Steve's World Blog Information and articles on cities, towns and villages around the world.

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is located to the north of Cuba in the Atlantic Ocean, it is an independent country, speaking the English language and is made up of a large number of islands, cays and rocks spread over an area of over 5,000 square miles. Thought to have been first settled by the Taino people in the seventh century, the Bahamas has a large population by the time Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World. As Spaniards arrived in the Bahamas they took most of the native population into slavery, and those remaining died of disease, this caused the islands to become depopulated and they were not permanently resettled until the 17^th century when a group of travellers arrived from Bermuda, they were known as the Eleutherian Travellers and settled on an island which they called Eleuthera (meaning freedom). After the islands became home to some notorious pirates, they were made a Britsh Crown colony in the early 18^th century. Bahamas Map.