Nassau: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Nassau's colourful history is full of roguery and rum running. It all began in 1648, when William Sayle and his party of Eleutheran Adventurers landed. The island was afterwards known as Sayle's Island, but the party didn't settle. Buccaneers did, establishing a base they hoped was beyond the reach of any authority.

The first real permanent settlement, established in 1666, was named Charles Town. There was little formal structure. The dirt streets were lined by brothels and taverns for 'common cheats, thieves, and lewd persons'. In 1684 virtually the entire population fled to the American colonies when the Spaniards sacked the town as retribution for relentless attacks by Charles Town's pirates. The town was rebuilt and renamed Nassau in 1695, with Fort Nassau on the site now occupied by the British Colonial Hilton hotel. Nassau was attacked again in 1703 by a combined Spanish and French force that destroyed the fort. In 1718 Governor Woodes Rogers arrived to establish order and an administration answerable to the English crown. Piracy was suppressed. Still, by the middle of the 18th century the public buildings comprised merely a church, along with a jail, courthouse, and Assembly House in a single, ruinous building at the northeast corner of Bay St - then known as 'The Strand' - and today's Market St. In the 1760s Governor William Shirley, former governor of Massachusetts, brought a Yankee sense of order and ingenuity to the creation of a real city. The swamps were drained, the land was surveyed, and tidy new streets were laid. The American Revolution boosted the city's fortunes, as citizens took to running the English blockade. Meanwhile a flood of Loyalist refugees - many quite wealthy or entrepreneurial - began arriving, lending new vigor to the city. In 1787 the haughty and inept Earl of Dunmore arrived as governor of the Bahamas, despite disgracing himself in the posts of governor of New York and Virginia in events before and during the American Revolution. His critics - there were many - accused him of a reprehensible private life, while bemoaning appointments to office of 'bankrupts, beggars, blackguards, and the husbands of his whores'. His legacy is evident today in several fine buildings, including the two batteries he erected: Fort Charlotte and Fort Fincastle. Alas, Dunmore erected his troops' barracks in the direct line of fire between Fort Charlotte and the town it had been built to defend. An investigation by the Secretary of War was highly critical, but the governor was saved by the outbreak of Britain's war with France in 1793, which sudenly made his exorbitant spending seem justified. Meanwhile, many Nassauvians returned to their privateering ways.

By the late 18th century Nassau had settled into a slow-paced, glamorous era in which the well-to-do lived graciously. Wealthy whites kept many slaves. Slaves and free blacks (who lived in Over-the-Hill shanties) were banished from the streets after nightfall. In 1807 the slave trade was abolished, and the British Navy landed scores of slaves who had been freed on the high seas. Many of the public edifices and sites such as the Queen's Staircase date from this time, and used their labour.

The city's fortunes briefly revived during the US Civil War, when citizens took to running the Northern blockade on the Southern states. Hotels went up to serve the traders, smugglers, and spies. Many fine homes were erected on the proceeds from blockade-running.

Modern History

During the 20th century, Nassau witnessed an influx of Greeks, lured by the local sponging industry, which they soon took over. Wealthy tourists also began to arrive. Their numbers were boosted by Prohibition. While Nassauvians made hay illicitly supplying liquor to the US, Yankees flocked to make merry in Nassau, where a casino had opened. After the repeal of Prohibition, tourism became seasonal, focused on the 'winter season' from December to March. The major hotels - the Royal Victoria, Fort Montagu, and the British Colonial - were open only for those three months and closed after the annual Washington Ball, when tourists returned home.

Recent History

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the city developed into the affluent and highly Americanised Nassau tourists see today. At first glance development seems to have barely tainted its charms. Nassau's affluence was built as a result of taxation legislation that made it an a centre of offshore banking, but it hasn't lost that buccaneering spirit of the Prohibition days. As a tax shelter, it's proven to be an attractive destination for money launderers and drug traffickers. Indeed, the corruption of government officials by Colombian traffickers caused a major scandal in 1980s and a US-led crackdown subsequently followed.

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