WHAT-TO-DO - NASSAU, CABLE BEACH & PARADISE ISLAND - JAN 2006 EDITION
No holiday in The Bahamas is complete without at least one stroll along that brash, busy and slated-for-renovation avenue that defines downtown Nassau – Bay St, where you’ll find the too cool for words side by side with the utterly gauche.
There are at least four good reasons why you should slip away from your hotel for a few hours to take in the Bay St phenomenon: Bahamian history, Bahamian culture and architecture and especially duty-free Bahamian shopping. Up and down Nassau’s main drag, you’ll find a landslide of well-known designer-name items marked down by as much as 30 per cent from stateside prices.
Some shops are located in buildings that date back to the turn of the last century or before. If you keep an eye out, you will see many of the distinctive elements of Bahamian architecture, including jalousies (louvered shutters), wide verandas with handrails from the days before air conditioning, porticoes, lattice work, balustrades, cornices and quoins – the distinctive blocks placed at the corners of many buildings to strengthen them against hurricanes.
The street has been in continuous use since the 17th century. Before 1695, Nassau was known as Charlestown, for Charles I of Great Britain, and Bay St was called The Strand. Paintings from that era indicate it was just a cart path meandering along the waterfront, graced by a few shacks and wind-bent coconut trees.
As the centuries passed, Bay St moved inland away from the water while shipping concerns, docks and stores gradually took their place along the harbour. Hurricanes helped redesign the old town and the old street many times over.
Now the government of Prime Minister Perry Christie is getting ready to change the character of Bay St once again, moving out shipping companies and equipment that obstruct harbour views. Plans call for the construction of a pleasant boardwalk all the way from Prince George Wharf, where the cruise ships tie up, to where the mailboats come in at Potter’s Cay, a little more than a mile to the east.
Bygone booms & busts
Through the years, Bay St reflected the fortunes of the country as a whole. There was a booming plantation era (disappeared when the thin soil of The Bahamas gave out and slavery ended in 1838), shipwrecking (a dubious profession that met a lingering death into the 20th century with the ongoing construction of lighthouses), gun-running (to the US Confederacy, ended when the civil war came to a close), rum-running (ended when US prohibition was lifted in 1933), and sponging (ended when a blight, almost overnight, destroyed the industry in 1938).
So, as you walk along the old thoroughfare today, you might reflect that you’re treading in the footsteps of ghosts: colonial bureaucrats; British Empire Loyalists fleeing the United States; Spanish, French and American invaders and ne’er-do-wells of all kinds, from bootleggers to pirates.
Bygone Bay St pedestrians also included blue-blooded British royalty. The Duke of Windsor, who was once King Edward VIII of England, became Royal Governor of The Bahamas in 1940 after he threw over the British Crown to marry American divorcee, Wallis Warfield Simpson.
A mile of history
The best place to start a self-directed walkabout on Bay St is the elegant British Colonial Hilton, that imposing yellow building on Marlborough St that dominates downtown Nassau and anchors the western end of Bay St itself.
As you look down Bay St with the hotel at your back (that is, looking east), there are historic buildings on both sides. The one on the corner of Bay and Navy Lion Rd (immediately to your left) was once St Cuthbert’s Anglican Church – named after Anglo-Saxon England’s most revered saint. It was a place of worship for fishermen and soldiers and sailors on patrol back in the mid-1800s. Long since decommissioned, it now houses shops, but the arched windows betray its earlier life.
Nearby you’ll see the entrance to the straw market. It is now under tenting since the original market and four adjoining buildings were burned down in a disastrous fire on Sept 4, 2001. (The original site, now a parking lot further down Bay St, will once again host the straw market on the ground floor of a smart new building that will also house the Ministry of Tourism when completed.) The straw market is busy, interesting and still the best place to go for inexpensive bangles, beads, authentic carvings and fabrics, along with the straw hats, bags and the other handicrafts for which it’s world famous.
