I kept thinking “Oh! Darling” — and not because my husband languished in a hammock while slurping a Bahama Mama rum cocktail. Along pale pink sands, on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, we were staying in the Potlatch Club cottage where music icon Paul McCartney and wife Linda honeymooned in March 1969. While here, the Beatles heartthrob jotted down lyrics to “Oh! Darling,” and “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window” on Potlatch-logo stationary; both songs appeared on the Fab Four’s final album, “Abbey Road,” later that year. Believe me darlin’: This chic, renovated one-bedroom had been abandoned and buried by the smothering jungle for nearly 40 years. In fact, the entire original Potlatch Club, once a 1960s and ‘70s hideaway for elites and celebrities — including Greta Garbo, Cliff Robertson and Richard Widmark — had been swallowed up by nature, looted, lashed by hurricane winds and long forgotten. That is, until Caribbean-born entrepreneurs Hans Febles and Bruce Loshusan spent almost eight years meticulously raising the decrepit Potlatch from the dead; 11 accommodations in whitewashed cottages debuted last summer on 12 gorgeously landscaped acres that feel like your own private oceanfront estate. “We bought the property not knowing its history,” Febles said. And that’s a crazy story in itself. Eleuthera is a rugged, low-key, 110-mile-long, twig-thin island with crystalline aqua seas, no traffic lights, a strip dubbed “the narrowest place on Earth,” one two-lane potholed main road, and wondrous skylit caves shielding bats and spirits of shipwrecked Puritans. A major happening is Eleuthera’s annual pineapple festival, when contestants draped in 30-gallon trash bags frantically try to devour a strung pineapple as fast as they can. The island’s 100 or so largely empty, pristine beaches are gaspingly beautiful (and just a 40-minute flight from Miami). Tourists can snorkel and book fishing trips, however because it’s so relaxed, the island’s candid slogan is: “Eleuthera, it’s not for everyone.” In 1967, a trio of moneyed New York socialites opened the Potlatch Club after building homes and cottages on what had been a 1923 pineapple plantation. They did so at the urging of a friend, Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress) who went to golf in Eleuthera and decided a plethora of posh pals needed a discreet tropical resort. The three Potlatch owners included two former debutantes and Junior Leaguers — Diana Adams, then married to a top-drawer tax attorney, and divorcee Marie Driggs, whose son, Tony, became Potlatch’s tennis pro on the cork-turf court. Joining them was Driggs’ partner, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, an outstanding pianist who studied the ivories in Paris. The Potlatch was an invitation-only retreat with thatched tiki umbrellas poolside and rooms filled with classy European antiques such as an oak wainscot chair dated 1657. Since guests were “invited” many didn’t feel the need to pay anything. Soon after Febles and Loshusan broke ground in 2016, Driggs’ late son Tony shared the piecemeal heyday history and some visitor names with the new owners who had no clue. Among the VIPs: Prince Charles, Lord Mountbatten, Broadway legend Mary Martin, actor Raymond Burr, actress and Post Cereals heiress Dina Merrill. Even, he said, Ringo. “There’s not a lot of photographs or paperwork on who stayed because they wanted privacy,” said Febles, who lives on-site. “I did find a bill for Walter Cronkite and Merv Griffin.” With draining funds, the socialites sold the furnished Potlatch Club in 1978 to a Canadian investor who never opened it as a hotel. Sometime in the ‘80s, the Potlatch plummeted into foreclosure and decades of ruin. Then one day, Febles and Loshusan were driving with a real estate agent after viewing another possible hotel venue, when they glimpsed the barely visible clubhouse constructed in 1923 and part of the bygone Potlatch. The area was so overgrown, they had no idea the vast lot stretched to the beach. “There were trees coming up from what had been the pool,” Febles recalled. But in his mind, he foresaw his hotel goal: “Timeless elegance.” “When it went bankrupt and was in probate for a couple years, locals used to go there and take whatever they wanted,” Febles said. Surprisingly, once the duo purchased the land, excited neighbors stopped by to give them Potlatch cups, napkins, brochures, and other items. “They felt like, finally, someone’s doing something here.” One man offered to return the heavy piano he somehow moved from the shuttered Potlatch. The damaged piano had long been neglected in his garage and although unusable, the baby grand mahogany Bosendorfer graces the new Potlatch’s library. Prior co-owner Elizabeth Fitzgerald had often played it for guests. A dilapidated wood cabinet, rained on for decades, was discovered in the ramshackle premises. Now restored, it holds the original tasseled Potlatch room key chains, which Febles located in a stashed box with keys that had “Potlatch” misspelled. “I couldn’t try a key to see if it worked. There were no doors anywhere, everyone had taken them.” The clubhouse still features its 1923 black-and-white checkered floor set in sand; a section had cratered into the ground but was repaired