SHORT STORY OF BAHAMAS
Even though the islands of the Bahamas
are geographically near to the United States,
stretching from just 70 miles east of Florida's
Palm Beaches to 750 miles to the south, their
culture and their historical development evolved
quite differently.
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Columbus was the first European to sight these
islands. As any schoolchild knows, popular
convention suggests that his first landfall
was October 12, 1492, at San Salvador in the
Southern Bahamas. Not that it matters in the
total scheme of things today, but other researchers
suggest that the first landfall might have
been at Samana Cay, some 60 miles to the southeast
of San Salvador.
In either case, the first local residents were probably Arawak Indians,
refugees from elsewhere in the Caribbean trying to escape the vicious
Carib Indians. Evidence suggests they immigrated to the Bahamas around
the beginning of the 9th century. Shy and gentle, the Arawaks offered
great hospitality to the crew of the Niña, Pinta, and Santa
Maria, but to their ultimate dismay the Spaniards were enamored
of the gold trinkets they wore. Later incursions by the Spanish forced
the Arawaks to work in the gold and silver mines of the New World,
effectively decimating the local population with overwork and disease
by 1520.
The Spanish phrase "Baja Mar," for "shallow sea," was the derivation for the name Bahamas, but in later years the English had far more to do with the development of these islands than did the Spanish. By 1629, King Charles I claimed the Bahamas for England, and by 1648 English pilgrims fleeing religious persecution back home settled on an island they called Eleuthera, after the Greek word for "freedom." By the 1650s another group of English immigrants settled on an island they called New Providence due to their family links with a settlement at Providence, Rhode Island.
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By the end of the 17th century there were over 1,000 British living in the islands of the Bahamas, trying to eke sustenance from farming, fishing, and salvaging the occasional Spanish galleon that still ran aground.
Piracy was a big part of the local culture back then, and some of the most notorious buccaneers of the day like Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Henry Morgan, and Calico Jack Rackham repeatedly raided the Spanish galleons transiting these waters. This enraged the British government and caused them to attack Charles Town on New Providence, burning much of it to the ground. The city was later rebuilt as Nassau, named in honor of King William III of Orange-Nassau.
By 1718, the end of piracy was virtually ensured with the installation of a former pirate, Woodes Rogers, as the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He riveted the attention of his former associates by hanging eight pirates in a single day in downtown Nassau, and inspired the country's first motto: Expulsis piratis, restitua comercia (Piracy expelled, commerce restored). In 1973, on the occasion of the Bahamas' independence from Britain, then Prime Minister Linden Pindling rewrote the motto with the current "Forward, Upward, Onward, Together."
Experiments with agriculture on these islands were largely met with frustration due to the typically arid climate and poor soil. Plantation life as it was known in the southern United States and other Caribbean islands never really took hold in the Bahamas, and by 1834 the plantation culture, along with slavery, was essentially dead.
Even though farming was essentially a bust, these islands' perfect climate and immense natural beauty suggested a potential tourist industry as early as 1861 when the first hotel on Nassau, the Royal Victoria, was built to accommodate the business and pleasure travel of the era.
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Prohibition in the United States brought a temporary boon to the business interests of the Bahamas as rumrunning became a cottage industry out of Nassau, Bimini, and the West End of Grand Bahama. But tourism was the steadier growth industry, and by 1929 Pan American Airways began making daily flights from Miami to Nassau. The Vanderbilts and the Astors often wintered in these islands in their majestic yachts, and the attraction these islands had to the aristocracy soon trickled down to the masses.
While New Providence was the first island to enjoy true resort hotels and regular air service, the rest of these islands were being simultaneously discovered by the fun-in-the-sun set. Gradual growth in tourism resulted in ever-increasing infrastructure for hedonistic pursuits. Golf courses and tennis courts were built at grand resort hotels, and marinas were constructed to provide for the needs of visiting yachtsmen. The wealth of offshore marine life made these islands a Nirvana for sport anglers.
For those seeking a less active or consumptive recreation, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles of unspoiled beaches to stroll. As soon as face masks became available, snorkelers began peering beneath the surface of these incredibly crystalline waters to marvel at one of the world's great coral reef ecosystems. By 1960, the world's first destination resort for scuba diving was in operation in Freeport, Grand Bahama. Scuba diving and snorkeling became inexorably tied to the tourism future of these islands.
