Eleuthera

Eleuthera is a long, narrow island in the Bahamas, with the Atlantic on one side and the shallower waters of the Great Bahama Bank on the other. Its earlier Lucayan name was Cigateo. The Lucayans inhabited the island before Spanish slaving in the sixteenth century emptied much of the archipelago.

In 1648 a party of English religious independents sailed from Bermuda to establish a settlement here. Led by William Sayle and known as the Eleutheran Adventurers, they gave the island a name derived from the Greek word for freedom. Their early years were difficult, but their venture marked an enduring beginning of English settlement in the Bahamas. Later arrivals included loyalists who left the newly independent American colonies after the Revolutionary War.