Private home building on 640-acre Staniel Cay is flourishing and gives some parts of the island a ramshackle appearance.

FORBES: Blackbeard's Beach

Hemingway found Bimini, but Harold Hartman, onetime owner of a New Jersey box company, made the tiny island of Staniel Cay his adopted home.

FORBES: Blackbeard's Beach

In 1973 Hartman neighbor Martha Wohlford, a novelist, used sideband radio to set up the first communications link between Staniel Cay and the outside world.

FORBES: Blackbeard's Beach

Part of the charm of visiting Staniel Cay, which is a 30 minute flight from Nassau, is eavesdropping on other visitors over channel 16, used as a kind of public address system by all 100 of the island's residents and 40 vacation homeowners.

FORBES: Blackbeard's Beach