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Bermuda
Think
Bermuda and images of tidy pastel cottages, pink-sand beaches
and quintessential British traditions like cricket matches
and afternoon tea spring to mind, plus of course those professional
gents going about their business in jackets, ties and Bermuda
shorts, as if they forgot to put their pants on. For once
the stereotype matches up to reality, though you may be somewhat
disoriented if you mistakenly thought Bermuda was somewhere
in the Caribbean. The island is, in fact, situated in the
western Atlantic Ocean, nearly 600 nautical miles off the
coast of North Carolina.
The majority
of visitors to Bermuda come from North America for short stays,
and most consider the island to be quaintly British; the Brits,
on the other hand, come in much smaller numbers but tend to
consider the island highly Americanized. It is, of course,
uniquely Bermudian - a product of nearly four centuries of
British colonial history and an equally long reliance on American
trade.
Bermuda
Info
Bermuda is Britain's oldest remaining colony. it consists
of a tiny archipelago of approximately 135 islands. The Islanders
refer to the Island as Bermuda (singular) rather than the
Bermudas, thus I shall refer to them as 'Bermuda' or 'the
Island' in this text. The other official name of the islands
is the Somers Isles, after Admiral Sir George Somers. The
islands were discovered in 1503 by a Spaniard named Juan de
Bermudez, a mariner from Palos, Spain. He marked them on his
map but did not land there. Another old name for Bermuda was
Garza, after Bermudez's ship 'La Garza'. Throughout the sixteenth
century the islands were believed to be inhabited by demons,
and so were also known as the island of Devils. Partly for
this reason no settlement was mad there until the 17th century.
Bermuda was important to mariners however. Ships would try
to pass within sight of Bermuda so that their navigators would
be able to fix their position before crossing the Atlantic.
Unfortunately this often proved dangerous as Bermuda was surrounded
by a barrier reef that extended out into the ocean as much
as ten miles in some places. It was possible for a ship to
strike the reef without ever catching sight of the land, and
over the years over 200 ships were claimed by the reefs, or
the many storms for which the North Atlantic is so famous.
Bermuda
was eventually settled in 1609 by English colonist shipwrecked
there while travelling to Virginia to relieve the Jamestown
colony. The ship they were travelling in was the Sea Venture,
and onboard was Admiral Sir George Somers who was in command
of the expedition. The Sea Venture was separated from the
rest of the fleet by a hurricane and cast upon the reefs insight
of the shore at Saint Catherine's Bay. The travellers were
trapped for a year on this the most dreaded of islands, the
realm of devils. They discovered no devils, Bermuda was in
fact unpopulated, only an earthly paradise. They managed to
build to ships, escaped the reefs, and sailed on to Virginia,
leaving behind a few settlers who chose to remain. After reaching
they found Jamestown abandoned and the colonists travelling
down river. After saving the colony Sir George sailed back
to Bermuda to gather supplies but died enroute. Before his
death he ordered his men to bury him in Bermuda, which he
had come to love. Unfortunately his nephew, who was onboard,
insisted on returning the body to England so that he could
prove his uncle's death and gain his inheritance. in a compromise
with the Admiral's faithful men he cut out Sir George's Heart
and had it buried in a spot that has now become a public garden
in the heart of the old town of Saint George's which was named
after him.
In 1616
the first black man and the first Native American were brought
from the West Indies to dive for pearls. They were followed
later by the importation of Irish, Scottish, Native American
and particularly African slaves. Slavery was abolished in
Bermuda and throughout the British Empire on August 1, 1834,
the Day of Emancipation, by an act of the British Parliament.
Unfortunately many Bermudian slave owners shipped their slaves
to the United States to be sold shortly before the act was
passed. The arrival in 1621 of "certaine younge maydes"
(young women) from England created excitement. However, it
was an arrangement with a price attached. Those single men
who could scrape together 100 pounds of tobacco secured themselves
wives.
Bermuda
has a rich cultural, political, and architectural legacy.
The Bermuda Legislature (Parliament) was founded in 1620,
and is one of the oldest in the World. Saint Peter's Church
in Saint George's is the oldest church of England outside
of Britain. and Christ Church in Warwick is the oldest Scottish
Presbyterian Church in the Americas. Bermuda was the first
country outside of the United Kingdom to issue it's own postage
stamp, the Perot Stamp, during the 17th Century. Bermuda passed
the first conservation laws in the Americas. The Bermuda petrel
was protected by 1616 and the used of Bermuda cedar regulated
after 1622. Bermuda has also been an active and important
participant in the history of the Americas, especially the
United States. A large cache of gunpowder was stolen from
a British garrison in Bermuda by Bermudian conspirators and
supplied to George Washington's at a crucial moment of the
War. Without that Bermudian assistance the United States would
never have existed. During the British American War of 1812
a fleet from Bermuda sailed up the Potomac River and attacked
the US capital Washington D.C., and setting fire to the White
House. During the American Civil War Bermuda became the major
trading point between Europe and the American South. Bermudian
blockade runners became wealthy by shipping weapons and supplies
to the South, generally they earned 10 years income in a single
year.
