Andros, The Bahamas


Andros is an archipelago in The Bahamas, the largest of the Bahamian Islands. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consists of hundreds of small islets and cays connected by mangrove estuaries and tidal swamplands, together with three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The three main islands are separated by bights, estuaries that trifurcate the island from east to west. It is long by wide at the widest point.

Etymology

The indigenous Lucayan people called the island Habacoa meaning "large upper outer land". Originally named Espiritu Santu by the Spanish, Andros Island was given its present name sometime early during the period of British colonial rule. Several eighteenth-century British documents refer to it as Andrews Island. A 1782 map refers to the island as San Andreas.
The modern name is believed to be in honour of Sir Edmund Andros, Commander of His Majesty's Forces in Barbados in 1672 and governor successively of New York, Massachusetts, and New England. Andros was notable for his role in the collapse of the Dominion of New England, after which he was removed from office and jailed by disgruntled colonists who took advantage of the ambiguous status of royal governors after King James II who had appointed them was deposed by William and Mary in the Glorious Revolution in England.
Secondary and tertiary sources indicate that the island may have been named after the inhabitants of St Andro Island off the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, because 1,400 migrants reportedly settled in Andros in 1787. Contemporary records, including official Bahamian census figures from 1788 and 1807, indicate that the number of inhabitants of Andros in that period was fewer than 400, and the original source of this report remains obscure. Only 2,650 individuals were evacuated from the Mosquito Coast in 1787, including individuals evacuated from St. Andrews Island, and 2,214 are known to have settled in Belize. The misconception appears to stem from a misreading of the Royal Geographical Society account of the transfer of the inhabitants from St. Andrews to Andros. The 1879 report states that the descendants of the migrants living in northern Andros numbered 1,400 as of 1879, as opposed to their ancestors comprising that number in 1787 when the original migration took place.
Another theory suggests that the island was named after the Greek isle of Andros, by Greek sponge fishermen.
The theory that the island was named for Sir Edmund Andros is the most widely accepted.

History

Pre-Columbian and Spanish eras

The Lucayans, a subgroup of the Taíno people, were indigenous to The Bahamas at the time of European encounter. Archeological artefacts and remains have been found in both Morgan's Cave on North Andros, and in the Stargate Blue Hole on South Andros. The population of The Bahamas is estimated to have been approximately 40,000 Lucayan-Taínos when the Spanish arrived in the region.
Spain claimed the Bahamas after Columbus' arrival on the islands — his first landfall in the Western Hemisphere may have been on the Bahamian island of San Salvador. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the Americas are named, came on a Spanish charter and spent four months exploring The Bahamas in 1499–1500. He mapped a portion of the eastern shore of Andros Island.
Spanish exploitation of the labor of the natives of nearby Hispaniola rapidly reduced the population of that island, leading the Governor of Hispaniola to complain to the Spanish crown. After Columbus's death, Ferdinand II of Aragon ordered in 1509 that Indians be imported from nearby islands to make up the population losses in Hispaniola, and the Spanish began capturing Lucayans in the Bahamas for use as laborers in Hispaniola; within two years the southern Bahamas were largely depopulated. The Spanish may have carried away as many as 40,000 Lucayans by 1513. A 1520 expedition by the Spanish discovered only 11 people in The Bahamas; the Lucayans were effectively eradicated from these islands. The islands of the Bahamas, including Andros Island, remained uninhabited thereafter for approximately 130 years.
The Bahamas subsequently passed back and forth between Spanish and British rule for 150 years. Britain gained control following the American Revolutionary War by treaty in 1783, when it exchanged East Florida with Spain for The Bahamas.

