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Bermuda's History from
1700 to 1799
Eighteenth century
events with role in American Revolutionary War and afterwards

By Keith
Archibald Forbes (see About
Us) exclusively for Bermuda
Online
To refer to this
web file, please use "bermuda-online.org/history1700-1799.htm" as
your Subject
1700-1702
- 1700. In St. George's,
Bermuda, the Globe Hotel was built as a residence for Governor Day.
- 1700. In Bermuda, in addition
to a fleet of 60 sloops, 6 brigantines, 4 ships, 300 to 400 two-masted boats
for coastal waters, Bermudians built large boats for foreign clients as well. It was one of the best years ever for Bermuda ship-building. The
industry lasted for about 150 years. Only with the age of steam and beyond
did the industry decline. Today, no vessels are made commercially in
Bermuda.
- 1701. With war between Britain
and France imminent, the British Government decided that Bermuda should be
protected by regular soldiers. The small military force, the Independent
Company of Foot, was sent from England.
- 1701. May. On HMS Lincoln, the first 50 full time soldiers arrived in Bermuda
with Governor
Benjamin Bennett, who had commanded a company in Ireland. They were detached
from the 2nd Foot over protests of General William Selwyn who had clothed
them in England. They were headed by Captain Lancelot Sandys,
with Lieutenant Robert Henly and had 2 sergeants, 2 corporals, 1
drummer and 50 privates.
- 1701. In St. George's,
Bermuda, Fanny Fox's Cottage was built on Duke of Clarence Street.
1702-1714
1702. Queen Anne (see
right) ascended the throne.
- 1704. In Bermuda, another Act
to punish the "insolence of Negroes" was passed, this time with castration.
The act was repealed in 1705 at the insistence of Whitehall as it
containing "some inhumane penalties," although "whipping and
imprisoning" were considered acceptable.
- 1705. In St. George's,
Bermuda, the Old Rectory was built.
- 1705. In St. George's,
Bermuda, Reeve Court was built by Dr. Thomas Holland, minister of the
parish church. For centuries, it was the tallest building in the
town.
- 1710. "Verdmont," now a
Bermuda National Trust museum, in Smith's Parish, was first built.
- 1710.
A Bermuda silver tankard was made by Thomas Savage Sr, (1664-1749) a
silversmith who worked in both Boston and Bermuda. He
was born in Boston and trained as a silversmith from 1678 to about
1685. Savage
and his family moved to Bermuda in the early 18th century and he is
known to have lived and worked in Bermuda between 1706 and 1714. Only
14 pieces made by Savage are recorded in the standard reference book
on Boston silversmiths. Seven of these pieces are tankards and almost
all of these have Boston rather than Bermudian associations.
- 1711. In St. George's,
Bermuda, the Tucker House was built.
- 1711. In Bermuda, an
Order in Council was issued to authorize the master of any ship greater
than 44 feet to use as many Blacks and or slaves as crew as he thought
necessary. But it limited the number of whites to six.
- 1711. So many slaves
wore fine clothing and fancy dresses to their own balls and gatherings
that the Bermuda Assembly passed a law that forbade masters from
allowing their slaves to "wear any silk, lace, ribbon, rings,
bracelets, buckles, . . . nor other ornaments." These "merry
meetings and midnight festivals" reflected a synthesis of
European fashion and African and Native American traditions perhaps
best exemplified by the costume, dance, and music of gombey dancers.
Despite the reforming efforts of the Assembly, numerous clandestine
public houses served rum and bibby (a liquor made from fermented
palmetto sap) to black clientele, sites where slave sailors could
relax after months at sea. Goods and specie flowing in Bermuda's
internal slave economy testify to the success of Bermudian slave
sailors in obtaining creature comforts for themselves and for the
slave community as a whole, while their celebrations and rituals
reveal their ability to create and maintain cultural traditions
independently expressed from that of the white families with whom they
lived.
- 1712. Earliest documented
evidence of knowledge of Argus and Challenger Banks for fishing and
salvaging wrecks.
- 1712. On September 8 the
first of two very severe hurricanes that damaged many Bermuda buildings
including St. Peter's Church in St. George's. Bermuda's first settlers
had built almost everything out of cedar wood, including commercial
buildings and churches. It was as a direct result
of these hurricanes that the decision was taken to quit building
structures of wood and instead make them out of limestone, to better
withstand hurricanes. New construction methods were developed to cut
stone from hillsides to create solid limestone buildings. (Many still
survive).
1714-1727
1714. George I ascended the
throne of England.
