View From The Pilot House
By dthompson ~ April 30th, 2010. Filed under: View.
One of the things I have always found interesting are the surnames that repeat through
the Bahamas.
By Skip Allen, Sr.
Jimmy Sands has it right.He was talking to our editor about his family’s history in the Bahamas—all 350 years of it— when he pointed out that given there are just 350,000 Bahamians, he feels lucky. His exact quote was, “when I wake up in the morning, open my eyes, and realize I’m a Bahamian, I feel just like I’ve won the Lottery.” Amen.
Working on this annual issue about my favorite cruising grounds is always a sentimental journey of sorts. I’ve been going to or through the Bahamas for 60 years, give or take. Like Jimmy said, there aren’t that many Bahamians, and with 700 islands, they are spread pretty thin. Most everyone knows everyone else, their kin and where they are from.
One of the things—I would say “tings” if I was writing from there—that I have always found interesting is the short list of surnames that repeat through the islands. Names like Malone and Moxey, Saunders and Sands, Knowles and Nixon, Bethel and Rolle, or Pinder and Pritchard are more than just family names, they tell you about families and create an instant connection.
Most of the Alburys, for example, have something to do with Abaco, Gibsons with Eleuthera and earlier than that, with Scotland. Alburys, Malones and Russells hailed originally from Irish stock. Many Black Bahamians took the name Rolle after Lord Rolle, a much-admired planter in Exuma who, after emancipation, gave his land to his former slaves.
During the Revolutionary War, a number of staunch Loyalists fled the Colonies and set up shop in the Abacos, which is why places like Hope Town look like a pastel version of New England, complete with picket fences. Canadians favored Nassau.
There are French influences, too, in the Bahamas, as you can tell from names like Dillet, Symonette and Poitier.
Greeks arrived in the Bahamas during the 1880s to work in the sponge trade and theirn names joined the mix. Lebanese families followed in the 1890:Armoury, Moses are two of those. A book on the subject called Bahamian Culture and Factors Which Impact Upon It, written as two essays by Donald M. McCartney and published in 2004, is an interesting place to start your research if this sort of thing interests you.
Or, you could do what I like to do, spend time in the Bahamas and let the whole United Nations experience of it wash over you like the tides until you get the hang of it.
If you haven’t been to the Bahamas, tell yourself this is the year. Those of you on the Gulf of Mexico side can shoot across through the Okeechobee Waterway—the locks are repaired and the Lake has plenty of water—and hook up with cruisers in Stuart, Florida, to cross in company during one of the guided Bahamas Flings. They also leave from Fort Lauderdale. Check it out on the Bahamas official Web site: bahamas.com/bahamas/boating-fling-schedule-2010.
