Amble along Navy Lion Road or Woodes Rogers Walk on a typically warm Caribbean morning, and you will see ships. Lots of ships. You will see super-yachts tucked into the sheltered waters of Pointe Marina.

You will surely see cruise ships, too, either wedged into the concrete of Prince George Wharf, or filling up the channel which separates the most populous part of the Bahamas – the capital Nassau, on New Providence island – from the sunny playground of Paradise Island opposite.

There will be passengers, sailors and dockers as well. But it won’t be like the old days. It will be nothing like the old days.

For a country broadly regarded as an unhurried haven for hot-weather holidays (tourism accounts for 70 per cent of its GDP; contrary to popular opinion, off-shore banking makes up only 15 per cent), the Bahamas has a great deal of history.

Some of it is seismic – one of its islands (academic debate still rages as to which) was the first fragment of the Americas spotted by Christopher Columbus, on October 12 1492.

Some of it is dark – the hellscape of slavery and European-borne disease which ensued. Some of it is far brighter - 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Bahamian independence. And some of it… well, some of it swashes and buckles in a manner that seems scarcely credible 300 years later.

Put plainly, and in modern terminology, if you go back to the start of the 18th century, the Bahamas was a terrorist state. It was a violent, dangerous place where only vicious men and dead-eyed killers could survive. But a potent mix of mythology, Hollywood, Errol Flynn’s smile and Johnny Depp’s eyeliner have worked their magic, so it is simpler to go with a more romantic description of this nation of islands.

From roughly 1706 to 1718, the Bahamas – or, at least, New Providence, and the grimy alleyways of the fledgling Nassau - was the “Republic of Pirates”. Splice the mainsail and unfurl the Jolly Roger – this is a tale that needs retelling. 

This tale started earlier, of course, in the whirlpool of the colonial rush sparked by Columbus’s voyages. Initially claimed by Spain, the Bahamas fell into British clutches in 1648, with the arrival of settlers (the so-called “Eleutheran Adventurers”) from Bermuda.

By 1670, Charles II had formally tied the islands to the new province of Carolina, on the American mainland – an absentee-landlord arrangement which allowed disorder to thrive.

Into this vacuum sailed Henry Avery, an English mariner who docked his ship, the Fancy, in Nassau in 1696, her hold stuffed with plundered gold, silver, ivory and gunpowder. Partly in self-preservation and partly in self-interest, the governor of the Bahamas, Sir Nicholas Trott, had accepted a sizable bribe to sanction the Fancy’s entry. This bought Avery a blind eye turned – and permission to use New Providence as a base. A precedent was set.

Avery was not just a pirate. He might as easily be considered a “privateer”: a sailor with a licence, often government-granted, to make mischief in distant waters by harrying the vessels of his sponsor’s enemies and inflicting financial damage by stealing their cargoes.

These were profitable times. The War of the Spanish Succession engulfed much of Europe between 1701 and 1715, and sent ripples across to the Caribbean, where Spanish, French, Portuguese, British and Dutch ships were frequently at each other’s throats in the Atlantic’s main shipping lanes. Suddenly, the Bahamas – one of the quieter outposts of the “New World” – was in a prime location.

The men who followed Avery were pirates in a “pure” sense; they were beholden to no government and interested solely in their own endeavours. Though even here, there was honour among thieves. On its coalescence in around 1706, the “Republic of Pirates” brought a certain hard order to the lawlessness.

As well as a governor, there was a formal magistrate to enforce the island’s rules, usually on bloody terms. One of the holders of this “office” was one Edward Teach. He is better known today as the fearsome figure Blackbeard, despite the fact that Teach was not one of the ringleaders when the Republic began aggressively expanding its activities. 

Peace in Europe was not good business for the villains of New Providence. The end of the war made the thin veil of legitimacy provided by privateering licences all but redundant, and the Treaty of Utrecht stripped French and Spanish galleons of their enemy status. Not that this mattered hugely to the unscrupulous captains moored in Nassau.

