Side Trips

Discovering Rum Cay & Conception Island

"Where on earth is Rum Cay?" Even many Bahamians have never heard of it. Located between San Salvador and Long Island, this is another cay, like Fortune Island, that time forgot.

That wasn't always the case, though. The very name conjures up images of swashbucklers and rumrunners. Doubtless, it was at least a port of call for those dubious seafarers, as it was for ships that took on supplies of salt, fresh water, and food before crossing the Atlantic or going south to Latin America. The cay's name is supposed to have derived from a rum-laden sailing ship that wrecked upon its shores.

Like many other Bahamian islands, Rum Cay once attracted British Loyalists fleeing the new United States of America. They hoped to establish themselves here as farmers and plantation overlords, but even those brave and homeless immigrants abandoned the island as unproductive. Salt mines were the mainstay of the island's economy before they were wiped out by a hurricane at the turn of the 19th century. After that, most of the inhabitants migrated to Nassau; by the 1970s, the population of Rum Cay stood at "80 souls."

Today most of Rum Cay's 100 inhabitants live at Port Nelson, the island's capital. The well-known underwater cinematographer Stan Waterman once described Rum Cay as the "unspoiled diving jewel of The Bahamas." For that reason, a diving club was opened here in 1983, but it closed, regrettably, in 1990.

Some maintain that Rum Cay was the next island where Columbus landed after he found and named San Salvador. He dubbed that second spot Santa María de la Concepción. However, many students of history and navigation believe that Columbus made this second landfall at the island today called Conception, which lies northwest of Rum Cay and about the same distance northeast of Long Island. You'll have to travel here in a private boat.

Joseph Judge, a writer whose articles have appeared in National Geographic, believes that neither Rum Cay nor Conception was Columbus' second stop. He holds that, based on modern computer science and knowledge of oceanography, the island the discoverer named Santa María de la Concepción has to be Crooked Island.

The uninhabited Conception Island is under the protection of The Bahamas National Trust, which preserves it as a sea and land park. It's a sanctuary for migratory birds. The most esoteric divers find excellent scuba sites here, and endangered green turtles use the beaches as egg-laying sites. Park rules are strict about littering, or removing any plant or animal life.

With the demise of the Rum Cay Club, tourist traffic to the island came to a halt except for the odd yachting party or two. It's gaining renewed interest, however, and at present, you can arrange for boaters on San Salvador to take you to see Rum Cay and Conception, which remain frozen in time.