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Sketch History of Bermuda
By Mary Johnson Tweedy
FOR a little group of islands too small for a literal cartographer to scale on a world map, Bermuda has had a spectacular history. It seems to have been mixed up in almost everything. Bermudians introduced the Irish potato to the United States in 1621, and tennis in 1874. In the 1770's they stole an important store of powder from the local English magazine that the American Colonists later used effectively against the British in the American Revolution.
During England's many colonial wars, Bermudians became experienced, expert and rich as privateers. In the eighteenth century Bermuda's sailing ships carried much of the cargo between America and the West Indies, and later Bermuda was New York's green grocer and supplied the city with fresh vegetables. When relations between the United States and England were touchy in the nineteenth century. Bermuda was fortified into a minor-league Gibraltar. † But in World War I, Bermuda was used by the United States Navy, and in World War II, America respected its strategic location sufficiently to pump a mile and a half of "land" from the sea for huge bases.
The history of this geographical mite has been crowded into a very short period as the history of civilization goes. Few men had set foot on Bermuda until 1609, when Sir George Somers was shipwrecked there. Certainly there were no aborigines, and it was one of the last spots in the temperate zone to be inhabited.
The Islands, named for Juan de Bermudez, a Spaniard who probably sailed around them and their awesome reefs early in the sixteenth century, appeared on maps as early as 1511 as "la Bermuda." Most sixteenth century mariners believed Bermuda was inhabited by devils and avoided it, but the discovery on the South Shore of a crudely carved inscription in rock with the date "1543" and indefinite initials has led most historians to believe that an early Spanish or Portuguese explorer landed here.
Bermuda's known history begins with the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in 1609. The Sea Venture was flagship of a fleet of nine ships sent out by the Virginia Company under the command of Admiral Sir George Somers to relieve the Jamestown Colony. * During a storm the fleet was separated, driven off course, and after four hectic days the Sea Venture sighted Bermuda. The crippled ship was beached on a reef and 150 passengers and crew came ashore on July 28, 1609. The anniversary of that day is now celebrated as Somers Day and is the national holiday of Bermuda.
The survivors found wild hogs, berries and cahow birds for food. The cahow bird, known nowhere else in the world, was so tame it could be caught easily, and the early settlers killed so many that it was thought to be extinct until 1906, when one was observed.
After months of work two small ships were built, the forty-foot Deliverance and the thirty-foot Patience. They sailed for Jamestown on May 10, 1610, leaving behind two escaped culprits. Two weeks later the ships arrived at Jamestown to find that famine had ravaged the Colony. Captain John Smith had gone to England several months before, leaving 500 colonists in fairly comfortable conditions, but when Somers got there he found only 60 survivors.
Recalling the relative lushness of Bermuda, it was decided that Somers would return to the Islands and bring back food. He sailed in the Patience less than a month after he landed at Jamestown, but again it was a hard trip and he died a few days after reaching Bermuda. He had instructed his nephew Mathew to return to Jamestown with supplied but instead the younger man buried Sir George's heart, which is now in Somers Garden in St. George, and sailed for England with his uncle's body. The earlier culprits stayed on with a third man left by Mathew Somers.
After hearing Mathew Somers' report the Virginia Company decided to colonize Bermuda and sent out the first governor an sixty settlers in 1612. Their instructions were to find pearls, ambergris or gold. Meanwhile the three rogues * who had been left behind discovered a small fortune in ambergris which they hid from the governor, but they were found out and the ambergris was taken in the name of the Company. Little more of it has turned up.
Houses and churches were built, the Colony was divided into Tribes (now called Parishes), the town St. George was started and forts were built to protect it. Money, with a wild boar on one side and a ship on the other, was sent to the Colony. Somewhat derisively, the colonists called it "Hog Money." Now it is a rare collector's item and only a few dozen coins exist.
