the bahamas history timeline
1996 – Ingraham reinstates the death penalty for murder.
1834 – Emancipation of slaves.
Rogers controlled Nassau, but Charles Vane was loose and threatening to drive the governor and his forces out. Learning that the King of Spain wanted to expel English from the islands, Rogers worked to improve the defenses of Nassau. He lost nearly 100 men of the new forces due to an unidentified disease, and the Navy ships left for other assignments. Rogers sent four of his ships to Havana to assure the Spanish governor that he was suppressing piracy and to trade for supplies. The crews of ex-pirates and men who had come with Rogers all turned to piracy. The ex-pirate Benjamin Hornigold later caught ten men at Green Turtle Cay as part of Rogers’ suppression effort. Eight were found guilty and hanged in front of the fort. [15]
When Europeans first landed on the islands, they reported the Bahamas were lushly forested. Cleared to develop the land for sugarcane plantations, the forests have not regrown and have not been replanted.
From 1861 to 1865, The Islands Of The Bahamas benefited greatly from the U.S. Civil War. Britain’s textile industry depended on Southern cotton; however, the Union blockaded British ships from reaching Southern ports. So blockade runners from Charleston met British ships here and traded cotton for British goods. Upon their return, they sold their shipment for huge profits. The end of the Civil War marked the end of prosperity. In 1919, the United States passed the 18th amendment prohibiting alcohol. The colonial government expanded Prince George Wharf in Nassau to accommodate the flow of alcohol. When Prohibition ended in 1934 so did the enormous revenues. Combined with the collapse of the sponge harvesting industry, it economically devastated The Bahamas.
English Puritans known as “Eleutheran Adventurers” arrived here in 1649 in search of religious freedom. Instead, they found food shortages. Captain William Sayles sailed to the American colonies for help and received supplies from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Upon his return, the settlers thanked them by shipping them brasileto wood. The proceeds helped purchase land for what later became Harvard University.
Instead, they’d sail to Nassau, where blockade runners would meet them with their precious cargo. The British ships would trade goods for cotton, which the blockade runners would then return to Charleston to sell at a massive profit. It took 48 hours to sail the 560 miles between Nassau and Charleston, so blockade runners were able to make a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time.
From the late 1600s to the early 1700s, pirates were plentiful in Nassau. Our location near busy shipping routes meant there were always plenty of passing ships loaded with valuable cargo to steal. Pirates would lure heavily-laden merchant ships close to shore by shining bright lights into the dark sky, mimicking lighthouses. Captains, expecting to find safe harbors, would guide their ships into shallow reefs, where they’d wreck and be plundered. With hundreds of small islands in the area, there was no shortage of secret places for pirates to hide their newly acquired treasures.
2009 Aug 23, In the Bahamas Stefania Fernandez (18), Miss Venezuela, was the fairest of them all once again, winning the 2009 Miss Universe crown for the second year straight and the sixth time since the pageant’s creation.
(AP, 8/24/09)
2011 Jul 5, The Bahamas banned commercial fishing of sharks, awarding protection to the more than 40 species circling the island chain that touts itself as the shark diving capital of the world. The ban applies to an estimated 243,000 square miles (630,000 square km) of water surrounding the archipelago.
(AP, 7/6/11)
Resources:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Bahamas
http://www.bahamas.com/our-history
http://www.nassauparadiseisland.com/timeline-colorful-history-nassau-paradise-island
http://www.timelines.ws/countries/BAHAMAS.HTML
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cannabis