- 1716. Another very severe
hurricane damaged many Bermuda buildings.
- 1716.
All ninety-two Bermuda-registered vessels were sloops.
- 1716. Christ Church, or Old
Devonshire Church, was first built, from an earlier religious edifice
that had first commenced in the 1660s. It replaced a place of worship
that blew down in a hurricane. (It was reconstructed after fire from arson
in the 1970s).
- 1718. In Bermuda, another
slave conspiracy was feared. It was reported that Negro men had grown
very impudent and insulting of late. In fact, some slave conspiracies
began, known as the "poisoning plots" until 1730.
- 1718. May 10. Nathaniel
Catling came ashore in Bermuda and went to see Governor Bennett. He
told the Governor that he was one of the crew of the Bermuda sloop
"Diamond". On April 14 they were sailing off Rum Key in the
Bahamas when they were intercepted by the pirate ship
"Ranger" commanded by Captain Vane. The pirates beat up the
captain and all the crew of the "Diamond", and looted the
vessel of a black man and 300 pieces of eight. Nathaniel Catling was
singled and hanged by the neck until they thought he was dead. When
they let him down on the deck, he was seen to revive, whereupon one of
the pirates hacked him across the collarbone with his cutlass and
would have continued until he had murdered him had not one of the
other pirates persuaded him it "was too great a cruelty".
The pirates' final act was to set fire to the
"Diamond".
- 1718. May 15. 5 days
after Catling made his report, Edward North, the commander of the
Bermuda sloop "William and Martha" came to see Governor
Bennett with a similar story. He said that his ship had been attacked
by Vane off Rum Key within 3 hours of the attack on the
"Diamond". The pirates had boarded his vessel, violently
beaten him and his crew, then dragged one of the seamen to the bows,
bound him hand and foot, and tied him to the bowsprit. As he lay there
helpless on his back, the pirates put burning matches to his eyes and
the muzzle of a loaded pistol in his mouth, thereby to oblige him to
confess what money was on board. In this instance they did not set
fire to the ship, but Captain North reported that while they were on
board, the pirates were continually cursing the King and the higher
powers, and swearing damnation on the Governor."
- 1719. On November 17, the
Cobbs Hill Methodist Chapel in Warwick Parish, Bermuda, was built by
slaves at night.
-
1719.
July. It is believed that in Bermuda black involvement in the maritime
trading economy began, arising from a meeting between Bermuda
Governor Benjamin Bennett and his Council, arising from reports of a
number of white Bermudian sailors colluding with pirates. The concern
was that these white sailors, acting as pilots, would lead pirates
through the treacherous shoals of Bermuda to the Islands. But of even
more concern was the fact that the number of local whites available to
defend the island was being depleted by overseas trading. Bennett was
particularly worried about the salt rakers in Turks Island.
He declared at that meeting that pirates
were taking these men and that it was “...very detrimental to the
Inhabitants of these Islands”. (Minutes of the Governor’s Council,
Bermuda Archives, 1706-21, p. 120). The low white male population and
its military implications were likely reasons for Bennett’s plan to
arm and muster slaves. By an Order-in-Council
it was declared that the number of white men employed in the local
merchant marine be circumscribed. It was hoped this would deprive the
pirates of potential pilots and at the same time expand the number of
men available for the muster. Thereafter,
no vessel of 40 feet or more keel and belonging to and departing from
the Islands was to have “...any more white Sailors than
Twelve...”; and no vessel of 39 feet keel or less was to take out
any more than nine ‘white’ sailors. All captains of vessels of any
dimension whatsoever could take out “...as many Negroes or other
Slaves as he or they shall think proper". All sailors taken out
by vessels were to be brought back to the Islands by the same vessels
on which they left. Hence began the
expansion of the international reach of local ‘black’s trading’,
as ‘Negroes’, ‘Mulattos’, and ‘Indians’, bond or free,
would begin to slowly expand their presence in the Bermudian merchant
marine. Between 1708 and 1720, about 28 percent of the men
constituting a sloop’s crew were ‘black’ according to 18th
Century documents. This rose to 34 percent in 1720. Those
who were employed as mariners within the ‘black’ community were
not all Bermuda-born and raised; and among the community of sailors
were men with at least a foreign and plausibly Spanish Caribbean
heritage. Slave labour shifted from performing diverse agricultural
tasks to skilled artisan crafts.
A few male slaves had fished, hunted whales,
and salvaged wrecks in local waters during the company period, and
these early maritime slaves were among the first recruited by
Bermudian masters embarking on inter-colonial trade.