British colonial era 1648–1973

In 1648 English settlers from Bermuda established a colony on Eleuthera. In 1666 the English founded Charles Town — later renamed Nassau — on New Providence.
During the late 1600s and 1700s, various pirates and buccaneers frequented Andros Island. In 1713 the Bahama Islands were declared a Republic of Pirates. Morgan's Bluff and Morgan's Cave on North Andros are named after the famous privateer-pirate, Henry Morgan, for whom Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum is named. It is said that the Andros settlement of Small Hope Bay was so named because Morgan claimed there would be "small hope" of anybody finding the treasure he had hidden there. Pirates raiding the Spanish treasure galleons out of Cuba maintained a settlement on South Andros.
Loyalists fleeing the United States during and after the American Revolution settled on various Bahama Islands including Andros, bringing their slaves with them. In addition, Andros was the destination of many families who were squeezed out of the Belize logwood industry following the relocation of Mosquito Coast settlers to British Honduras in 1787. By 1788 the population of all The Bahamas was reported as 3,000 whites and 8,000 blacks. The 1788 census for Andros reported 22 white heads of families, with a total of 132 slaves; they cultivated of land.
After the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, some Seminoles and black American slaves escaped and sailed to the west coast of Andros by the wrecking sloop Steerwater, where they established the settlement of Red Bays. Hundreds of Black Seminoles and slaves travelling in 1823 by canoe and 27 sloops across the Gulf Stream joined them, with more arriving in later years. While sometimes called "Black Indians", the descendants of Black Seminoles identify as Bahamians, while acknowledging their connections to the American South.
In 1807, the British Empire had banned the international slave trade in its colonies through the Slave Trade Act. At times U.S. ships in its domestic coastwise slave trade were wrecked on Bahama islands or reefs. Even before 1834, when Britain abolished slavery in its colonies, the colonial governments in the Caribbean freed the slaves from such American ships as the Comet and Encomium, and later the Hermosa.
In addition, Bahamian mariners raided passing illegal slave ships and liberated Africans. Such freed Africans entered a system of apprenticeship or indentured servitude in The Bahamas. Later, many of these freed Africans and their offspring migrated to the Out Islands, including Andros, resulting in an indigenous culture that is closer to those in West Africa than most other black cultures in the Western Hemisphere.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Greek spongers immigrated to Andros for the rich sponge fishing on the Great Bahama Bank off Andros' west coast. For a period of years, Andros sponging was The Bahamas' largest industry. In the 1930s, the sponges were wiped out by a Red Tide infestation. The sponging industry died, and the spongers left the island for Key West, and Tarpon Springs, Florida. Thousands of unemployed Bahamians moved to the village of Coconut Grove near Miami.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Owens Lumber company, a US-owned company, deforested much of the indigenous pineyards that grew on North Andros. As a result of poor planning for sustainable harvests, the island today has overcrowded forests of mainly young trees.
In the 1960s and 1970s The Bahamas, led by Sir Lynden Pindling, the Member of Parliament for Kemps Bay on South Andros, negotiated independence from the British. Self-rule was granted in 1964, and one-man one-vote Majority Rule in 1967.
The Bahamas achieved Independence 10 July 1973. One of the final acts of the British Crown in The Bahamas was to grant AUTEC a long-term lease for land on Andros.
Sir Lynden became the first Prime Minister of The Bahamas. He served until 1992, when his party lost control of Parliament. He retained his seat representing South Andros.

Timeline

  • 800-1500± Gradual population of the Bahamas, including Andros Island, by the Lucayan people
  • 1520± The Spanish find the Lucayan people are eradicated following decades of exploitation as regional slave labourers
  • 1650—1750± Pirate Era
  • 1725 British naturalist Mark Catesby visits Andros
  • 1783 British Loyalist settlers arrive from the United States
  • 1807–1865 Africans freed from slave ships after passage of Great Britain's Slave Trade Act settle on Andros
  • 1821–1840 Black Seminoles and slaves emigrate from Florida
  • 1841 Commercial sponging era begins in the flats of west Andros
  • 1892 Andros Fibre founded
  • 1938 Red tide wipes out sponge industry
  • 1950–1975 Deforestation of North Andros pineyards
  • 1960 Small Hope Bay Lodge, Bahamas' first dive resort, opens near Fresh Creek
  • 1961 First American in space Alan Shepard reports he can see Andros Island from space
  • 1964 Construction of AUTEC Base begins
  • 1965 U.S. submersible DSV Alvin begins work off Andros
  • 1968 Bridges built across Fresh Creek and Stafford Creek, unifying North Andros
  • 1970 Jacques-Yves Cousteau uses his research vessel RV Calypso to explore Blue Holes and Tongue of the Ocean.
  • 1972 Androsia Batik Factory opens
  • 1972 International Field Studies at Forfar Field Station opens
  • 1973 Lynden Pindling, Member of Parliament for Kemp's Bay on South Andros, becomes first Prime Minister of independent Bahamas
  • 1974 Bahamas Agricultural Research, Training and Development project initiated, fostering agriculture on Andros
  • 1983 Mennonite Farm established near Blanket Sound
  • 1984 Queen Elizabeth II visits Andros to dedicate Queen's Park
  • 1997 Andros Conservancy and Trust founded, dedicated to the ecological preservation of the islands
  • 2002 Creation of first National Parks and Marine Protected Areas on Andros
  • 2014 The Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute opens.