at the top of the list. Here in Grand Bahama, the sea on one side falls off into the deep water of the Northwest Providence Channel, giving it a dark blue or indigo colour. In shallow areas the water is turquoise or aquamarine, becoming progressively more translucent as one gets closer to land. Over the reefs it takes on the colour of eggplant. The northern coast faces on to the aquamarine waters of the Little Bahama Bank.
A relic of the ages
The archipelago is thought to be the remnant of an ancient mountain range, with the islands and the Great Bahama Bank itself resting on its flattened peaks. Deep channels, such as the Gulf Stream, the Tongue of the Ocean and Crooked Island Passage, were once shallow valleys that now lie 5,000 feet and more beneath the sea.
Today, these former valleys are international shipping lanes, which put The Bahamas in an enviable position. This is especially evident in Grand Bahama, site of the duty-free industrial port of Freeport and home to one of the world’s largest bunkering installations.
The island is just off the Gulf Stream—the watery highway between North and South America—and the route to the Panama Canal. It is also directly on the Northwest Providence Channel, one of the main routes to Europe.
Freeport is the enduring dream of the late Wallace Groves, an American entrepreneur who turned pine barrens and swamp into today’s “free port” and industrial centre.
With a grant of land from what was then the colonial government of The Bahamas, Groves started the Grand Bahama Port Authority, which built homes, churches, schools and roads, as well as a modern port. Today, the harbour is a major trans-shipment facility, served by a privately owned, state-of-the-art airport.
Formed by coral reefs
Although The Bahamas covers an area of about 100,000 square miles, most of it is water. The land mass is only 5,380 square miles, a bit larger than the state of Connecticut. The islands are low and flat, with the highest elevation only 206 feet above sea level—at a place on Cat Island known as Mount Alvernia.
Although they are not often thought of as a resource, The Bahamas’ most prized possession is its fragile and endangered system of coral reefs. The country has an estimated 900 square miles of living coral beneath the sea, including the world’s third-longest barrier reef, located along the eastern shore of Andros.
Unlike reefs in many other parts of the world, those in The Bahamas are still in fairly good condition, partly because the government, environmental agencies and dive companies all promote reef appreciation and education.
Marine biologists say reefs are the only reason The Bahamas was born in the distant past and the only reason the archipelago continues to survive today on top of its ancient mountain top.
The islands are made of calcium carbonate, or limestone, 85 to 95 per cent of which is produced or precipitated by the tiny organisms that make up the reef. Thus, the islands are continually being built and renewed by the reefs. Among many other benefits, the reefs buffer the land against erosion caused by tidal and storm surges.
The Bahamas is home to permanent research stations where scientists rave about the pristine conditions, the diversity and productivity of marine habitats and the low human impact—all of which make it possible to conduct high-quality research.
They refer to the reefs as the “rain forests of the sea.” In fact, scientists say the reefs are even more biologically diverse and productive than rain forests, harbouring more than a million species. Several drugs have been developed from chemicals found in coral reef organisms and are used to treat HIV infections, cardiovascular diseases, ulcers, leukaemia and skin cancer.
The reefs contribute strongly to the Bahamian tourism industry (which accounts for about half of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product), including swimming, diving and boat excursions. They also support a booming sportfishing industry that lures fishermen from around the world, whether they are looking for giant blue marlin in the open sea or swift bonefish that peel the line from fly-fishing reels on the tidal flats. The commercial fisheries for grouper, snapper, crawfish and conch, all of which depend on the reefs in one way or another.
Another source of income related to the reefs and the clarity of the water is the making of movies, which uses the country and the ocean as a picturesque backdrop for films such as the popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, Miracle at St Anna, Into the Blue, After the Sunset and the recent James Bond flick Casino Royale. Films have been shot here since 1914, including some well known favourites such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Thunderball, Never Say Never Again, Splash, Jaws IV and Flipper.
Distinctive blue holes
Another unusual feature of the Bahamian sea is blue holes, which often appear as circles of intense blue in the midst of emerald waters. Some of these holes have strong currents, which set them apart from similar formations in other countries.
There are several theories about the formation of the Bahama blues. The consensus is they were created during an ice age when water became trapped in glaciers and icecaps, causing sea levels to fall. The holes probably started as dry-land caves. Rain slowly ate away the limestone, opening fissures and forming underground pockets that eventually became huge caverns.
As the last glacial period ended about 12,500 years ago, once again raising the sea levels, the cavern roofs collapsed, forming the blue holes we see today.
Divers say the eerily beautiful chasms, hundreds of feet deep, can be a little spooky. Old-time Bahamians speak of the “lusca,” a hideous octopus-like creature that inhabits the holes—“him of de hahnds,” as they say—who pulls intruders down to their death.
The submerged caverns of Grand Bahama’s Lucayan National Park are one of the world’s most extensive cave systems. About eight miles of the ancient caves have been explored, and three pre-Columbian skeletons of Lucayans were discovered there in the 1960s.
Bahama exclusives
In The Bahamas you’ll see species you won’t find anywhere else. The Bahama parrot (Amazona leucocephala bahamensis) survives in its last wild enclaves on Inagua and Abaco. The Bahama swallow (Tachycineta cyaneoviridis) lives and breeds in the northern Bahamas and nowhere else on earth. Around 120 of the islands’ 1,370 plant species are endemic to The Bahamas.
Almost all Bahama reptiles—iguanas, freshwater terrapins, boa constrictors—are endemic to a particular island or cay. At one time, the entire archipelago was densely populated by iguanas. Nowadays they are few and far between.
