A Brief History
This remote group of islands remained unnamed until it was spotted by Spanish navigator Juan Bermúdez in 1503. Only a few years later an Italian map showed “La Bermuda.” It was also called the “Isles of Devils” because early navigators were terrified of Bermuda’s reefs and celebrated their salvation when they had passed safely by. Despite benign conditions and ample food, there were few visitors, and those who landed did so usually because they were shipwrecked. One was the anonymous sailor who carved the date 1543 on a rock on the south coast, now known as Spanish Rock. He also inscribed a cross and a pair of letters, perhaps his initials or those of his king.
The Sea Venture
In 1606 James I granted a charter to the Virginia Company to establish the first English colony in America, named Jamestown in the king’s honor. Three years later a second contingent of settlers set sail from Plymouth under Admiral Sir George Somers. Less than halfway across the Atlantic, the fleet ran into a vicious storm. The flagship vessel, called Sea Venture, was separated from the rest of the convoy and eventually snagged on the reefs just east of Bermuda on 28 July 1609.
Miraculously, all aboard were ferried to shore. It turned out that Bermuda was an ideal place to be stranded. After less than a year, Somers and his group had built new ships from local cedar and timber salvaged from the remains of the Sea Venture. Leaving behind only two men, the Somers party resumed their journey westward and finally landed at Jamestown, only to be greeted by a shock: illness, starvation, and Indian attacks had drastically decimated the colony. Somers set sail almost immediately, headed back to Bermuda. He knew that it could provide the people of Jamestown with enough food to save them from further hardship. Unfortunately, he died trying to organize the Bermuda-Jamestown lifeline. His body was shipped back to England but his heart was buried in Bermuda, the colony he would later be credited with founding.
King James added the name of Bermuda to the original Virginia Company Charter, and in the spring of 1612 more than 50 colonists were sent out on the Plough to join three pioneers who had volunteered to hold the fort. Defenses were built and the town of St. George’s was established at the east end of Bermuda, near the spot where the Sea Venture castaways had first landed. The Bermuda Company was then created to administer the island.
News of the British settlement agitated the Spanish. After all, a Spaniard had discovered (and given his name to) Bermuda. Philip III of Spain was urged by his advisors to act immediately to force the British out. Two ships were dispatched with orders to evaluate the situation. As they approached the island, the small British population created a number of ruses to convince the Spanish that Bermuda was well defended; two salvos fired from a cannon went across the bay. The Spanish fell for the ploy and fled, grossly overestimating the strength of the English garrison, which couldn’t have mustered a third shot at that time. Bermuda’s Britishness was affirmed.
A Growing Colony
Progress was swift during the first few years of the colony’s existence. In 1619 the congregation of St. Peter’s Church moved into a permanent building, and Bermuda’s parliament met in an enclosure still visible amid the pews. But it was soon decided to separate the secular from the religious, and a new government building went up. State House, Bermuda’s first stone structure, is still standing today in St. George’s.
An English surveyor, Richard Norwood, undertook a study of the terrain, dividing the colony into the nine “tribes” that are the parishes (counties) of today and the origin of the numerous “Tribe Roads” still to be seen across the island. Of the nine parishes, all but St. George’s were named after prominent shareholders in the original Bermuda Company.
During this period local money was minted, called “Hog” money after the wild pig on the reverse side; it was Britain’s first colonial currency. Agriculture was to be the economic base for the new colony, whose major crop was tobacco. In reality, Bermuda could never compete with the crops produced in Virginia, but it began to develop a plantation system, including the importation of slave labor. The slaves were treated a bit better than were those on islands farther south, and slavery was finally abolished in Britain (and Bermuda) in 1834. The initial centuries of enforced settlement, followed by emancipation and the ensuing years of equality, have produced Bermuda’s modern biracial society.