Richard Norwood was sent from England in 1613 to dive for pearls, but when no pearls were found he was appointed surveyor to divide the Tribes into shares. He decided to mark each Tribe off into fifty shares of twenty-five acres each rather than twenty-six acres each, which would have made him come out short. Governor Daniel Tucker started him off at St. George and, when he was only halfway through, ordered him to switch to the other end of the Colony and begin surveying from Somerset. The final result was a two hundred-acre "overplus" in one of the most fertile parts of the Islands and this Governor Tucker claimed for himself. This land grab produced considerable hard feeling but perhaps it also helped create the wealth of the prominent Tucker family of today.
A court was established in 1616 and the Colonial Parliament first met in 1620, but the Company in London and the colonists never got on. The Company insisted they grow tobacco, but it was of poor quality and the people didn't like to farm. As time went on the colonists were forbidden to build ships or trade with the American Colonies, and the Company was arbitrary in its dealings with them. In 1684 the King agreed to annul the charter of the Company and let the people govern themselves under the Royal supervision.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Bermuda depended on salt, cedar and sailors for its livelihood. The people began to develop the salt beds of Turks Island, a barren little group south of Bermuda, and about ten per cent of the population entered the salt trade. Their families stayed in Bermuda as a rule, but the men went to Turks for six months of the year to rake salt, and it became a sort of colonial possession of Bermuda. Bermudians were excellent shipwrights and their fast cedar ships carried salt to Newfoundland for the fishing industry and salt, rum, molasses and a large amount of general cargo between the West Indies and America. By 1817 there were about eighty ships in the Colony, totaling 8,000 tons, or two tons for every man, woman and child.
The speed of these cedar ships made them excellent privateers during the wars England fought with France, Spain and America. The risks of such a career were high but so were the rewards, and several of Bermuda's present fortunes were started with the profits of privateering ancestors.
With the outbreak of the American Revolution an embargo was placed on Bermuda ships and the Colony faced starvation. Bermuda's interests were in salt and sailing and she had depended upon the American Colonies for much of her food. The English governor was staunchly loyal to England but the practical colonists were hungry. A delegation led by Colonel Henry Tucker went to Philadelphia in 1775 to negotiate with the Continental Congress and arrange for a relaxation of the embargo in exchange for salt. The Congress showed slight interest in salt, but indicated the embargo could be lifted if the Bermudians sent them the powder stored at the English arsenal in St. George. Tucker's delegation returned to the Colony and less than a month later the unguarded magazine was entered at night, one hundred kegs of powder were brashly rolled across the governor's park and loaded onto boats at Tobacco Bay. The governor offered a large reward, but although well known to the colonists, the conspirators were never reported.
The powder had been in America for some time before George Washington heard about it, and on September 6, some three weeks after the theft, he wrote a letter "To the Inhabitants of the Islands of Bermuda," proposing that if they could arrange to get him the powder he would see to it that Bermuda was provisioned. As a result of the gunpowder steal the blockade was lifted, but during the later years of the war some Bermudians (and some Loyalists from the American continent) couldn't resist the temptation to privateer on American vessels, and it was again applied.
American history books rarely dwell on the three ships England sent to America after the Revolution to evacuate Loyalist refugees" from their enemies. One of these put in at Bermuda for repairs and the governor and loyal colonists greeted the evacuees so warmly that some of them took up residence here.
St. George's was a busy place during the War of 1812. The hunting was good for privateers who brought their prize ships and the American passengers into the port. Other Americans lured by the chance for profiteering came to speculate in the valuable prize cargoes, often wearing green glasses to avoid recognition by their more respectable compatriots.
When the English burned Washington in 1814 they launched their attack from Bermuda. They assembled their fleet along the North Shore, completed their final plans and sailed their force of 35,000 men through treacherous North Rock passage for Chesapeake Bay.
A little-known engagement of the War of 1812 is the encounter outside Boston Harbor between HMS Shannon and USS Chesapeake, but a prized possession of H.M. Dockyard in Bermuda is the bell from the victorious Shannon that later put in here for repairs.