Peace broke out here, too – namely between Henry Jennings and Benjamin Hornigold, two of the port’s biggest hitters and bitterest rivals. Their teaming-up to form the “Flying Gang” was a grim development for legitimate shipping in Caribbean waters.

When news broke that a Spanish flotilla had gone down in a hurricane off the east coast of Florida on July 31 1715 – just five months after hostilities had ceased in Europe – Jennings was one of the first on the scene, ravenous for gold, attacking the salvage vessels attempting to rescue a sunken treasure of astonishing value.

Hornigold would cling vaguely to his privateer tag, refusing to target British ships. Teach, who was part of his crew, had no such principles. If it sailed past him, he would shoot it. By 1718, he had emerged from Hornigold’s shadow and was running riot on the American coast, his guns trained on Virginia and the Carolinas.

In the May of that year, he blockaded Charleston, stopping any ship coming in or out, and syphoning anything of value. His infamy grew, but would eventually be his undoing. Cornered by the British lieutenant Robert Maynard in Ocracoke Inlet, off (what is now) North Carolina, on November 22, he was filleted in a blur of hand-to-hand combat, the deck of the ship he had recklessly boarded slippery with blood.

His corpse would be tossed to the waves, but only after his head had been severed and speared onto the bowsprit of Maynard’s sloop – the starkest of warnings.

The buccaneer party was approaching its end, as Europe’s kings grew tired of the useful thugs whose belligerence had served them so well. It is with good reason that Nassau’s waterfront is now named after Woodes Rogers. While Blackbeard had been pillaging the Carolinas, this former privateer had been appointed as a new governor of the Bahamas, dispatched to the Caribbean by George I with a brief to quash the Republic of Pirates.

Those who haunted its harbour had a straightforward choice: to receive a full “King’s Pardon”, or face the consequences. Some chose wisely. Jennings accepted the amnesty, and retired to Bermuda to run a plantation. Hornigold embraced it, turning gamekeeper to hunt down his former comrades at Rogers’s behest.

There were enough refuseniks to keep him busy, too, but the sun was setting on the pirate era. Charles Vane – one of the most notorious of the Bahamas pirates – was captured off (what is now) Honduras in 1719 and swung from the gallows, at Port Royal on the south coast of Jamaica, on March 29 1721.

Much has changed in the Bahamas since. But if you stroll the streets of Nassau today, you will notice merry echoes of a turbulent period. You have the Pirates of Nassau museum (piratesofnassau.com; entry from £5.50), which recreates the era in gibbets, waxworks and treasure chests. You have Pirate Republic Brewing (piraterepublicbahamas.com), where you can toast any hearties of your choosing with local beer. And you have Blackbeard’s Revenge (blackbeardsrevenge.com), a replica galleon open for dinner- and booze-cruises.

Quite what Captain Teach would make of such matters – accoutrements include limbo dancers and foam machines – is very hard to say. Perhaps, ultimately, it would be safer not to ask.

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Three brilliant Bahamas breaks

On the shore

If you want to stay on the north coast of New Providence, where pirates once strode the sands, make for the Sandals Royal Bahamian Spa Resort. This five-star adults-only enclave, just to the west of Nassau, comes with its own private off-shore island for added fun in the sun.

A seven-night all-inclusive stay, flying from Manchester on March 11, costs from £3,030 per person through Best At Travel (020 3993 6347).

In the deep

It’s not all about bars and beaches, of course – The Bahamas is also a remarkable location for sub-aqua adventures, too, the archipelago’s shallow waters teeming with marine life.

Dive Worldwide (01962 302 087) sells an 11-day “Island Escapade” with two nights in Nassau and six days on the outpost of San Salvador, and the coral reefs that define it. From £2,545 per person, including international and internal flights, and 16 dives.

In the pink

The Bahamas’ signature resort is surely The Atlantis, the famous retreat whose distinctive rose-coloured bulk dominates Paradise Island, just across from Nassau. Themed around the sunken city of Greek mythology, it boasts water slides, a casino and a vast aquarium.

A seven-night getaway to The Royal at Atlantis, flying from Heathrow on March 4, costs from £2,429 per person, via Virgin Holidays (0344 472 9646).