24 / 64
American South. Daring Bahamians saw an opportunity to get rich. They
outfitted fast boats to make the dangerous 560-mile (901 km) journey
between Nassau and Charleston, South Carolina. They would bring British-
made goods into Charleston and carry cotton—which they could trade with
the British in Nassau—out. The blockade runners who evaded the Union
navy made enormous sums of money, and the Bahamas prospered. But with
the end of the Civil War in 1865, the lucrative business disappeared, and hard
times befell the islands.
Fortunately for Bahamians, another smuggling opportunity arose in
1919. In that year, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—
which prohibited the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcoholic bever-
ages—was passed. Demand for alcohol in the United States remained high,
however, and those who wanted to take some risks could make huge profits.
Nassau became a center for rumrunners, as the liquor smugglers were called,
and once again the Bahamas enjoyed a measure of prosperity. When the
Twenty-first Amendment was passed and Prohibition ended in 1933, howev-
er, the Bahamas suffered a major economic blow. That blow was made worse
several years later by the loss of another important source of income for
Bahamians: diving for sponges. In 1938, disease ravaged local sponge beds,
and more islanders were cast into poverty.
Economic Progress
World War II (1939–45) pumped money into the Bahamian economy. The
United States signed a lease for a naval base on Mayaguana Island in 1940,
and the British maintained an air base on New Providence.
Bahamas
24