Other male slaves, particularly boys,
learned seamanship when their owners eschewed planting and took to the
sea.
A third group became sawyers, joiners,
caulkers, blacksmiths, and shipwrights and formed the backbone of the
colony's shipbuilding labor force.
As more and more slaves were integrated into
the maritime economy, the shipping fleet swelled and the island
prospered from its increased trade.
From
a white perspective, the shift enabled white masters who went to sea
to use their previously underemployed male slaves more productively.
- 1720. Of the 17 boats in
Antigua, 9 were from Bermuda.
- 1722. When Colonel John Bruce
Hope became Governor, major work was done on Paget Fort (or Queen's Fort
as it was sometimes called). It seems likely that the rocks on which the
lower battery stood were undermined by the constant pounding of the
waves, particularly in the winter. It took several years to complete the
repairs on both Paget and nearby Smith's Forts, at great cost.
- 1724. Bishop George
Berkeley proposed a scheme for the erection of a college in Bermuda for
"the converting of the savage Americans to Christianity."
- 1725. The
"William" was seized by Robert Dinwiddie, Bermuda
Collector of Customs, for smuggling and for having a substantially
black crew (3 of 4 crew members). She was acquitted from seizure.
Master of the William was Solomon Frith. He successfully smuggled a
hogshead of Virginia tobacco by discharging his white crew at Turks
Islands and taking a slave crew on to VA. By law, slaves could not
testify and therefore he could not be found guilty of smuggling for
lack of witnesses.
1727-1760
1760-1820
1760. King George III (see
right) was enthroned.
- 1761. A slave or servile conspiracy was
uncovered in Bermuda. Over half of the black population laid plans in a bid
for freedom. Six slaves were executed, including one female. The Legislature
reacted by banning all black festivities including Gombey dancing.
- 1762. A Watch Law was enacted in
Bermuda. Any slave not found by night where they belonged would receive 100
lashes.
- 1763. The French ship
"L'Union" struck a reef in good weather and sank off Bermuda. It has
yielded good wooden artifacts.
- 1764. August. Appointment of George
James Bruere as Governor of Bermuda, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the
British Army. He arrived in Bermuda with his wife and nine children on the
Prince of Wales, and remained in office for the next sixteen years.
- 1764. A French flotilla from Santo
Domingo attached Bermudian salt-rakers in the Turks Islands, destroyed their
houses and effects and carried them off as prisoners. Bermudians had been
salt-rakers there since 1678 but the capture made the British Government in
London look into the real ownership of the Turks Islands. They were deemed
part of the British Crown but part of the colony of the Bahamas. Bermudians
living there were given advance notice to quit.
- 1765. Bermuda families living in the
Somerset Bridge area formed themselves into a social group called the Somerset
Bridge Club and began their own private library, for members only.
- 1765. On September 4, in Ayr,
Scotland, Claude William McCallan was born, the son of William and Jean
McCallan. He was shipwrecked on Bermuda's north reefs in 1786. He was rescued
with his shipbuilding tools by a local fisherman, Daniel Seon. McCallan never
left Bermuda. Instead he selected a local bride, Lucy Burrows Mercer, and
erected his lovely home in 1799 to 1800 near where he first arrived, at Callan Glen in Hamilton Parish. At one
point, Callan Glen it owned all the property east, south and west of
it.
- 1767. The
British Government took a more formal interest in the waters of the western
Atlantic with the establishment of the "North America" Station
of the Royal Navy.
- 1772. November. Customs
officers seized the sloop "Molly", suspecting a cargo of foreign
rum. The Captain Perient Trott, owner Alex. Stockdale and others boarded the
vessel, forced off the officers, and made for sea. (Bermuda and the American
Revolution; Kerr, W; pg 37).
- 1774, early. The ship
"Industry" of Limerick was stranded on the north rocks. The
ship was stripped by Bermudians. (Bermuda and the American Revolution; Kerr,
W; pg 37).
- 1775. April 19. Britain and
the USA went to war, with the Battle of
Lexington, outside Boston, the "shot heard round the world."
- 1775. August 14. After
the Pennsylvania committee of safety engaged the sloop "Lady
Catherine" Capt George Ord master, with 40 men as delegation to Bermuda
to trade powder of St George's for exemption from the embargo, they made
away with Henry Tucker's (of Somerset) 8 (1/2) barrells of powder. He
credited the powder to Capt John Cowper, of NC, Henry's agent in
America. At the same time, the Charleston, SC committee of
safety sent the schooners "Lady Catherine",
"Charlestown" and "Savannah Packet" as delegation to
Bermuda to trade powder of St George's for exemption from the embargo. They
duly arrived and made away that day with gun powder , reaching
Charleston and depositing the powder, later used at Fort Moultrie.
