From 1861 until 1865, the boom and bust economy of The Islands of The Bahamas was enjoying an enormous boom as a result of the American Civil War. Great Britain's textile industry depended on southern cotton, so it favoured the Confederacy. However, British ships could not reach southern ports because the Union was blockading them. To gain access to this precious import, blockade runners in sleek, fast boats would travel the 560 miles from Charleston to Nassau with loads of cotton. Here, they would meet up with British vessels and trade their cotton for the goods that the British ships carried. Returning to Charleston, the blockade runners would sell their shipments at a huge profit.
The end of the Civil War meant the end of prosperity for The Bahamas, and it wasn't until 1919, when the United States passed the 14th Amendment prohibiting alcohol, that smuggling - and the vast source of income that came with it - returned to the islands. Scotch whisky was an important British export for The Islands of The Bahamas, so the colonial government greatly expanded Prince George Wharf in Nassau to accommodate the huge traffic in alcohol.
When Prohibition ended in 1934, so too did the vast revenues that had poured into the country. Unfortunately, the end of Prohibition came just before with the collapse of the profitable sponge-harvesting industry, and the combined impact proved economically devastating to The Islands of The Bahamas.
