Bahamas Trivia
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60 free Bahamas trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Bahamas trivia quiz covers the whole archipelago, not just the cruise-ship strip in Nassau. It starts with the basics any visitor picks up: which island the capital sits on, roughly how many islands there are, the year of independence and what the flag's colours mean. From there it goes into the story of the place, from the Lucayans who met Columbus and the Puritan settlers of Eleuthera to the pirates' republic that Woodes Rogers shut down in 1718, the Loyalists, the Civil War blockade runners, the Duke of Windsor's unhappy governorship and Lynden Pindling's road to independence. There are questions on the natural side too: Andros and its blue holes, Dean's Blue Hole, the swimming pigs of Big Major Cay, Hurricane Dorian and the salt flats of Inagua. Sport and culture get their turn with Junkanoo, Sidney Poitier, Thunderball, Fyre Festival, the Bahamas Bowl and the country's remarkable run of Olympic 400-metre gold medals. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages, and each explanation adds a detail worth keeping. Play it before a trip, at a Bahamas-themed party or just to find out how much you really know about the islands.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nassau, the capital and largest city of the Bahamas, sits on which island?
New Providence
Nassau sits on New Providence, one of the smaller main islands at about 80 square miles, yet home to well over half of all Bahamians.
Q 02Roughly how many islands make up the Bahamas?
700
Roughly 700 islands make up the Bahamas, plus a couple of thousand rocky cays, yet people live on only about 30 of them.
Q 03Which imaginary line crosses the middle of the Bahamas?
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer cuts across the middle of the chain, so Nassau and the northern islands, palm trees and all, lie just outside the tropics.
Q 04Who represented the Queen at the Bahamas' 1973 independence ceremony?
Prince Charles
Prince Charles, then a 24-year-old naval officer, arrived aboard the frigate he was serving on and watched the Union Jack lowered for the last time just before midnight, when the new Bahamian flag went up.
Q 05Which British territory shares the Bahamas' island chain?
Turks and Caicos
Turks and Caicos completes the Lucayan Archipelago and was run from the Bahamas more than once, getting its own governor only when its bigger neighbour became independent in 1973.
Q 06What did the Lucayans call the island Columbus named San Salvador in 1492?
Guanahaní
The Lucayans called it Guanahaní; which modern island that was is still debated, and Watling's Island was officially renamed San Salvador only in the 1920s, to match the favoured theory.
Q 07Which Bahamian rodent was believed extinct until a colony was found on a remote cay in the 1960s?
The hutia
The hutia, a rabbit-sized rodent found only in the Bahamas, was written off as extinct until a colony turned up on East Plana Cay; conservationists have since moved some to other cays.
Q 08Tourist guides often trace the name 'Bahamas' to Spanish words meaning what?
Shallow sea
'Shallow sea' is the usual gloss: guides derive 'Bahamas' from the Spanish 'baja mar', though scholars dispute the claim and some prefer a Lucayan origin for the name.
Q 09The Eleutheran Adventurers, the Bahamas' first permanent English settlers, arrived from where?
Bermuda
The Eleutheran Adventurers sailed from Bermuda in the late 1640s: Puritans led by William Sayle who were at odds with the island's authorities and wanted to worship as they chose.
Q 10The Puritan settlers named their new island Eleuthera, which comes from the Greek word for what?
Free
Eleuthera is the feminine form of the Greek eleutheros, 'Free', chosen by Puritan settlers who had left their old colony in the 1640s to escape religious control.
Q 11Which former privateer arrived at Nassau in 1718 as governor and ended the pirates' republic?
Woodes Rogers
Woodes Rogers reached Nassau in July 1718 carrying a royal pardon for pirates who submitted; his first term left him bankrupt and in a debtors' prison, yet he was sent back for a second and died in office.
Q 12Which marooned sailor, said to have inspired Robinson Crusoe, did the Bahamas' future governor rescue in 1709?
Alexander Selkirk
Alexander Selkirk was taken off Juan Fernández Island in February 1709 by a privateering expedition that went on to capture a Spanish treasure ship and circle the globe; its commander later governed the Bahamas.
Q 13Which pirate accepted the king's pardon in 1718 and then hunted his former comrades for the Bahamas' governor?
Q 21What was the nickname of the white merchant elite behind the United Bahamian Party?
