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.
Loyalists fleeing Mainland America after the American Revolution settled on various Bahamas Islands including Andros, bringing their slaves with them. In addition, Andros was the destination of many families who were squeezed out of the Belize logwood industry following the relocation of Mosquito Coast settlers to British Honduras in 1787. By 1788 the islands of New Providence, Abaco, Exuma, Eleuthera, Harbour Island, Long Island, Cat Island, Turks Island and Andros were inhabited by a reported population of three thousand whites and 8000 blacks. The 1788 census reported 22 white heads of families with 132 slaves on Andros, cultivating 813 acres of land.
In 1821 Seminoles and black slaves fleeing Florida were brought to the west coast of Andros by the wrecking vessel ‘Steer water,’ where they established the settlement of Red Bays. Additional Black Seminoles travelling by canoe across the Gulf Stream joined them over the next several decades.
In 1807, the British Empire outlawed the slave trade with the Slave Trade Act, and ended slavery of blacks altogether with emancipation in 1834. African immigration to the Bahamas continued through the raiding of passing slave ships by Bahamian mariners. Slaves freed in this manner entered a system of apprenticeship or indentured servitude. Many of these freed Africans and their offspring immigrated to the Out Islands including Andros, resulting in an indigenous culture that is closer to African than most other black cultures in the Western Hemisphere.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries (1841–1938) Greek
