On December 28, 1851, the island was mentioned in the letter of a sailor known only as "F". Published by
The Louisville Journal, the letter described
gale force winds, and "rain [that] poured in torrents" as they passed the area of the island. In September 1883, a
Category 3 hurricane came through, wreaking havoc across the islands. Captain Dorsey of the
Carleton, a ship headed from Nassau to
Iuiqua with 14 passengers, sailed the ship to the harbor of Little San Salvador to wait out a "heavy thunderstorm". They arrived at the harbor at 3 pm, and at 10 pm the Captain had noted that the
barometer had fallen four tenths, and informed the passengers "that a hurricane was blowing". The ship was blown out of the safety of the harbor, and as a result multiple passengers died, including Rev. J.S.J. Higgs, the rector of the parish of
San Salvador Island. On June 22, 1901, the British
sloop Lizzie Culmer was blown ashore the island and wrecked, resulting in the death of one woman. The
Culmer was bound for Nassau carrying merchandise and passengers from Rum Bay. The schooner
William F. Campbell which had been carrying pineapples, rescued the surviors. On January 1, 1902, the British fruit trading ship
Frascati was abandoned off the shore of the island. Just after midnight, the ship struck a reef and sank. In 1907,
Dr. N.L. Britton, the director of the
New York Botanical Garden, led a party to the island in hopes of finding new plant specimens. In 1935, for his annual fishing trip, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the
USS Farragut as an escort, sailed
John Jacob Astor IV's former yacht
Nourmahal around the Bahamas. While off the coast of Little San Salvador, the party set off in small boats on an excursion to capture tropical fish to be added to tanks aboard the
Nourmahal. While on a
Good Neighbor policy trip to the Bahamas in March 1936, Roosevelt returned to the island aboard the
Presidential yacht USS Potomac for recreational swimming and fishing. In 1940, at the start of
World War II, President Roosevelt met with
Edward VIII to discuss locations for a new
United States naval base to be located in the Bahamas. Little San Salvador was considered, as well as Eleuthera and Long Island. In July 1941, two Floridian yacht enthusiasts anchored off the island for two weeks. The island's popularity for
US Presidents continued, and in March 1957
Dwight D. Eisenhower visited to
troll for fish. In July, three men visited the island to catch bonefish in the island's lagoon. In 1972, a group from Boston University visited the island for an ecological survey.
1975 onwards: cruise ship tourism at Half Moon Cay In 1975, a buyer for Little San Salvador was being sought. The listing price was originally $3.6 million, but was then lowered to $3 million to entice a buyer. In December 1975, the captain of
windjammer Phantome reported to the
US Coast Guard a suspicious midnight rendezvous between a 28-foot boat and a freighter off the coast of the island. In January 1976, after their plane lost power, two Detroit men survived the crash and were marooned on the island. In 1978, the New York based company Caribbean Schooner Cruises announced two four-masted schooners that would sail from Nassau taking tourists to
Spanish Wells, Cat Island, Little San Salvador,
Great Guana Cay, and Andros Island.
Knut Kloster, founder of
Norwegian Cruise Line, began negotiating to buy Little San Salvador in 1979, to guarantee his ships could always dock, "for an afternoon of swimming and lazing on the beach." NCL succeeded in acquiring the island, and the first large cruise ship to visit the island was a NCL employee and guest cruise on May 30, 1980, sailing aboard the
SS Norway. In 1987, in response to the
New York trash barge incident, it was proposed to turn the lagoon on the island into a
landfill. The goal was then build condominiums and restaurants on top of the landfill, but the Bahamas rejected the idea. In December 1996, it was announced that
Holland America Line was buying the island. They purchased the island for $6 million, and planned to invest $16 million into the construction of all new facilities. The company renamed the destination
Half Moon Cay upon its opening in December 1997. To better compete with
CocoCay, on December 10, 2024 Carnival announced a massive expansion and renovation to the island. A new pier is envisioned for North Arrival Plaza to allow up to Carnival's
Excellence Class to dock, including the
Mardi Gras launched in 2020, removing some of the need to tender to the island. A new name was also revealed,
RelaxAway, Half Moon Cay. ==Ownership==