A cat-sized rodent once found in all but the extreme southern Bahama Islands is the hutìa (Geocapromys ingrahami), now largely restricted to the 1,000-acre East Plana Cay, between Crooked and Mayaguana islands.
Inagua has the largest colony of flamingos in the western hemisphere, numbering more than 60,000 birds. This Bahamas national bird once faced extinction but is now protected by law. Even airplanes are forbidden to fly less than 2,000 feet over the nesting grounds.
First settlements
It was not until the middle of the 17th century that a band of English Puritans calling themselves the Eleutherian Adventurers came to settle The Bahamas. They arrived from England, via Bermuda, to escape religious persecution and to set up an idealistic democracy on an island they named Eleuthera.
That first settlement of about 70 colonists did not last. But while the colony itself failed, several families stayed on and set up self-contained farms on Eleuthera and nearby islands. These pioneers included the names Adderley, Albury, Bethell and Saunders—family names that are still found throughout the islands today.
Later, in 1670, the British Crown awarded The Bahamas to eight Lords Proprietors—English noblemen who were busy enriching themselves and colonizing the Carolinas.
Trouble was, the governors that the Proprietors sent to administer The Bahamas either were themselves privateers (meaning they had a letter of marque allowing them to capture and plunder Spanish ships) or they encouraged privateers and outright pirates to set up a base in Nassau. From there and other islands, they preyed on the gold-laden galleons making their way back to Spain.
This annoyance led eventually to the Spanish invading New Providence in 1684, burning English ships in harbour and carrying away all the women, children and slaves they could find.
By 1701, England was at war with both France and Spain, and those two countries attacked Nassau—then called Charlestown—so repeatedly that, by 1706, the city was said to be ungovernable.
Golden age of piracy
The first two decades of the 1700s are often referred to as the Golden Age of Piracy. The country attracted several notorious brigands, including Benjamin Hornigold, Edward Teach or Thatch (Blackbeard), “Calico Jack” Rackham, Stede Bonnet and perhaps the cruellest of the lot, Charles Vane. Among the cutthroats were two fierce lady pirates, Ann Bonney and Mary Read, the consorts of pirates, who were adept at killing with sword and pistol. Unlike many of their male companions, these women escaped the gallows by “pleading the belly”—swearing they were pregnant.
Nassau became a port of taverns and bordellos that, according to records of the day, you could smell far out to sea if the wind was right. At the height of the age of piracy, between 2,000 and 3,000 pirates were operating out of New Providence, where the then-shallow harbour protected them and their fast ships from the Royal Navy’s men-’o-war. The pirates ran the place pretty much as they liked.
The Crown began to take control of the islands after 1718 with the arrival of Woodes Rogers, the first Royal Governor sent from Britain. A former privateer himself, Rogers offered the pirates an amnesty if they promised to behave and death if they didn’t. He backed that up by hanging nine of them one morning on a beach in Nassau—a spot where vacationers now frolic and sunbathe on the golden sand.
By 1729, Rogers was able to report that he had expelled the pirates and reinstated normal business in The Bahamas: Expulsis Piratis, Restituta Commercia. In fact, those Latin words became the motto of The Bahamas and remained so until the country gained its independence from Britain in 1973.
Booms and busts
Settlers began arriving in large numbers only after the American War of Independence ended in 1783. These were British Empire Loyalists, who arrived with their families and slaves. Many of them sought land to recreate the plantation style of life they had enjoyed in the southern United States.
However, not all the blacks who arrived in The Bahamas in this period and earlier were slaves. They came as free men and women from Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica and Haiti, as well as the United States.
Later, when slavery was abolished by Britain in 1838 but continued in other colonies, British naval ships stopped and boarded Portuguese and Spanish slavers, freed the Africans aboard and brought about 6,000 of them to The Bahamas.
Grand Bahama settled
By the early 1800s tiny settlements had already arisen in Gold Rock, West Head, South Point, High Rock and other places—set up by free Africans and released slaves. In 1806, 500 acres of land were granted to one Joseph Smith, who created the first official settlement, which later became West End.
Earlier, this idyllic location had been a port of call for pirates, a temporary stopover for shipwreckers, a gun-runners’ haven during the American Civil War and a den of bootleggers during Prohibition, which began in the 1920s. When Prohibition ended, West End returned to its quietude, disturbed only briefly in 1948 when Sir Billy Butlin tried to replicate Butlin’s Holiday Camp—the tourist centre he created in Blackpool, England. That failed after two years, and the property sat dormant for almost a decade before reopening as the Jack Tar Village.
Next came Old Bahama Bay, a residential resort with luxurious ocean and canalfront homes, a full-service marina, restaurant and hotel now operated by Ginn Development Co. This company is building Ginn sur Mer, a huge project that includes homes, condos and golf courses.
Many of the islands enjoyed flashes of prosperity over the years—shipwrecking in the late 1700s, blockade running during the US Civil War, logging in the 1900s and bootlegging during Prohibition. The booms and busts followed one another with regularity.
Today, The Bahamas is the premier tourist destination in the Caribbean area, with a host of large, world-class resorts and also a growing number of smaller, charming hotels dotted around the islands, where winter-weary northerners trade in overcoats for bikinis and galoshes for sandals.
Freeport, Grand Bahama, is now a busy deep-water container port, and Nassau is now a renowned business and financial centre, home to many of the world’s top banks.
With new economic opportunities, including construction, real estate, aquaculture and alternative energy projects on the horizon, Bahamians believe their economy is at last on a solid footing.
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