Monday, Apr. 20, 1959
Treasure Islands
Signing himself simply Mr. Randolph, an outraged British subject wrote the King at the end of the 17th century to complain that the Bahamas were one of the "chief places where Pyrates Resort & are Harbourd." He requested "that his Majesty be pleased to send a first Rate ffrigot under the Command of a sober person" to end the menace. By 1718 Edward ("Blackbeard") Teach had been shot, and Woodes Rogers, the first Royal Governor, had arrived to establish the crown colony's motto--"Expulsis Piratis
Restituta Commercia [Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored]."
Today the limestone-and-coral islands from Grand Bahama to Great Inagua hold treasure beyond Teach's wildest dreams: the northeasterly breezes that blow across them are heavy with the sweet green smell of money. A single street-front foot of Nassau's shop-lined Bay Street on New Providence Island costs as much as $10,000; clubs, marinas, luxury cottages and the private pleasure domes of the Western world's wealthy nestle among the avocado trees from one end of the 750-mile, 673-island chain to the other.
Suitcase Companies. This February, 1,000 tourists a day went down ships' gangways and airplane ramps (Nassau is a 55-minute flight from Miami) to lose themselves in the Bahamas' magical blend of suntan, goombay music, Beefeater Gin (at $2 a bottle), crazy straw hats and Sweet Richard's single-entendre ditties at the Cat and Fiddle Club. Commerce, which flourished briefly in the blockade-running days of the Civil War and the rum-running days of Prohibition, is again running wild. And, in a respectable way, the pirates are back.
A group of merchants, lawyers and real estate wizards, known as the "Bay Street Pirates" to Nassau taxi drivers, began the boom nine years ago. They spread the word that these British crown-colony islands have no income taxes, no personal property taxes, no real estate taxes, no capital gains taxes, trifling inheritance taxes. Now, says Attorney Stafford Sands, leading Bay Streeter, "there's a definite feeling of yeastiness about the whole American investment picture."
The Bay Streeters' campaign brought a wave of "suitcase companies"--actually subsidiaries of foreign corporations but legally independent. Through a suitcase company, for example, a U.S. steel company subsidiary buys ore in Venezuela, ships it in chartered vessels to Europe. The profits returned to the Bahamian company are not taxed, can be used for expansion outside the U.S. or "borrowed" by the U.S. parent company.
In addition to hundreds of British and Canadian firms, an estimated 26 U.S. companies are operating out of Nassau suitcases. The Bethlehem Steel Corp. lurks behind a mahogany shingle reading, "The Registered Office of Bethlehem Steel Co. Limited, Overseas Underwriters Limited." Similar shingles hang outside Nassau offices of outfits such as Crucible Steel, U.S. Steel (which calls itself Navios), Whirlpool, Cummins Diesel, RCA, J. I. Case (agricultural equipment) and Grant Advertising. Outboard Marine International (Evinrude and Johnson outboard motors) has a staff of 55, including U.S. citizens, Englishmen, Canadians and a handful of Bahamian Comptometer operators. In air-conditioned comfort behind a Bay Street brass plate, Outboard Representative James Butler says: "We are a completely international company. Europeans come here on business to see our motors. Our salesmen travel from Nassau to all parts of the world."
Private Lives. But the Bahamas are a personal haven for the rich as well as a corporate haven for foreign companies. Clint Murchison Jr. soaks up the sun on a private island hideaway at Spanish Cay (rhymes with fee). Standard Oil Heiress Marion Carstairs and her half brother Francis Francis bought adjoining Whale Cay and Bird Cay. Longtime Alcoa Board Chairman Arthur Vining Davis built expensive Rock Sound Club, a public hotel, on Eleuthera. While he was at it, Davis put up the truly private Cotton Bay Golf Club (among the members: Laurance Rockefeller, General Nathan Twining), complete with Robert Trent Jones-designed $600,000 golf course, and bought 25,000 acres of pink-beached paradise. Last week he was closing a deal to sell a sizable chunk of his acreage to a combine headed by Pan American World Airways President Juan Trippe. Howard Hughes controls Cay Sal, closest island (50 miles) to Cuba.
Coke & Beer. On central New Providence Island, nine new hotels have sprung up in the past five years. The Howard Johnson-run Nassau Beach Lodge opened in February; rushing to completion is Lyford Cay, a combination club-real estate development masterminded by international beer baron and financier Edward Plunket Taylor of Toronto. In 1955 Taylor paid $2,000,000 for 4,000 acres of underbrush 17 miles west of Nassau, making him the second biggest landowner on New Providence (after Eunice Lady Oakes and her children, heirs to the 7,000 acres of the late Sir Harry Oakes). He has laid out $3,500,000 on land improvement, and is building a $2,000,000 clubhouse that has already been paid for by the sale of more than fifty 1 1/2-acre plots (top price: $75,000). Four miles from Taylor's project is the Coral Harbour Club, bankrolled to the tune of $2,000,000 by the widow and children of Coca-Cola Co. Director Lindsey Hopkins.
On Andros Island, Axel Wenner-Gren, the Swedish tycoon (Electrolux vacuum cleaners, Bofors guns), has sunk $11 million in a long-range resort-and-home-building project. On the northern end of Andros, Parker Pen Co. Chairman Kenneth S. Parker is developing 8,500 acres of building and truck-gardening land. Louis R. Wasey, former ad agency executive (Erwin, Wasey & Co.), sold frs stockholdings in 1956 to concentrate on his Cat Cay Club, a heaven for well-heeled fishermen. Biggest venture of all is Freeport, a man-made harbor, industry site and bunkering installation 81 miles east of Palm Beach, Fla., on Grand Bahama Island. A $12 million joint venture of top U.S. Shipowner Daniel K. Ludwig, Promoter Wallace Groves and British Millionaire Charles Hayward, Freeport boasts a harbor dredged 30 ft. deep and capable of handling 400-ft. ships, and offshore refueling lines that can deliver 7,500 gallons an hour.
Two Votes Apiece. The Bay Street boys run the politics as well as the boom. But even in the sparsely populated (116,530) Bahamas, the dreams that drove colonials to greater measures of self-government elsewhere in the old British Empire are stirring. Last year, at the beginning of the winter season, Nassau's taxi drivers, bus boys, power-plant workers and construction workers walked out on strike (TIME, Jan. 27, 1958). Members of the Progressive Liberal Party, they struck mostly for fairer polling laws, and they won a few concessions; e.g., men of property, who formerly could vote in every constituency where they owned or leased $14 worth of property ($7 on the out islands), were limited to only two votes apiece. Elections have not been held since, and the balance of legislative power remains Bay Street, 24 seats; P.L.P., 5.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.