for Potlatch 2.0. Eleuthera, with the rest of the Bahamas, remained a British colony until gaining independence in 1973. Which explains why the first Potlatch’s general manager wore dressy Scottish kilts (supposedly he was hired because of his finesse for playing backgammon and bridge). The current GM, Bhutan-born Kezang Dorji, is a gem who worked as a high-end butler for Keith Richards, Christie Brinkley, and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and exudes his homeland’s Gross National Happiness attitude. (Both Dorji and laid-back Febles are hands-on, even toting guests’ luggage to their quarters. In the mornings, you might spot shorts-clad Febles picking stray blades from the perfectly manicured green lawns. He’s often joined by two statuesque wild herons.) Of the Bahamas’ 700 islands, Eleuthera ranked as the “pineapple capital” in the mid-19th century, shipping tons of the tangy fruit to the United States and England. After exports bottomed out, so did pineapple cultivation — there’s only about 15 farmers now. At Eleuthera’s recent 36th annual Pineapple Festival, fans of the prickly crop munched pineapple tarts, perused pineapple-themed paintings, and danced to boisterous bands in a park. “This is where it all began, this is the place internationally where people bought pineapples from,” enthused Bekera Taylor, who owns a one-acre farm. Inside a festival booth, she sold Eleuthera’s special Sugarloaf variety (“they’re sugary sweet and shaped like a loaf of bread”), next to homemade pineapple ketchup, pineapple barbecue sauce, pineapple pepper jelly, and pineapple chips. She’s hoping to launch a pineapple winery. Thanks to a stormy shipwreck, Eleuthera is also “the birthplace of the Bahamas.” In 1648, a group of English Puritans set sail from Bermuda to avoid religious persecution only to smack into Devil’s Backbone reef. They managed to get ashore, name their refuge “Eleuthera” from the Greek word for “free,” and take shelter in Preacher’s Cave where they carved Pulpit Rock for sermons. I had the willies in the cave, but then it’s also an ancient burial ground for the extinct Lucayan people; archeologists dug up a shaman’s remains, a beheaded skeleton and a 1,000-year-old tooth. Another must-see is the Glass Window Bridge, a 30-foot-wide natural rock formation (“the narrowest place on Earth”) topped by a manmade paved bridge (no glass). Visually striking, the calm, turquoise Bight of Eleuthera waters lie on one side; on the other the churning cobalt Atlantic. Potlatch isn’t within walking distance of much, although the Leon Levy Native Plant Preserve beckoned a block away. I fixated on medicinal flora and learned home-brewed tea from horse bush relives chest congestion, a bound thatch palm can “pull de heat out a de head,” according to a sign, and snakeroot cures intestinal worms. Also, from Potlatch, a 10-minute stroll on powdery sands brought us to funky beach bar Tippy’s; the men’s restroom door is labeled “Bob” and covered by Marley’s likeness. One balmy morning, about 45 miles from Potlatch, we hopped on a five-minute water taxi ride to tiny Harbour Island, known as the “Nantucket of the Bahamas” and luring privileged visitors and multi-million-dollar yachts. (Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce vacationed there.) The main mode of transportation — golf carts — puttered past brightly colored colonial-era homes erected by British Loyalists starting in the 1700s. On a side street, a lively brass band paraded with a coffin containing a departed gent, as we popped into Vic-Hum Club, a 70-year-old landmark bar totally plastered with memorabilia. Co-owner Jay-Jay Percentie — an exuberant local councilman, justice of the peace and self-anointed Prince of Dunmore (the only town on Harbour Island) — proudly took the “world’s largest coconut” off a shelf. “It’s got a diameter of 33 inches even though it’s shrunk over 40 years,” he boasted, holding out the monstrous, hefty, hard-shelled thing. “It washed up in 1983. Maybe it came from Indonesia. It sure traveled over the Atlantic Ocean to make it here.” A mystery yes, but back at the Potlatch, there were more secrets to unravel. The word “potlatch” refers to a North American Indigenous ceremony during which possessions are given away to show wealth, fortuitous for the initial owners and freebie clientele. (The new hotel offers breakfast-inclusive rates from $659 — and yes, you must pay.) To channel the past, I quietly sat in Potlatch’s library, surrounded by the long-lost piano, worn tennis rackets that Febles found stored, vintage photos of the early Potlatch, and its brochure stating “children under ten must be accompanied by a nurse.” On the wall hung a copy of Sir Paul’s handwritten lyrics to “Oh! Darling” on Potlatch notepaper. Febles said he acquired the duplicate from the Liverpool Beatles Museum that retains the original. However, one prized relic is no longer on display. Months ago, a deck of old playing cards, inscribed “Potlatch Club” in gold letters, had been exhibited under a glass dome in the library. Suddenly, the deck vanished. Febles said guests had already checked out and weren’t suspects. Five days later, the card deck magically reappeared right beside the glass dome. Perhaps borrowed by Potlatch ghosts for a friendly game of bridge.