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 long by wide at the widest point.
Etymology
The indigenous Lucayan people called the island Habacoa (or Babucca) 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.
Secondary and tertiary sources indicate that the island may have been named after the inhabitants of St Andro Island (also called St Andrew or San Andrés) 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' discovery of 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.
A 1520 expedition by the Spanish discovered only 11 people in the Bahamas; the Lucayans were effectively eradicated from these islands. After this it is often said there were no known permanent settlements in the Bahamas, including Andros Island, for approximately 130 years. The Bahamas 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.