Andros, Bahamas

Andros Island is an archipelago within the Bahamas, the largest of the Bahamian Islands. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consists of hundreds of small islets and cays connected by mangrove estuaries and tidal swamplands, together with three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The three main islands are separated by bights, estuaries that trifurcate the island from east to west. It is long by wide at the widest point. The indigenous Lucayan people called the island Habacoa (or Babucca) meaning "large upper outer land". Originally named Espiritu Santu by the Spanish, Andros Island was given its present name sometime early during the period of British colonial rule. Several eighteenth-century British documents refer to it as Andrews Island. A 1782 map refers to the island as San Andreas. The modern name is believed to be in honour of Sir Edmund Andros, Commander of His Majesty's Forces in Barbados in 1672 and governor successively of New York, Massachusetts, and New England. Andros was notable for his role in the collapse of the Dominion of New England, after which he was removed from office and jailed. Secondary and tertiary sources indicate that the island may have been named after the inhabitants of St Andro Island (also called St Andrew or San Andrés) off the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, because 1,400 migrants reportedly settled in Andros in 1787. Contemporary records, including official Bahamian census figures from 1788 and 1807, indicate that the number of inhabitants of Andros in that period was fewer than 400, and the original source of this report remains obscure. Only 2,650 individuals were evacuated from the Mosquito Coast in 1787, including individuals evacuated from St. Andrews Island, and 2,214 are known to have settled in Belize. The misconception appears to stem from a misreading of the Royal Geographical Society account of the transfer of the inhabitants from St.