- 1775. In Philadelphia, the
American Continental Congress announced a trade embargo against all colonies
remaining loyal to the Crown. When Bermuda tried to bargain with salt, the
American colonies refused and requested gunpowder instead. George Washington
himself wrote to Bermuda, saying the cause was just for him to obtain the
supply. A copy of his letter is still available in Bermuda for
interested locals and visitors. A group of Bermudians became
sympathetic to the Revolution and on August 14, to the great outrage of
Bermuda Governor George James Bruere, himself a former British Army
Lieutenant Colonel, stole the island's British Army supply of
gunpowder from Powder Magazine in St. George's and shipped it to the rebels in
America. The Charleston, SC committee of safety sent the schooners "Lady
Catherine", "Charlestown" and "Savannah Packet" as
a delegation to Bermuda to trade powder of St George's for exemption from
the embargo. They arrived Aug 1775 and made away with gun powder on 14
August, reaching Charleston and depositing the powder, later used at Fort
Moultrie. (Bermuda and the American Revolution; Kerr, W; pg 47; Bermuda
Historical Quarterly Vol XXV, No1, 1968). The embargo was then lifted. The infamous "Gunpowder Plot" created a
sensation in Bermuda where those loyal to the Crown were outraged at the
treason of certain Bermudians. However, the friendliness shown by the USA
towards Bermudians did not last forever. British troops were brought in to
prevent another such plot.
- 1775. The "Scorpion"
was sent by Gage and Admiral Howe to remove Bermuda's cannon from the
Islands, fearing that the Americans would take the ordnance after the
powder. (Bermuda and the American Revolution; Kerr, W; pg 53).
- 1775. US Congress authorized
Mr Edward Stiles, of Pennsylvania and a former Bermudian, to send the brig
"Sea Nymph" Sam Stobel master, to Bermuda with cargo (such as
lumber, soap, and candles).
- 1776. May. The sloop
"Betsy & Ann", Ben Tucker master, was given permission to
exchange 1700 bushels of salt and two puncheons of rum for provisions at
Greenwich, Cumberland, NJ.
1776. Summer. St George Tucker, his father and one other purchased
the sloop "Dispatch" to smuggle rice, loaded with salt at Turk's
Islands in Nov 1776, and proceeded to Virginia and sold the cargo.
- 1776. Summer. Admiral Lord
Howe sent two sloops of war to interrupt Bermuda trade with America, the
"Nautilus", Capt John Collins, (arrived Jun 19, departed Oct 20
1776), and the "Galatea", Capt Thomas Jordan, (arrived Sep 7
1776).
- 1776. St George Tucker
purchased the sloop "Adelphi" for trade as he had the
"Dispatch" above. He apparently chartered the sloop to Norton and
Beale, master George Gibbs.
- American
Loyalists in Bermuda
- 1777 Bridger Goodrich bought a
fine Bermuda sloop, a prize of the "Galatea" and refitted her as
a privateer. On his initial commission he took 5 prizes of which two were
Bermudians which he brought back to Bermuda. His seizure of Bermudian
vessels raised a storm of indignation particularly at the Western end of the
Island and Henry Tucker of Somerset formed an association to boycott Bridger.
The latter took this opposition in his stride and engaged himself to marry
Elizabeth Tucker, a kinswoman of Henry; the association's threat took little
effect.
- In 1777, Bermuda was invaded briefly
by the USA. During the American Revolution, British militia soldiers manned
the isolated 17th century battery near Wreck Hill on Somerset Island in
Bermuda. The old fort had a strategic position protecting the West End
Channel. It was one of the few passages through the dangerous ring of reefs
for sailing ships. The soldiers at the fort had the presence of mind to
exchange gunfire with two armed brigs that advanced in a threatening manner
although they then flew British colors. The brigs answered with broadsides
from their cannon, lowered their Union Jack flags, hoisted the red, white and
blue striped ensign of the United States of America and proceeded to invade
Bermuda with landing parties. To avoid meeting this much bigger force, the
Bermuda based militia men retreated from the battery. The Americans spiked
their guns and destroyed the walls of the fort but were forced to retreat
themselves when more local soldiers and a Royal Navy detachment responded to
the alarm. The Americans escaped on their ships in what became only the second
time in the history of Bermuda that it was invaded.