The Bay Street Boys
'The Bay Street Boys' took their name from Nassau's main commercial street; the white merchant clique ran the colony until the Progressive Liberal Party's 1967 election win brought majority rule.
Q 22The Bahamian currency is held at a fixed one-to-one exchange rate with which foreign currency?
The US dollar
The US dollar circulates alongside the Bahamian dollar, which is pegged to it at par; both are accepted interchangeably on every island, so American visitors never need to change money.
Q 23Which tax are residents of the Bahamas spared?
Income tax
Benjamin Hornigold
Benjamin Hornigold was sent out by the new governor to hunt his old comrades; Charles Vane outran him, but the ten pirates he did bring back were tried in Nassau and most were hanged.
Q 14Before it was renamed in 1695 to honour King William III, what was Nassau called?
Charles Town
Charles Town, named for Charles II, was rebuilt after a Spanish raid in 1684 and renamed for William's Dutch family, the House of Nassau.
Q 15Which motto did the Bahamas carry before its present coat of arms?
Piracy expelled, commerce restored
'Piracy expelled, commerce restored' translates the Latin 'Expulsis piratis restituta commercia' on the colonial badge, where a British ship chases off two pirate vessels; the modern arms carry 'Forward, Upward, Onward Together' instead.
Q 16Which group did Britain resettle in the Bahamas in their thousands after the American Revolution?
Loyalists and their slaves
Loyalists and their slaves arrived in their thousands on British land grants and planted cotton, but worn-out soil and insect pests soon ruined the crop.
Q 17What made Nassau briefly rich during the American Civil War?
Blockade running for the Confederacy
Blockade running for the Confederacy turned Nassau into a boomtown: fast ships slipped cotton out of Southern ports and ran arms and luxuries back in past the Union navy.
Q 18Which former British king served as Governor of the Bahamas during the Second World War?
Edward VIII
Edward VIII, by then the Duke of Windsor, governed from 1940 to 1945; he had given up the throne in 1936 to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, who came to Nassau with him.
Q 19Who served as the first prime minister of an independent Bahamas, holding office from 1973 to 1992?
Lynden Pindling
Lynden Pindling led the Bahamas to majority rule in 1967 and then to independence, and his party stayed in power for 25 years; Nassau's international airport now carries his name.
Q 20Who became the first Bahamian to serve as governor-general, three weeks after independence in 1973?
Sir Milo Butler
Sir Milo Butler took over on 1 August 1973 from the last British governor, who had stayed on for three weeks as the first governor-general; Butler held the post until his death in 1979.
Income tax on wages doesn't exist in the Bahamas, and that low-tax regime drew the banks and trust companies that made it an offshore finance hub; import duties and VAT pay the government's bills instead.
Q 24What colour is the triangle at the hoist of the Bahamian flag?
Black
The hoist triangle is Black, standing for the vigour and force of a united people; the gold stripe represents the sun and the land's resources, the aquamarine stripes the surrounding sea.
Q 25Which two animals support the shield on the Bahamian coat of arms?
A marlin and a flamingo
'A marlin and a flamingo' support the shield: the blue marlin is the Bahamas' national fish and the flamingo its national bird, standing for the sea and the land of the islands.
Q 26Which ship is depicted on the shield of the Bahamian coat of arms?
The Santa María
The Santa María, Columbus's flagship, sails across the shield on wavy blue-and-silver waves beneath a rising golden sun, recalling his 1492 landfall in the islands.
Q 27What is the national flower of the Bahamas?
Yellow elder
Yellow elder, a shrub with trumpet-shaped yellow flowers, was chosen partly because favourites such as hibiscus and bougainvillea had already been claimed as national flowers by other countries.
Q 28Which extremely dense hardwood, once prized for ship bearings, is the national tree of the Bahamas?
Lignum vitae
Lignum vitae is so dense it sinks in water, and its self-lubricating wood was turned into bearings for ship propeller shafts; the Bahamas adopted it as its national tree.
Q 29What is the highest point in the Bahamas, rising only 63 metres on Cat Island?
Mount Alvernia
Mount Alvernia, known locally as Como Hill, is crowned by the Hermitage, a miniature stone monastery that the priest and trained architect Father Jerome built there in 1939.
Q 30Which island is by far the largest in the Bahamas?
Andros
Andros covers about 2,300 square miles yet has fewer than 10,000 residents, while most Bahamians crowd onto an island roughly one-thirtieth its size.