Slaves were brought to Bermuda soon after it was settled, but they were usually a liability. There were no plantations for them to farm and since much of the Colony's supplies had to be imported it was expensive to keep them. They were taught trades, but this so upset the economic balance that white Bermudians who were artisans had to emigrate. The Colony petitioned England for permission to free them, to levy a high duty on their importation or to send them to the Bahamas, but each request was turned down. In 1834 slaves were freed throughout the Empire but owners were permitted a grace period of several years before releasing them. Most Bermudians gave a sigh of relief and freed them immediately. The colored people in Bermuda are largely descended from these slaves although there has been some immigration of West Indians during recent years. The prevalence of old Bermuda names among the colored population is most often the result of former slaves taking their masters' names.
During the Civil War Bermuda had one of the most prosperous times in her history. Confederate gold and cotton flowed into the Colony to pay for the supplies furnished to the South by England, which were often sent here and transferred to small, fast ships for a dash to a Confederate port. St. George was the center for blockade runners (who got £1,000 a trip), spies seccessionists, adventurers and Confederate agents. The Colony's sympathies were so completely with the South that ladies snubbed the American consul when he walked past them and, according to Hayward, there was scarcely a house with but a Confederate flag or some indication of Southern sympathy.
When the South was defeated, Bermuda's economy collapsed. Shipping, which had begun to decline early in the century, was finished with the advent of steam and with it went much of the salt trade. England was at peace and there were few opportunities for privateering. Colonists tried their hands at developing such new industries as growing silk worms or orchids, but it was hard to find careers for the hardened seamen. Even wrecking in the Bahamas disappointed those with propensities for privateering.
Surprisingly the solution was a decision to truck farm for the New York market, seven hundred miles away, and the trade flourished until shrewd Texans took it away. The Colony's soil and climate produced excellent onions, potatoes, celery, tomatoes, etc., and the profits were sufficient to interest the traditionally non-agrarian Bermudians. The trade was so brisk that Hamilton was called "onion town," but the bottleneck was in the onion seeds that Bermuda had to import. Texas discovered how to simulate Bermuda's growing conditions, then promptly cornered the seed market, registered the name as "Bermuda onions" and proceeded to market its onions as such. To cap all this, the United States slapped a high tariff on vegetables, which combined with high local growing costs put Bermuda out of that business.
Resourcefully the Bermudians turned to a by-product of the vegetable business, and began to focus their attention on tourists. There had been a few visitors for health reasons from the earliest days, but the ships that came to Bermuda to fetch onions and potatoes also carried passengers who began to stop over in increasing numbers to enjoy the climate and charm of the Islands. Soon Bermuda was in the tourist business. She supplemented her beaches and beauty with attractive, well-run hotels and guest houses and with excellent facilities for golf, tennis, sailing and fishing. Bermuda's attraction has been so great that the tourist industry has weathered crises that might easily have been fatal.
Before World War I Bermuda had already become popular and entertained such guests as Mark Twain and Woodrow Wilson, but when the war came the number of tourists dwindled. There was a speedy recovery after the Armistice when Prohibition-saddled Americans realized that Bermuda was beautiful, near by, and the liquor was uncut. The Depression was a boom time for Bermuda when it developed that there were plenty of people who couldn't afford Europe as usual but nevertheless wanted to go "abroad," and they settled on Bermuda. World War II again closed Bermuda to tourists but the American Army and Navy brought thousands of troops and construction workers here to build their bases, and the English established a huge censorship headquarters. When peace came Bermuda could again immediately welcome guests despite the absence of the Queen of Bermuda, as civilian airlines could land at the United States Army's war-constructed Kindley Field, and the Air Age had really arrived.
With the return of the Queen in 1949 and the reopening of the big hotels, Bermudians were off on another era, to, as the country's motto "Quo Fata Ferunt" is translated, "Whither the fates may carry."
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