This statue of Christopher Columbus stands in f ront of Government House. It was designed by American writer Washington Irving in 1830. We docked two hours earlier than expected. This would give us a little more time to search for Capt. Lightbourn, the slave trader in the town of Nassau on the island of New Providence in the nation of The Bahamas. Most of the Bahamian people live on the 21–by–7–mile New Providence island and 90% of those 170,000 live in Nassau.

Linda visited Nassau on a senior trip from USC in 1971 and remembers little about it. (No wonder!) Many of our friends have taken a two–day cruise from Miami to Nassau and also remembered little about it, so I really didn’t expect much from our brief eight–hour visit.

Pirates and buccaneers were the first European visitors to The Bahamas, and they used the many coves, sandbars, and spits as hideouts for their attacks on Spanish ships laden with Inca and Aztec gold. The first British settlement was in 1666, four years before the first British settlement in South Carolina, and it was similarly named Charles Town after the English king.

Whereas the citizens of our Charles Town were primarily engaged in farming and trade with the natives, the citizens of New Providence’s Charles Town were mostly rogues, prostitutes, drunkards, thieves, and peg–legged pirates. When the Spanish sacked Charles Town in 1684,

most of the English–speaking hoi poloi

moved to South Carolina and set up taverns, brothels, and gambling houses, and eventually became respected entrepreneurs and, no doubt, leading politicians. From that day to this, the fortunes of the Bahamians have been tied directly to conditions in the United States.

During the American Revolution, New Providence prospered due to the English blockade of the colonies. American privateers raided Nassau and held the town for several days before retreating. During the early 1800s, The Bahamas became home to wealthy white traders and freed slaves captured by the British Navy and dumped on the island.

During the American Civil War, Bahamian merchants prospered as blockade runners, sneaking goods into Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington. Many grand homes and hotels were built on the island during the war to service these Rhett Butlers.

Legal trade replaced smuggling during the 19th and 20th centuries, and The Bahamas grew slowly. Emigrant Greeks created a vigorous sponge industry that kept the economy alive until prohibition in the US jump–started the tourist business. Hotels and casinos lured Americans eager for whiskey, wild women, and gambling. Bahamians also returned to their rum–running days by smuggling tons of alcohol into Florida and the Carolina coast.

When Prohibition ended, Nassau entrepreneurs turned to legal tourism that attracted Americans to excellent hotels during the high season, December to March. This snowbirding in-creased greatly after the US put an embargo on Cuba in 1960. And even colleges in S.C. began sending their grads to the island for a glimpse of sex and sin.

All this time, The Bahamas had been a rather loosely–controlled British colony. During the 1960s, the civil rights fever hit the islands, and the local people demanded their freedom. Britain piddled a-round for a decade before granting independence in 1973. As expected, the new rulers, though bound by a democratic constitution, soon floundered in corruption primed by drug money. 1999 hurricanes Dennis and Floyd brought ruin and looting; however, the last four years have seen a stabilizing government and a growing economy.

Continued next week