Pirates, Loyalists and pink sand: the Bahamas back story

About Pirates, Loyalists and pink sand: the Bahamas back story

By the ULTIMATE The Bahamas Editorial Team

Site Editor: Tara de la Motte

The Bahamas has packed a great deal of history into its 700 islands. Here are the stories we love most, each one checked against an official source.

700 islands

The government describes The Bahamas as 700 islands and 2,400 cays, stretching 760 miles from off Florida almost to Haiti, with a land area of 5,358 square miles. Only thirty of the islands are inhabited.

The pirate years

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, privateers and pirates flocked to these shallow waters and their hundreds of hiding places close to the busy shipping lanes. The official history names Blackbeard and Calico Jack, and the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. By 1718 the King of England had appointed Woodes Rogers as Royal Governor to restore order; he offered amnesty to those who surrendered, 300 pirates did, and the rest, Blackbeard among them, fled. The Pirates of Nassau Museum downtown tells the story.

Seven hundred islands and 2,400 cays, and only thirty of them inhabited.

The Loyalists

After the American Revolution, colonists loyal to Britain arrived in Eleuthera, many bringing enslaved people as well as their building skills. Harbour Island’s classic New England-style architecture still sets the tone in Dunmore Town. The Pompey Museum in Vendue House tells the story of slavery and emancipation.

Pink sand

Harbour Island’s beach is pink because of foraminifera, single-celled sea creatures with red or pink shells, full of holes, that wash ashore and mix with the white sand.

A French cloister

At the top of the Versailles Gardens at The Ocean Club stand the remains of a 12th-century French Augustinian monastery. William Randolph Hearst bought it in the 1920s, and Huntington Hartford installed it on Paradise Island, then called Hog Island, after he bought the island in 1959.

On screen

Thunderball Grotto in the Exumas is named after the James Bond film that made it famous, and a tour listing on the official tourism site calls Sandy Cay off Long Island the home of the Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Pirates, Loyalists and pink sand: the Bahamas back story before you go.