- 1778-1779. British troops were
sent to Bermuda, as the result of the local militia failing to deal with the
pro-American sentiment. Some took charge of a condemned vessel
"Southampton" apparently against the wishes of the customs
officers. The first permanent British Army garrison was established.
- 1778. St George Tucker
sent the "Adonis", Capt Trimingham to Curacao, the ship falling to
the French on return.
- 1778. The British sailing vessel
Lord Amberst struck a reef and sank. Much of its glassware was later recovered
and is at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.
- 1779. The Bridger Goodrich
fleet of Bermuda privateers maintained such a blockade in Chesapeake Bay
that Governor Thomas Jefferson wrote John Jay, President of the Congress
"Our trade has never been so distressed since the time of Lord
Dunmore."
- 1779. December 1. "HMS
Delaware" arrived in Bermuda on 1 December 1779 from America, carrying
officers and men of the Royal Garrison Battalion.
- 1780. When an American named Pinkham
arrived in Bermuda, there was a big revival in the business of whaling. He
taught Bermudians how to cut blubber with spades, thus avoiding waste. For
more than 50 years, it was one of the colony's most important
industries.
- 1780. July 27. In the
annals of the Massachusetts Historical
Society there is a record of a treasonous, co-operative accord between
Bermudian men of high status and the American military. An
invasion of Bermuda was discussed with the Honourable Timothy Pickering, Jr,
of the American Board of War by a Captain B. Joel of Bermuda. He
gave the names of those from Bermuda, including a judge and secretary of
Government, a doctor and comptroller,. He drew up a map showing which
buildings in the Bermuda capital housed "Friends of
America." Colonel Timothy
Pickering, Jr. had headed up the Salem/Essex Militia, with whom he had been
associated before the revolution against tea and other taxes began.
Pickering's irregulars stopped short of a strategic spot from which they
could have annihilated the Redcoats streaming back to Boston from their
drubbing at Lexington and Concord, and guerilla losses on that retreat.
Capt. B. Joel wrote to Pickering, who by then was
Adjutant General and a member of the US government's Board of War: "I
trouble you once more to mention a circumstance I did not until now think
proper to make public, & which I intended to communicate only to you. In
the attempt on Berd. I have likewise a design of seizing between two &
three thousand pounds in specie, which the governor always keeps by him.
Money arising from the Custom of the Island for which he gives the Collector
Bills, on England from the Admiralty, and from his own revenues. With this
he pays the Garrison, and furnishes the Barracks, Commissary, & other
departments. With the approbation of the (War) Board I could induce a
merchant of this City (?Boston), from view of private interest &
emolument to furnish a vessel for the attempt." The
phrase "in the attempt on Berd." is taken to suggest a possible
invasion, either for total control, or only as a singular attack of Bermuda.
Capt. Joel also transmits with his letter a list of those sympathetic to
whatever he was cooking up with Pickering and augments that roll call with
the map showing some of their homes in St. George's. Had
Joel's papers been discovered by Bruere or British officials, it would
perhaps have resulted the removal of his head, along with those of the
treasonous worthies, a number of whom sat on the Governor's Council. The
Joel map of St. George's of 1780 with adjacent islands and forts was known
to Bermudians and was published by Dr. Henry Wilkinson in his four-volume
Bermuda books much later.
- 1780. September 10. Death of
His Excellency, Governor George James Bruere, Lieutenant Colonel in His
Majesty's Service, at the age of 59 years. He was put under the floor of
St. Peter's Church, in a manner coldly contemptuous of his person and his
office, probably resulting
from the Anglo-American War of 1775-1783. Bruere
did not make it through the end of that conflict, which was resolved with
the Treaty of Paris in 1783. He had arrived in Bermuda with his wife
and nine children on the Prince of Wales in August 1764, and remained in
office for the next sixteen years, until his untimely demise, probably from
the scourge of yellow fever. One daughter, Frances, married into the Tucker
family, descendants of the former Governor Daniel Tucker (1616-19). Among
his good works, Bruere spoke against the evil of slavery, years before it
came to the fore in the London Parliament. He took a keen interest in
agriculture, which he thought was a neglected economic arena, and it that
regard he and his wife bought 60 acres to the north of the Town of St.
