Hemingway in Bimini -- One of the oddest pieces of real estate in the Atlantic -- less than a few hundred feet wide in many places, with a surface area of only 23 sq. km (9 sq. miles) -- Bimini has always floated like a magic lure, only 81km (50 miles) from some of the most crowded seashores in the United States. During the 1930s, it was famous as an alter ego to Key West. Soaked with liquor during U.S. Prohibition (Bimini served as a depot for outlawed contraband) and widely known today as a storage depot for illegal drugs, the place has always found itself bathed in controversy. Thanks to novelist Ernest Hemingway, its raunchy, no-holds-barred lifestyle became infamous throughout North America.
Hemingway's first boat (the Pilar) was a diesel-powered tub he skippered with fellow writer John Dos Passos for the express purpose of reaching Bimini. One of the bloodiest of his many self-destructive acts occurred off the coast of Bimini when, struggling to aim a revolver at the thrashing jaws of a captured mako shark, he accidentally shot himself in both legs. But don't let that fool you: Hemingway did some serious and successful fishing here. Among the most impressive catches of his life were a 356kg (785-lb.) mako and a 233 kg (514-lb.) tuna, both hauled in off the coast of Bimini.
Some of Hemingway's most famous fistfights happened on Bimini, too -- one with wealthy publisher Joseph Knapp, others with a series of black contenders who stood to earn $250 if they could stay in the ring with him for three 3-minute rounds. (No one ever collected the money.)
Hemingway revised the manuscript of To Have and Have Not on Bimini in 1937. His evocative description of the seaport in Islands in the Stream was Alice Town, Bimini's still-seedy capital.
