Rum Cay

Rum Cay is about seventy square kilometres and holds fewer than a hundred people, almost all of them in the single settlement of Port Nelson. It had a salt industry in the nineteenth century that a hurricane finished in 1908, and it has been quiet ever since. The reason to come is underwater: reef in excellent condition by regional standards, a wall on the southern side, and the wreck of HMS Conqueror, a 101-gun screw-propelled British ship of the line lost on the reef in 1861, lying in shallow water and protected as a heritage site. Above water there are empty beaches, salt ponds and the remains of the salt works.

History

The Lucayans called the island Mamana, mid waters land, and a cave in the north holds their drawings and carvings, while farmers have turned up Arawak-period objects in soil the islanders once enriched with bat guano. Some writers, among them Samuel Eliot Morison, identify Rum Cay with Santa María de la Concepción, one of Columbus' landfalls of 1492, though others place that island elsewhere in the Bahamas or the Caicos (Wikipedia, Rum Cay).

The landscape

• HMS Conqueror - an 1861 warship wreck in shallow water, protected.
• The reef and wall - some of the best condition coral in the country.
• Port Nelson - the single settlement, with a handful of residents.
• The salt works ruins - what is left of the nineteenth-century industry.

When to go

December to May is the dry season with the best diving conditions. Transport is the constraint: air services have started and stopped over the years and many visitors arrive by private boat. Check what is running before planning.

Before you go

Access is genuinely unreliable, with scheduled flights that have come and gone repeatedly. Facilities are minimal: a couple of guesthouses at best, limited food, and no medical facilities. The Conqueror is a protected wreck and nothing may be removed. Anyone not diving will find nothing to do at all.

Nearby

San Salvador is a short hop east; Long Island is west.

Key facts