George to grow grapes with the intention of producing a very fine
Madeira." He
became ill in July 1780, probably due to stress after the locals stole his
gunpowder and gave it to the Americans, and died two months later, said by
the great Bermuda historian, Dr. Henry Wilkinson, to be "the victim in
the eyes of his family of five years of incessant strain and foul
play", a situation brought on by the machinations of the locals in
their dealings with the rebels in what became the United States of America
three years after his death. Because he died of fever he was
buried under St. Peter's Church, St. George's. Bruere,
a former British Army Lieutenant Colonel who lost a son also in the army
fighting the Americans, was outraged when he discovered what had
happened and put up a reward for the capture of the Bermudians responsible
but to no avail. Bruere
was Governor from 1764 until his death. His portrait hangs in the Bermuda
National Trust's Tucker House museum in the heart of St. George's.
- 1781. 40 acres of cotton were
found growing in Tucker's Town, which led directly to the British government
encouraging the planting of cotton as a commercial crop in 1788.
- 1781. December 16. An American
loyalist, William
Browne born in Massachusetts 27th Feb 1737 but who had fallen foul of
rebel bigotry and fled to England, where he was called on by Lord North from
his (he said) 'profoundest retreat' , took over as Bermuda's Governor. He
had been a friend of John Adams who thought him a solid judicious character,
which turned out to be correct as on arriving to take up office, a lesser
man would have thought his task insurmountable.
The Islands had a serious lack
of food, especially bread and prices were exorbitantly high. The towns were
crowded with Loyalists and rents had risen to unprecedented levels. Both
smallpox and typhus were present and unchecked in their course. His official
residence was in such a state of disrepair it struck him with horror. Enemy
prisoners where everywhere taking notes on everything and the danger of
attack was greater than ever before. Browne set about organizing island
affairs appointing other Loyalists to key positions, one from Virginia as
attorney general another from Massachusetts as chief justice, he reinstated
the local militia officers and made whaling license free. He took numerous
measures and initiatives that went down well with the islanders. He in fact
turned out to be a model governor and the islanders had quickly taken to
someone who had suffered so much for his loyalty to the Crown. He was able
to see that the likelihood of America becoming independent meant this
enchanting, tranquil, beautiful isle of pink sand would make it the
'Gibraltar of the west' and imperative for British commerce, so he built up
the island's small garrison. Independence was also pretty obvious to the
Loyalists and more and more of them arrived and collected at the east end of
the island, but were dispersing to other colonies almost as soon as they had
arrived. At the end of the war when Loyalists were being evacuated from New
York he had them re-provisioned before continuing their journeys. With peace
declared, Bermuda was quick to restart trade with the USA and he pressed for
it to become a free port, for such he appointed another Loyalist from
Connecticut as comptroller. Browne's summing up at the end of his
governorship in 1788 was "Bermuda is divided on domestic business but
is united in it's loyalty to His Majesty."
- 1780s. The Bermuda fitted dinghy
started racing. Teams of black sailors who were slaves competed against each
other for their master's honor, prize money and often a turtle dinner.
- 1782. May 9. At sea, late
in the US War of Independence, the masthead
lookout of the Continental frigate Deane saw a strange sail on the horizon.
The vessel with the raked-back masts to leeward was a Bermudian privateer,
Regulator. Only fast runners, privateers, and warships cruised the
waters off the Carolinas. She was caught on a lee shore with nowhere to run
and her sixteen six-pound cannon no match for the frigate's twenty-eight
twelve-pounders. Trapped and out-gunned, Captain George Kidd struck his
colours and Regulator fell prize to the United States navy. The
men of the Deane were amazed to find that 70 of the 75-man crew on the
Regulator were black slaves. Kidd and his four officers were the only white
men on board. A further surprise occurred
at the vice admiralty court trial of the Regulator when, breaking with
precedent, the Massachusetts justices offered the slaves among the crew
their freedom rather than condemn them, as forfeited chattel, to be sold at
auction. To
a man, the black Bermudians declined the offer and asked instead to be sent
to their island home as prisoners of war on the next flag-of-truce. Rather
than embrace the freedom offered to them by this new republic, they chose to
return to Bermuda and slavery.
- 1783. Captain
Andrew Durnford, Royal Engineers, wrote his "Bermuda Defence
Report" of that year: "To
the unequal distribution of that carbonate of lime in solution . . . I
attribute, not only the caverns and sandflaws, but the pinnacle . . . The
most remarkable groups are at Tobacco Bay, St. George's Island, and at the
North Rock."
