New Providence
UTC-4) | |
ISO code | BS-NP |
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New Providence is the most populous island in
The island was originally under Spanish control following
The three branches of
Other settlements on New Providence include Grants Town, Bain Town, Fox Hill, Adelaide, Yamacraw, South Beach, Coral Harbour, Lyford Cay, Paradise Island, Sea Breeze, Centreville, The Grove (South) and The Grove (West Bay), Cable Beach, Delaporte, Gambier, Old Fort Bay, Carmichael Road, and Love Beach.[8]
Etymology
The indigenous
History
After 1670, Bermudian salt rakers gathering sea salt in Grand Turk and Inagua became regular visitors to the island. The first lasting European settlement was on Eleuthera in 1648, and then New Providence in 1666.
By 1670, there were over 900 people on the settlement of Charles-Town. Due to ineffective governors, Charles-Town was attacked by the French and Spanish navies, became a home base for pirates, and was eventually destroyed by a Spanish attack in 1684. However, two years later in 1686, new English colonists from Jamaica came and settled. They were called back by the governor of Jamaica, but they ignored this order. In 1695, Governor Nicolas Trott rebuilt the town and added a fort, both were called Nassau. However, the fort was heavily damaged in a Spanish attack in 1700 and the colonists eventually abandoned the fort in 1703 after a French and Spanish attack. Due to the lack of cannon and soldiers in the fort, New Providence soon became a home base for pirates. By 1713, there were over 1000 pirates in Nassau and they outnumbered the 400–500 law-abiding inhabitants; pirate Thomas Barrow even declared himself "Governor of New Providence".[11] In 1718, Governor Woodes Rogers (sent by King George I of Great Britain) came in and offered a pardon for any pirate willing to give up their ways. Using his intelligence and threatening to execute them if they did not take the pardon, Rogers was eventually able to rid Nassau of pirates.
In February 1776,
The frigate
After the American Revolution, several thousand Loyalists and their slaves emigrated to New Providence and nearby islands, hoping to re-establish plantation agriculture. The shallow soils and sparse rainfall doomed this activity to failure, and by the early 19th century the Bahamas had become a nearly vacant archipelago. Salt raking continued here and there, wreck gleaning was profitable in Grand Bahama, but New Providence was the only island with any prosperity because of the large British military establishment. The fortresses began to crumble and were abandoned by 1850. New Providence afterwards had two periods of high economic success: during the American Civil War of 1861–65, when it was a highly popular port for blockade-runners serving the Confederate States of America;[12] and during Prohibition, when it was a smuggling centre for distilled spirits.
Tourist destination
By the late 19th century New Providence had begun billing itself as the "sanitarium of the western hemisphere". Testimonials by residents and visitors emphasized its extremely mild climate with minimal daily temperature fluctuations (often as little as 3 °C (5 °F) in any given 12-hour period) and warm winters (a typical winter morning in the range of 21 to 23 °C (70 to 74 °F), excellent drainage, ample variety and number of Christian (Protestant) churches, well-tended and rectilinear roads, modern luxurious facilities, and native English speakers. Steam ships plied between the coastal southern United States, Cuba, and Nassau, and the popularity of the destination proceeded to grow.[13]
By the late 1920s, New Providence had become well-established especially as an American vacation destination with many tourist facilities, including a deepened harbour for short-visit cruise ship visitors and hotels offering gambling. Two-thirds of the approximately 400,000 Bahamians live on New Providence, although this proportion has fallen somewhat with the development of Freeport on Grand Bahama.
References
- ^ "Census population and housing" (PDF). Bahamas Gov. Retrieved 17 April 2023.
- ^ 2010 Census of Population and Housing: New Providence (PDF) (Report). Department of Statistics of the Bahamas. August 2012. p. 3. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved May 18, 2015.
- ^ https://www.blurtit.com/q702844.html Archived March 18, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Nassau, the capital city is located on New Providence island
- ^ "CIA Factbook". 22 September 2022. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 24 January 2021.
- ^ "World Atlas – Where is Nassau?". Archived from the original on 2018-06-22. Retrieved 2016-04-16.
- ^ Bruce Taylor (September 1997). "Review of Johnson, Howard, The Bahamas From Slavery to Servitude, 1783–1933". H-Lat Am, H-Net Reviews. Archived from the original on 2013-10-29. Retrieved 2013-01-03.
- ^ http://www.bahamasfinder.com/nassau.html Archived 2015-08-28 at the Wayback Machine Nassau was formerly known as Charles Town but was burned to the ground by the Spanish in 1684.
- ^ "New Providence". Government of the Bahamas. Archived from the original on 2012-03-28. Retrieved 2011-09-11.
- from the original on 2023-02-21. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
- ^ John Everett-Heath. "New Providence Island". Encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
- ^ Headlam, Cecil (1930). America and West Indies: July 1716 | British History Online (Vol 29 ed.). London: His Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 139–159. Archived from the original on 31 August 2018. Retrieved 15 October 2017.
- ^ "Mysterious Fate of the Blockade Runners" by J. W. A. Wright, The Overland Monthly, ed. by Bret Harte. 1885
- ISBN 978-5-87272-044-7.