When agriculture failed to be profitable, the ingenious settlers looked for other ways to make a living. Bermuda sits astride the main whale migration route, and because the motherland and other colonies demanded (and paid well for) the oil, the local population went into the whaling business. Once the colonists were good enough seamen to land whales, it was perhaps only natural that they might turn their skills to another historical marine tradition: piracy. The practice evolved modestly, perhaps even legally, from the salvaging (called “wrecking”) of treasure found on ships grounded on the local reefs. From there it was easy to make the transition to taking goods by subterfuge or by force. Smuggling was so commonplace that it passed almost unnoticed.
Changing Loyalties
Isolated from London by more than 5,300 km (3,300 miles) in an age of slow communications, Bermuda sometimes found itself out of step with developments in the homeland. In 1649, the islanders were appalled to learn of the execution of Charles I and the proclamation of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. They later rejoiced when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660.
Another era ended in 1684 when the Bermuda Company lost its charter. After a five-year legal battle, Bermuda became a British colony with a degree of self-government. The authorities in London appointed a Governor to act as the crown representative (this is still the system today). The most difficult test of Bermuda’s loyalties came when the American colonies rose in rebellion against George III. London forbade Bermuda to trade with or otherwise support General Washington’s revolutionaries. This was a heartbreaking decree for the islanders to obey in light of Bermuda’s close personal and family ties with the people of Virginia and other American colonies. Commerce also provided a strong rationale for helping the rebels, for Bermuda received most of its grain from the North American colonies. Simply put, Bermuda needed food and George Washington needed gunpowder.
On a dark night in mid-August 1775, several boats sailed into the dark harbor of Tobacco Bay near Fort St. Catherine and, in a daring and dangerous raid, stole 100 kegs of gunpowder from the main ordnance store. Once safely on the boats, the ammunition made its way to the rebel forces. To this day nobody knows if this was part of an orchestrated campaign or simply a spur-of-the-moment action by local sympathizers. But Bermuda got its grain. The British authorities were horrified but could find no conclusive proof of guilt. The Tuckers, a prominent family with many connections to the American revolutionaries, were the prime suspects. Not all Bermudians, however, were sympathetic to the rebel cause, as privateers continued to capture and ransack American ships.
Gibraltar of the West
With the loss of its naval bases in the American colonies, Britain began to appreciate Bermuda’s strategic importance. They wanted to create a “Gibraltar of the West” and set about building a large naval dockyard on Ireland Island, at the opposite end of the archipelago from the main population center of St. George’s. The addition of this important facility shifted the center of communications in the colony, prompting authorities to transfer the capital from St. George’s to the hitherto undistinguished village of Hamilton. Traditionalists were furious.
Starting in 1824, Britain sent convicts to Bermuda to supplement the slave labor working on the dockyard project. At any given time there were well over 1,000 prisoners employed in the development of the outpost’s military potential. Yellow fever, dysentery, and scurvy killed a sizable proportion of these unfortunates, who were crammed into filthy floating prisons (called “hulks”) during the hours they weren’t working. These hulks were used until 1863.
Bermuda and the US Civil War
Slavery had been abolished in Bermuda more than a quarter-century before the outbreak of the American Civil War, yet islanders’ sympathies lay with the South. Although Britain remained officially neutral and British subjects were forbidden from taking part in the hostilities, the Bermudians pitched in to help supply British arms and goods to the Confederate cause against the Union forces.
St. George’s Harbour and Penno’s Wharf were working at full capacity to unload cargoes that were then transferred onto blockade-runners. These long, slim vessels were specially designed to outrun the Union navy’s picket ships. They made their way to Wilmington, North Carolina, the closest Confederate port to Bermuda. Here they would take on a new cargo of cotton — a most profitable ballast that increased in value tenfold by the time it was delivered to buyers in Britain. St. George’s boomed during the Civil War; the town seethed with sailors, speculators, Confederate agents, and Union spies. When General Lee laid down his sword in 1865, it was as if Bermuda, too, had lost a war.