-
1783. HMS
Cerberus, 5th Rate 32 gun ship, apparently launched in 1779, struck rocks in Castle
Harbour and sank. (Note, on January 10, 1777 an American shore battery drove
away HMS Cerberus, it is not known if it was the same one). Her commander was Sir Jacob Wheate — a Royal Navy
captain. Where she went down is now a dive site also known as the Musket
Ball Wreck. It is not known whether Wheate was aboard when she sank and
survived, or was not aboard at the time. He is believed to have died later
that year, from yellow fever and was buried underneath St. Peter's Church (a
corpse believed to be his, from a coffin plate found by it, was discovered
in August 2008 during excavations).
-
1783.
After the Treaty of Paris ended the American War of Independence with Great
Britain the national geography of North America was re-written in
British eyes. From the Royal Navy came the new order. Operations off and in
Bermuda came under the "River St. Lawrence and Coast of North
America and West Indies" station. The
loss of most of the American colonies in the American Revolution left
Bermuda as the only British port between Halifax and the West Indies: an
ideal location for a Royal Navy dockyard.
- 1784. In Bermuda, a slave named
Quashi was convicted of murdering his master John McNeill and was hanged on
Gibbet Island.
- 1784. On January 17, the beginning
of a Bermuda newspaper. In the town of St. George, Joseph Stockdale arrived
from England to edit, print and publish The Bermuda Gazette. He was the King's
Printer in Bermuda.
- 1784. On March 1, in one of its
first editions, the Bermuda Gazette reported snow fell in Bermuda on the night
before.
- 1784. Postal service in Bermuda was started by Stockdale
in the town of St. George. He placed a letter box outside his office on
Printer's Alley.
- 1784, the
Bermuda Marine Assurance Company issued its first policy to cover a shipment
of cargo from Bermuda to Philadelphia (but went out of business by 1811). As
the trade between Bermuda and North America expanded, British insurance
companies were encouraged to appoint and support general agents in Bermuda.
- 1787-88. Because
Bermudians did not confine their fishing, hunting for turtles
and whaling to home waters, they went for cod off the Newfoundland Banks with
34 sloops of 30-60 tons, manned by 8-10 men and a Newfoundlander pilot,
Newfoundland complained to London. Bermudians were forbidden to further
violate the terms of the Treaty of Paris, 1763. Bermuda's Governor Henry
Hamilton had to ensure this was obeyed.
- 1788. Birth of Bermudian slave Mary
Prince at Brackish Pond, on a farm owned by Charles Myners. Her mother was a
household slave and her father was a slave in the shipbuilder's yard at Crow
Lane. Her story is both the first-hand account of slavery in Bermuda and the
first ever compiled by a woman. She was sent to the Caribbean to work in the
Turks Islands, then taken to London by new master John Wood, tried to escape,
came under the protection of the London-based Anti Slavery Society and her
story became famous.
-
1788.
Lieutenant Thomas Hurd RN made the earliest detailed record of North Rock,
the northernmost point of Bermuda, and the chart contained a proposal for
the building of a lighthouse and gun battery on the platform of reefs. It
also had a vignette of the six main pinnacles, of which only one is now
extant. What happened to the others is not readily known, though hearsay
suggests they may have been used as targets for modern artillery practice.
Lt.
Hurd spent almost a decade in Bermuda waters charting the extensive reefs
and plotting the channels through them, including the only major one for
large ships, off the east end of St. George's Island. His work set new
standards for such charts and he was appointed the second Hydrographer to
the Royal Navy in 1808. At his death in 1823, Francis Beaufort, who invented
the wind force scale for indicating wind velocity for shipping, succeeded
him in that office.
- 1788. Major Andrew Durnford was one
of the officers who arrived from England. He re-built Paget Fort.
- 1790. Following a petition from a
number of merchants in the Central and Western Parishes, the Bermuda
Government appointed a Commission to acquire 145 acres for what became later
the town, then city, of Hamilton. Regulations governing the incorporation
required the streets to be 50 feet wide, with the land on the harbour side
reserved for wharf development (now Hamilton Docks). Average price of town
property was then £20 per acre (about $1.60). Similar property today would
fetch in excess of $4 million.
- 1791. The merger of the
formerly separate British colony of Maine, with Massachusetts, before it
again became a separate state later.
- 1792. In Bermuda, Freemasons
established Prince Alfred No 233 (EC), originally chartered under the Moderns
as No 507.
- 1793. With the threat of war with
France, the Governor of Bermuda directed Major Andrew Durnford to build a new
Barbette Battery on the height of the land above Paget Fort on Paget
Island.
- 1793. The town of Hamilton was
incorporated as the site of Bermuda's new capital instead of the town of St.
