ABSTRACT
The lowest point is the Atlantic Ocean and the highest point is Mount Alvernia on Cat Island. It extends from eighty kilometers east of Florida to eighty kilometers northeast of Cuba”. Inhabited by Lucayan Indians at the time of sighting by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492, the islands were assigned to Spain by papal grant. Subsequently occupied only by slave traders and buccaneers, the Bahamas were granted by the British crown to Sir Robert Heath in 1629. Prior to World War II, the only surveys performed in the Bahamas were astronomical observations of hazards to navigation and local cadastral-type surveys of some privately held properties. The US Department of State issued a new paper on Limits in the Seas, No. 128 on the Bahamas Archipelagic and other Maritime Claims and Boundaries on January 31, 2014. “The chapter analyzes the maritime claims and maritime boundaries of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, including its archipelagic baseline claim.