In the years that followed, Bermuda’s fortunes picked up as the first steamships began to arrive on a regular basis. In 1883 Princess Louise (daughter of Queen Victoria) arrived on a lengthy visit en route to her new home farther north, as the wife of the Governor General of Canada. She extolled Bermuda to those in her upper-class English circles, and wealthy tourists began to arrive soon thereafter. By the turn of the century, Bermuda was a well-known winter destination for visitors from the US and Canada as well as Britain. The Princess Hotel was opened in Hamilton in 1885 to commemorate the visit.
Three More Wars
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Boer War (the struggle between British and Dutch settlers in South Africa) sent shock waves as far as Bermuda. Thousands of Boer prisoners were shipped to the colony, and prison camps were established on half-a-dozen islands in Great Sound. After the Boers lost the war, many of the prisoners chose to remain in Bermuda rather than accept a British South Africa.
During World War I, Bermudian volunteers fought in France while others joined resident British forces in defending the islands. German submarines aggravated the supply problem and threatened ships stopping in the islands to refuel for the remainder of the Atlantic crossing. When the Americans entered the conflict, White’s Island, just opposite the Hamilton waterfront, was leased to the US government. It was a small-scale preview of the American military presence that would be established in World War II.
Between the two world wars, tourism became a prime economic factor, and luxury cruise liners began regular runs between New York and Bermuda during the 1920s. Resort hotels were built to attract Americans escaping the northern winter (and the Prohibition laws against alcoholic beverages).
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, Bermuda’s growing tourist industry all but collapsed. The ships were commandeered to carry troops or become floating hospitals, and the waters around the islands were infested with German submarines. Bermuda played an important role in intelligence. In the basements of the Princess and Bermudiana hotels, more than a thousand British experts analyzed communications intercepted between the western hemisphere and Europe. Mail quietly removed from refueling ships and planes was steamed open and tested for microdots and invisible codes, an important contribution to the struggle against Axis spying activity. The big hotels stayed in business by serving as billets for servicemen and civilian war workers.
Just as the first British M15 intelligence operatives were arriving in Hamilton in August 1940, the Lend-Lease Act was negotiated between Britain and the US. Under a 99-year lease, the US acquired about one-tenth of the land area of Bermuda for the development of naval and air bases, modernizing the defenses of Britain’s “Gibraltar of the West.”
Changing Times
In the years after World War II, the centuries-old links with Britain began to change. The “Imperial” coffers were empty, the empire swiftly began to contract, and British military forces were pulled out of Bermuda after 174 years.
Social changes also began to revolutionize the old way of life. The motor car was introduced, bringing about the demise of the horse-drawn carriage and eventually causing the bankruptcy of the new Bermuda Railway in 1947. The 1950s saw racial segregation end in the major hotels and restaurants (although schools were not integrated until 1971). In 1968, a new constitution was adopted to make self-government more representative and effective; elections were won by the United Bermuda Party. Then suddenly, in 1970, the colony was expelled from the “Sterling area,” and Bermuda chose to ally its currency to the US dollar.
These abrupt and far-reaching changes on an island proud of its traditional ways brought strain and conflict. Riots broke out in 1968, and British troops had to be called in to restore order. Five years later the governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and his aide were assassinated. When the alleged assassins were executed in 1977, more riots ensued.
However, Bermuda pulled back from the brink of social chaos and began to return to its peaceful and law-abiding ways. With progressive taxation for its residents, the colony enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world. Where whaling and piracy were once important industries, the colony now looked to the less exciting but more predictable earnings from tourism, insurance, and banking enterprises. In the 1970s the number of so-called exempt companies more than doubled, and they now compete with tourism as the major contributor to Bermuda’s balance-of-payments’ surplus.
The political status quo under the United Bermuda Party continued until November 1998, when the PLP (Progressive Labour Party) won an unexpected landslide victory in the general elections. This not only surprised the old school but ushered in a new era full of opportunity for development as the island keeps up with a rapidly changing world. Challenges include environmental and housing issues as well as problems of unemployment, unknown in modern Bermuda until the final years of the 20th century. Positive long-term solutions will ensure that Bermuda continues to enjoy the wealth, security, and comfort it has created for itself.