George.
- 1793. Hundreds of people arrived by
boat in Bermuda, refugees from the slave revolts in Haiti and Santo
Domingo.
- 1793. June 29. In Bermuda, the Town
of St. George, first established in 1612, was officially incorporated by Act
of Parliament and received its first Mayor, Major Andrew Durnford.
- 1793. June 29. In Bermuda, the
then-infant town (now City) of Hamilton, named after Sir Henry Hamilton,
Governor 1778-1794, was incorporated by Act of Parliament, with the motto
"Hamilton Sparsa Collegit" meaning "Hamilton had brought together the
scattered." The Freeholders were granted authority to elect from among them 1
Mayor, 3 Aldermen and 5 Common Councilors.
- 1794. First Customs Warehouse,
later, Town Hall, now offices, was built in Hamilton.
- 1795. January. First elections of
officials in Hamilton. Daniel Tucker, Mayor; Richard Peniston, Joseph Stowe,
William Hall, Aldermen; Benjamin Cox, George Harvey, Richard Darrell, William
Morris and one other as Councilors.
- 1795. A
channel, afterwards named the North Shore Channel, was established for
British shipping and a major anchorage was found at Castle Harbour at the
east end of the island. Thus a Royal Naval depot was first established in
Bermuda, at St. George’s.
- 1795. A slave conspiracy in Bermuda
was alleged to have been instigated by Haitian Mulattoes who had arrived from
Haiti in 1793.
- 1796. March 1. "I do
hereby declare the said Jemmy Darrell to be exonerated and released from all
and all manner of Slavery or Servitude whatsoever, and I do earnestly
request all Persons to treat him, as a Man actually and bona fide
Free." With these powerful words, Governor James Craufurd released him
from his enslavement. (He was also made a Kings Pilot on May 23, 1796.)
Pilot Darrell's life, however, as a free man was not much different than
during enslavement because of legislation consistently introduced to limit
rights of the freed slave. He, however, fought these regulations which
sought to limit his hard-earned rights. Pilot Darrell earned his freedom
through his abilities and steadiness in navigating the British Rear Admiral
George Murray's flagship through the Island's reefs to Murray's Anchorage
safely in 1795. he Admiral recommended that he be freed and commissioned as
a Kings Pilot. Pilot Darrell's freedom, however, brought little relief as
Bermudian legislators fearing free people of colour to be the primary
instigators of slave conspiracies, continued to curtail their rights.
- 1796. November 12. The
Bermuda Gazette and Weekly Advertiser published a special report.

Bermuda Gazette
November 12, 1796
- 1796. December 2. Death in Bermuda at the
age of 46 of His Excellency, Governor William Campbell, Lieutenant Colonel
of the 24th Regiment of Foot, who died of fever only a few days after his
arrival. A substantial memorial to him is in St. Peter's Church, St.
George's.
- 1797. In Bermuda, Lodge St. George
No 200 (SC) was given its Charter on 7th August and Atlantic Phoenix No 224
(EC) was given its Charter on 9th August.
- 1798.
Maria Hill Fort on the high Hill of Ireland Island, commanded by Captain
John V. Seymour, is of a square form, sunk in the rock, some part of the
platform, which is stone, is found to be soft and therefore will require to
be laid with wood; here are nine twelve-pounder cannon, as good as new,
unmounted, and new carriages. This Hill is well situated to annoy an enemy
passing round Ireland and should be capable of defending the passage into
the Great Sound. A report by a British officer that same year to 'The Most
Noble Marquis Cornwallis, Master General of His Majesty's Ordnance' suggests
some disparity in the number and size of its guns. "A considerable
enclosed Battery mounting eight eighteen pounders has been built upon the
summit of a Hill in the Island of Ireland. This Redoubt is in good Repair
& commands well the Entrance into the sound and anchorage called Grassy
Bay, where large Ships may ride out the severe Gales with safety."
- 1799. Rev. John Stephenson arrived
in Bermuda and began missionary work for the Methodist Church as an itinerant
preacher.
- 1799. Convict Bay in St.
George's Parish was so named, from
a concept borrowed by the British government of using obsolete warships as
floating prisons, prison hulks, at New York City during the American
Revolution. In 1799, the British government towed the hulk Somerset here,
hence the name. By 1824, two such hulks were located here while others were
at the Royal Navy Dockyard in Sandys Parish. Today, it is a residential area
for non-felons but the name has stuck.
Last Updated:
November 5, 2009
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