Fortress Bermuda
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Fortress Bermuda A visitor's guide to the naval and military heritage sites of the Imperial Fortress colony of Bermuda Seán Pòl Ó Creachmhaoil Including colonial and Imperial fortifications and naval and military sites, as well as Canadian and United States bases. First Edition Amended ISBN-13: 978-1530878956 ISBN-10: 1530878950 All photographs and drawings by the author, unless otherwise stated. Copyright © Seán Pòl Ó Creachmhaoil, 3rd of April, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder. Aquatic Bermuda Suite 923, 12 Church Street, The City of Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, Bermuda HM11 E-mail: [email protected] 1 (441) 236-2200 www.aquaticbermuda.com Photograph on the previous page: Scaur Hill Fort, on Somerset Island, Sandys' Parish. This book is dedicated to the memories of Major Donald Henry Burns, MBE, MC and David Francis Raine Acknowledgements I am indebted to the authors whose works I have drawn upon in writing this book, beginning with Dr. Edward Cecil Harris of the National Museum of Bermuda, Colin Benbow of the Bermuda Historical Society, Andrew P. Bermingham and Catherine Lynch Deichmann of the Bermuda National Trust, Lieutenant-Colonel Alistair Gavin Shorto, Lieutenant-Commander Ian Stranack, Lieutenant-Commander H.G. Middleton, William Sears Zuill, Hereward T. Watlington, Sister Jean de Chantal Kennedy, Herbert J. Tatem, Dr. Henry Wilkinson, David F. Raine, Terry Tucker, William M. Cox, H.R. and R.C. Tulloch, Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Willock, USMC, Jennifer M. Ingham-Hind, Squadron-Leader Colin A. Pomeroy, Ewan Partridge and Tom Singfield, and Tony McWilliam. I am equally grateful to Lance Furbert, formerly of the Department of Tourism and the St. George's Foundation, the late Major Donald Henry Burns, Lieutenant-Colonel Brendan O'Donnell Hollis, Horace Frith of the Carriage House Museum, Betty Frith and Group Captain Moray Vibart Ridgeway of the St. George's Historical Society, and Adelard Dubois. I have picked useful details also from the reminisces of Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Darling, Brian Hetzel, Phil Smith, and Martin Buckley, among others. I am grateful also to the creators of works now in the public domain that I have used, including G. Pearson and J. Cooper, whose engravings based on drawings by R. T. Pritchett were taken from "In The Trades, the Tropics and The Roaring Forties", by Anna Brassey (ca. 1883), A.J. Savage's Ordnance Survey map, Richard Norwood's map, reproduced by Jan Janson, The Graphic newspaper, and unknown photographers of contemporary post cards. All other photographs and maps in this book are my own products. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 19. St. George's Parish 125. Hamilton Parish 143. Smith's Parish 155. Devonshire Parish 177. Gallery 247. Pembroke Parish 291. Paget Parish 318. Warwick Parish 350. Southampton Parish 368. Sandys' Parish 417. Appendix (Judge Green's report) 427. Bibliography 429. Index INTRODUCTION Bermuda was first popularised as a holiday destination during the latter decades of the Nineteenth Century by North American travellers wealthy enough to afford the lengthy sea journeys to-and-from the archipelago (located 770 miles from Nova Scotia, 1,000 miles from the Caribbean, and 640 miles from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina) and the high cost of a season-long sojourn (and who had the luxury of being able to be away from their work for the entire winter). Princess Louise, the daughter of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, raised Bermuda's profile among the privileged classes of the United States and Canada when she wintered in Bermuda in 1883 (although her visit was actually taken as a medical precaution following injuries she had received in Canada, where her husband was the Governor General, and where, In her weakened state, her doctors thought it unwise that she winter). Many of the wealthy who chose to winter in Bermuda with 1 their families during this period were attracted partly by the large pool of unmarried young aristocrats serving in Bermuda's military garrison and at the Royal Navy Dockyard. These often impoverished nobles could provide their daughters the one thing that their fathers' money could not buy: a title (this put the early American tourists in competition with Bermuda's large cohort of spinsters, who had previously enjoyed sole access to these potential grooms). Bermuda's tourism industry would change considerably over the next century, although the colony would retain its reputation as an exclusive destination for the well-heeled. Prohibition in the United States after the First World War would bring waves of shortstay visitors who arrived at any time of year, but increasingly during the summer. While still affluent, these