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.