Make your way through the market and you’ll find yourself on Woodes Rogers Walk, along the harbour. Narrow side streets, plazas and arcades will take you back to Bay St. This is the place to hire a horse-drawn surrey for an inexpensive tour around downtown Nassau. You’ll find the surrey driver is a well-versed guide.
Next door to the market on Bay St, look for a smallish pink and white building known as Vendue House. It was built more than 200 years ago as an open-air arcade where you could buy almost anything, including livestock, farm equipment and, unfortunately, slaves.
Today, Vendue House is home to one of the country’s most important and poignant museums, the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation – well worth a visit.
Pirates ran Nassau
The most storied of Nassau’s many periods was the pirate era of the early 1700s when the likes of the demented Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Henry Jennings, Henry Morgan, and the cruelest of the lot, Charles (The Scourge of The Bahamas) Vane, hit Spanish, French and even British shipping to and from the Americas.
Also flying the Jolly Roger were a couple of bloodthirsty femmes, definitely not to be trifled with: Anne Bonney and Mary Read. Reports from the period indicate they were accomplished fighters with pistol, sword and axe. When they were finally captured in 1720 they both escaped hanging by “pleading the belly” – swearing they were pregnant.
At one time, the whole of Bay St was a nest of pirates. They ran the place pretty much as they liked and they liked it filthy. Dispatches of the day say the stench of Nassau could be detected far out at sea.
The pirates’ non-stop party ended abruptly after 1718 when one of their own, former privateer Woodes Rogers, arrived with orders from King George I to run the cutthroats out.
At first Rogers offered them a King’s pardon if only they’d promise to be good. When that didn’t work he hanged nine of them all at once on the lovely little beach at the western end of the British Colonial Hilton, the very spot where tourists now soak up the sun and watch majestic cruise ships ply in and out of Nassau Harbour.
Back then, that spot was part of Fort Nassau, long since replaced by barracks and then by the first British Colonial, built in 1900, burned down in 1922 and rebuilt in 1923. It was renovated to its present elegance in 1999. Look for a statue of the dashing Capt Rogers at the main entrance to the hotel, going for one of the two trusty flintlocks tucked in his belt, ready to extirpate another pirate.
Rogers was The Bahamas’ first Royal Governor, and he set up the first legislative assembly, which means that parliamentary democracy of a sort goes back a long way in The Bahamas.
Rogers earned a new coat of arms for the fledgling colony, long since replaced but still apropos for Bay St. It bears an easy-to-figure-out Latin motto: Expulsis Piratis Restituta Commercia. The pirates were indeed expelled and honest commerce was duly restored and, fittingly enough, it’s still thriving up and down Bay St.
If you want to experience what the old pirate days were really like, look for the first-class little museum near the lively Pirates bar, kitty corner from the British Colonial on King and George Sts, featuring lifelike displays and beautifully researched signs.
Shoppers’ mecca
On the south side of Bay St, look for John Bull, a veritable department store of designer name goods. The store’s main outlet is the one on Bay, in a building extensively renovated a few years ago. It was once a well-known ironmongery. So where hammers once clanged on anvils, you can now buy jewellery and perfume in sumptuous surroundings.
Across from the stately grey stone Royal Bank of Canada (circa 1919) is Solomon’s Mines, another of Nassau’s famous stores, also with other outlets on Bay St, around Nassau and on Paradise Island. This building dates back to the late 19th century. When it was being renovated workers found “Solomon’s Mines” painted on a concrete ceiling beam and that, of course, became the name of the store.
Many other present-day shops are located in historic buildings along Bay St, including Crown Jewellers Colombian Emerald’s International Quantum, Colombian, Fendi, Brass and Leather, Royal Palm Trading Company, Jeweler’s Warehouse, Diamonds Forever and Mucka-Mucks.
While it’s relaxing to hang out around the pool or the beach at your hotel, it’s a lot more fun and interesting to get out and take in the unvarnished history of old Bay St – before it’s renovated out of existence.
Disclaimer: The information in this article/release was accurate at
press time; however, we suggest you confirm all details and prices
directly with vendors.
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