travellers were of a different class from the pioneers, and were lured by liquor and the summer sun. Winter began to replace the summer as the "off season". During the Second World War, United States bases were built in Bermuda and numerous working-class American sailors and soldiers served in, or passed through, the British colony. The war dragged the United States out of the Great Depression, and many of these working-class servicemen joined the burgeoning middle class 2 3 in the post-war years, when they returned to Bermuda as visitors. Air service from the United States had begun in the late 1930s, and with the appearance of jet airliners in the 1950s the time and cost expended in reaching Bermuda dropped significantly. By the 1970s and 1980s, the typical visitors to Bermuda were middle class families, flying in for two-week summer holidays. Many of these visitors probably presumed that tourism was Bermuda's only industry, but the central leg of the economy from the American War of Independence 'til at least the 1950s was actually defence expenditure, as Bermuda replaced all of the bases the Royal Navy had lost between the Maritimes (Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) and the West Indies. In addition to serving as the headquarters (the Admiralty House), dockyard, and base for the North America and West Indies Squadron of the Royal Navy, a powerful military establishment was also built up to protect the naval base. The regular army was expanding upon a ring of defences that had originally been built by the Bermudian Government between the colony's official settlement in 1612 by the Virginia Company (which had occupied the archipelago since its flagship, the 4 "Sea Venture", had been wrecked there in 1609) and the establishment of the naval base there in 1794. Although an independent company of infantry had been stationed in Bermuda between 1701 and the end of the Seven Years' War, and invalid soldiers of the Royal Garrison Battalion had been stationed there during the American War of Independence (and withdrawn and disbanded in 1784), the primary force guarding Bermuda from 1612 'til the return of regular soldiers in 1793 (a company of the Royal Artillery Invalid Battalion and a detachment of the 47th Regiment of Foot) was the Militia. All able-bodied males between 16 and 60 were required to serve in the Militia. Although most of this force was only embodied once a year for annual training, it included a standing force of artillerymen who manned a large number of fortified batteries built along the South Shore, and at the East and West Ends of Bermuda. Some of these forts were built on Crown land (also called common or public land, which was held by the colonial government) and some on private. Men who served as commanders of the forts were released from normal Militia infantry duties and commissioned as Captains, 5 which made this a popular service with Bermudians who could afford the upkeep of a fort. As there was little oversight of the Captains (many of whom, like most other Bermudian men, spent much of their time away at sea after 1684), some of them neglected the forts they commanded, but others expended considerable time as well as much of their own money upon them. The first Captain of a fort was often its engineer, seeing to its construction, sometimes on land he owned, and purchasing even its canon. This was to cause thorny problems during the Nineteenth Century build-up of the regular army garrison as the Board of Ordnance attempted to gain title to all lands historically used by the Militia for defence purposes, including private property. The gunners of the regular Royal Artillery Invalid Battalion who were posted to Bermuda in 1794 only manned a small number of batteries, probably around St. George's. Their numbers dwindled through death, disease and discharges, with no reinforcements being sent until they were finally withdrawn and replaced in 1806. They would have composed an ever-less useful component of the Garrison. Most of Bermuda's coastal artillery would consequently 6 have remained in the hands of the Militia (strictly speaking, the gun crews - composed of volunteers - appear not to have been part of the Militia's infantry and mounted field organisation, although volunteers would be recruited into a volunteer artillery company from the Militia during the war against Revolutionary France), and it was presumably upon the fading away of that organisation after 1815 that most of the coastal forts built before the Nineteenth Century fell out of use. A handful were re-utilised and rebuilt by the regular army, which also built a number of completely new defence works. This regular army building programme largely ignored the South Shore of the Main Island, where coastal artillery defence evidently relied on mobile batteries of field guns that could quickly deploy where needed from Prospect Camp.