The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and 88% of its population. The archipelagic state consists of more than 3,000 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean, and is located north of Cuba and northwest of the island of Hispaniola and the Turks and Caicos Islands, southeast of the U.S. state of Florida, and east of the Florida Keys. The capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force describes The Bahamas' territory as encompassing 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
Nassau is the capital and largest city of The Bahamas. It is located on the island of New Providence, which had a population of 246,329 in 2010, or just over 70% of the entire population of The Bahamas. As of April 2023, the preliminary results of the 2022 census of the Bahamas reported a population of 296,522 for New Providence, 74.26% of the country's population. Nassau is commonly defined as a primate city, dwarfing all other towns in the country. It is the centre of commerce, education, law, administration, and media of the country.
The earliest arrival of people in the islands now known as The Bahamas was in the first millennium AD. The first inhabitants of the islands were the Lucayans, an Arawakan language-speaking Taino people, who arrived between about 500 and 800 AD from other islands of the Caribbean.
This article talks about transportation in the Bahamas, a North American archipelagic state in the Atlantic Ocean.
Andros Island is an archipelago within 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 167 kilometres (104 mi) long by 64 km (40 mi) wide at the widest point.
The Abaco Islands lie in the northern Bahamas, located about 193 miles east of Miami, Florida. The main islands are Great Abaco and Little Abaco, which is located just west of the northern tip of Great Abaco. There are several smaller barrier cays, of which the northernmost are Walker's Cay and its sister island Grand Cay. To the south, the next inhabited islands are Spanish Cay and Green Turtle Cay, with its settlement of New Plymouth, Great Guana Cay, private Scotland Cay, Man-O-War Cay, and Elbow Cay, with its settlement of Hope Town. Southernmost are Tilloo Cay and Lubbers Quarters. Another of note off Abaco's western shore is Gorda Cay, now a Disney-owned island and a cruise ship stop renamed Castaway Cay. Also in the vicinity is Moore's Island. On the Big Island of Abaco is Marsh Harbour, the Abacos' commercial hub and the Bahamas' third largest city, plus the resort area of Treasure Cay. Both have airports. A few mainland settlements of significance are Coopers Town and Fox Town in the north and Cherokee and Sandy Point in the south. Administratively, the Abaco Islands constitute seven of the 31 Local Government Districts of the Bahamas: Grand Cay, North Abaco, Green Turtle Cay, Central Abaco, South Abaco, Moore's Island, and Hope Town.
Grand Bahama is the northernmost of the islands of the Bahamas, with the town of West End located 56 nautical miles east of Palm Beach, Florida. It is the third largest island in the Bahamas island chain of approximately 700 islands and 2,400 cays. The island is roughly 530 square miles (1,400 km2) in area and approximately 153 kilometres (95 mi) long west to east and 24 kilometres (15 mi) at its widest point north to south. Administratively, the island consists of the Freeport Bonded Area and the districts of East Grand Bahama and West Grand Bahama. Nearly half of the homes on the island were damaged or destroyed in early September 2019 by Hurricane Dorian.
Inagua is the southernmost district of the Bahamas, comprising the islands of Great Inagua and Little Inagua. The headquarters for the district council are in Matthew Town.
The Out Islands are the islands that make up the Bahamas with the exception of New Providence Island, where the capital and largest city, Nassau, is located, and Grand Bahama Island, where Freeport is located. The Abaco Islands and Eleuthera islands are among the Out Islands.
The Raid of Nassau was a naval operation and amphibious assault by American forces against the British port of Nassau, Bahamas, during the American Revolutionary War. The raid, designed to resolve the issue of gunpowder shortages, resulted in the seizure of two forts and large quantities of military supplies before the raiders drew back to New England, where they fought an unsuccessful engagement with a British frigate.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to The Bahamas:
The following is an alphabetical list of topics related to the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.
Fort Montagu is a small fort of four cannon on the eastern shore of New Providence Island (Nassau) Bahamas. Peter Henry Bruce oversaw the construction of the fort that began in 1741 to defend the British possession from Spanish invaders.
The Raid on Nassau was a Spanish military expedition that took place in February 1720 during the War of the Quadruple Alliance wherein Spanish forces assaulted the British settlement of Nassau in an attempt to seize the island of New Providence. Although the Spanish managed to raid outlying posts, the assault on Nassau itself was repelled and the invasion was a failure.
The Capture of the Bahamas took place in April 1783, late in the American Revolutionary War, when a Loyalist expedition under the command of Andrew Deveaux set out to retake the Bahamas from the Spanish. The expedition was successful and Nassau fell without a shot being fired. It was one of the last actions of the entire war.
The Raid on Nassau, on the Bahamian island of New Providence, was a privately raised Franco-Spanish expedition against the English taking place in October 1703, during the War of the Spanish Succession; it was a Franco-Spanish victory, leading to Nassau's brief occupation, then its destruction. The joint Bourbon invasion was led by Blas Moreno Mondragón and Clause Le Chesnaye, with the attack focusing on Nassau, the capital of the English Bahamas, an important base of privateering for English corsairs in the Cuban and Saint Domingue's Caribbean seas. The town of Nassau was quickly taken and sacked, plundered and burnt down. The fort of Nassau was dismantled, and the English governor, with all the English soldiers were carried off prisoners. A year later, Sir Edward Birch, the new English governor, upon landing in Nassau, was so distraught at the ruin he found, that he returned to England after only a few months, without "unfurling his company-issued commission".
The Raid on Charles Town, or Spanish raid on New Providence, was a Spanish naval expedition on 19 January 1684 (O.S.) led by Cuban corsair Juan de Alarcón against the English privateering stronghold of Charles Town, capital of the Bahamas.
The British Colonial Hotel is a historic resort hotel in downtown Nassau, Bahamas, located on the only private beach in Nassau, on the site of the Old Fort of Nassau. The hotel, originally opened in 1924, has been described as "the Grand Dame of all Nassau hotels", "the most elegant and most expensive hotel in town", and "the most distinctive and pleasant of the island's large hotels".
The Old Fort of Nassau, also known as Fort Nassau, was a fort in Nassau, Bahamas, first built in 1697. The fort lasted for nearly two hundred years with a rich legacy of history until it was finally demolished in 1897. It was located on the north side of Marlborough Street, on the site of the current British Colonial Hilton Nassau. Remnants of the old walls can be seen on the hotel grounds. For many years it was the only fort in Nassau.
The Republic of Pirates was the base and stronghold of a loose confederacy run by privateers-turned-pirates in Nassau on New Providence island in the Bahamas during the Golden Age of Piracy for about twelve years from 1706 until 1718. While it was not a republic in a formal sense, it was governed by an informal pirate code, which dictated that the crews of the Republic would vote on the leadership of their ships and treat other pirate crews with civility. The term comes from Colin Woodard's book of the same name.