Today
Bermuda enjoys the highest average income in the World and
the highest Gross National Product: in 1999 this was (GNP):
$40,664.00. By comparison Switzerland, which had the second
highest GNP, earned $36,031.00, the United States of America
earned $32,778.00, Japan earned $34,276.00, and South Korea
earned $8,871.00.
Bermuda
History
 Bermuda
takes its name from the Spanish sea captain Juan de
Bermúdez, who sighted the uninhabited islands around 1503.
The Spanish did not claim the islands, but they soon became
an important navigational landmark for galleons crossing the
Atlantic between Spain and the New World. Since Bermuda is
surrounded by dangerous reefs, nautical misadventures cast
the Spanish ashore on several occasions and littered the sea
bed with enough booty for some people to consider scuba diving
more than a recreational sport.
In 1609
Admiral Sir George Somers was en route from England with supplies
for the recent British settlement at Jamestown, Virginia,
when his ship, Sea Venture, was wrecked off Bermuda.
Finding it a rather pleasant place to be washed up, the admiral
built replacement ships of fine Bermuda cedar, sailed off
and left a couple of men behind to establish a British claim
to the islands. The experience of these temporary British
castaways is thought to have inspired Shakespeare to write
The Tempest. Somers returned to Bermuda later that
same year but died soon after arrival. The British renamed
Bermuda the Somers Islands in honor of the admiral, but the
name failed to stick.
The Virginia
Company took a keen interest in the islands after hearing
of their suitability for colonisation, particularly in light
of Jamestown's hostile relations with the local Indians. Only
three years after Somers' misadventure, the company organized
60 settlers to establish a permanent colony on the islands.
Unfortunately the islands were not as abundant as was first
thought. The shallow topsoil limited agriculture and the lack
of water prevented commercial crops like sugar cane from being
introduced. The settlers soon became reliant on food imports
from the American colonies, which they paid for by supplying
sea salt secured from the Turks Islands.
For many
years the Virginia Company, and then the Bermuda Company,
ran the islands like a fiefdom. This wearied the settlers
so much they sued to have the company's charter rescinded,
and in 1684 Bermuda became a British crown colony. Slaves
were first introduced in 1616, most of them brought forcibly
from Africa though some were American Indians. They lived
in degrading conditions but were generally employed as domestic
servants or tradespeople rather than agricultural laborers.
The skills they learnt were to stand them in good stead when
slavery was abolished in 1834. At the time of emancipation
5000 of the 9000 people residing in Bermuda were registered
on the census as black or 'coloured.'
Despite
Bermuda's reliance on trade with the American colonies, political
bonds with Britain proved stronger during the American War
of Independence when Bermuda remained loyal to the crown.
During the War of 1812, the British Navy used Bermuda as a
base from which to ransack Washington, DC. The Americans responded
by confiscating the unprotected cargo of Bermuda's merchant
fleet, devastating the local economy. The US Civil War proved
more lucrative for the island. When the north blockaded southern
ports, cotton traders employed small, fast vessels to outrun
northern naval gunboats. These vessels were not capable of
an Atlantic crossing, and Bermuda blossomed as a trans-shipment
center on the blockade runners' route to England. Good at
picking losers, the island's shortlived prosperity collapsed
with the defeat of the South.
Princess
Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, is credited with putting
Bermuda on the tourist map after paying an extended visit
to the islands in 1883. The princess was the wife of the Governor
General of Canada and was keen to escape the long Canadian
winter. By the turn of the century, Bermuda was well on the
way to becoming a fashionable winter destination for 'snow
birds,' who flocked aboard steamers crossing regularly from
New York to Hamilton.
Bermuda's
strategic location in the Atlantic secured it a role in Allied
military and intelligence operations in WWII. However, its
proximity to the US mainland made it inevitable that the US
take primary responsibility for developing bases on the island.
Much to the locals' consternation, the British subsequently
signed a 99-year lease handing over substantial portions of
Bermuda's territory to the US military. The US constructed
an air base on St David's Island, where the international
airport is now located.
In the
wake of WWII, women were given the right to vote and, after
boycotts, some of the franchise qualifications restricting
the power of black voters were removed. In 1963 the Progressive
Labour Party was introduced, in part to represent the interests
of nonwhite Bermudians in the face of a government almost
totally made up of white landowners. The rest of the parliamentarians
united to form the United Bermuda Party. The two parties worked
together to produce the 1968 constitution which provided for
full internal self government, while leaving security, defense
and diplomatic affairs to the crown.
Although
Bermuda had long prided itself on the relative harmony of
its race relations, riots and race antagonism in the 1970s
resulted in the removal of all de facto discrimination and
the beginning of talks on independence from Britain. In the
decades that followed, the independence movement became the
dominant political issue, but a referendum in 1995 failed
by a two-thirds majority as Bermudians became apprehensive
about the political and economic cost of independence. Two
weeks later they did, at least, regain control of 10% of the
island's land mass when post-Cold War military cutbacks resulted
in the closure of the US base on the island. In 1998 the PLP's
Jennifer Smith was selected as premier, replacing the UBP's
Pamela Gordon, who was Bermuda's first female premier and
the youngest person ever to hold the office.
for more
info:
http://www.bermudatourism.com
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