Bellamena is Creolized Ballymena. It was once a fairly common name for a vessel but there were three Nassau urban legends in particular:

The oldest wasn't a bootlegger. She was an American Civil War blockade runner. Rumored to be part of the Fraser, Trenholm and Company fleet. Some peg Charleston, South Carolina millionaire George A. Trenholme (1807-1876) as the model for Captain Rhett K. Butler in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.

More in line with the popular "folk" theme was a steel-hulled, sailing auxiliary out of the New York Yacht Club rumored to be in the bootlegging employ of one Samuel T. Shaw, a wealthy New York arts patron and manager of the Grand Union Hotel.

But mostly it was the S.S. Ballymena a Miami – Nassau tramp-packet that was notorious for bumping booked and boarded black passengers in favor of late arriving whites. The "paint it black" was supposedly a reference to 1920s Bahamian Garveyism's short-lived plans for a competing "Black Star Line" Miami – Nassau service.