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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, 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 The act was repealed in 1705 at the insistence of Whitehall as it containing "some inhumane penalties," although "whipping and imprisoning" were considered acceptable. 1705.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. 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. 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. 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.
• 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

• 1727. King George II (see left) was enthroned.
• 1730. June 6. Slave Sally Bassett was sentenced to death on June 6, 1730, and then burned at the stake for poisoning her master. She always maintained her innocence and said God would send a sign to prove it. People then found the Bermudiana flowering out of her ashes and Sally became a focus of the anti-slavery movement.
• 1730. An Act affecting Negroes and other slaves imported into Bermuda was enacted. It levied a tax of £5 on all imported slaves, except those arriving directly from Africa. The Population was then 8,774 - 5,086 white and 3,688 black.
• 1731. In St. Georges, Bermuda, the Mitchell House (now the St. George's Historical Society) was built.
• 1732. Establishment of Georgia as a British Colony, by James Oglethorpe.
• 1736. In an inventory made for Colonel John Trimingham, there were 18 Bermuda-made carved chairs in his living room, made partly or wholly with cedar  - and mahogany imported from the West Indies, much prized. It was a good time for Bermuda-made furniture.
• 1737. Between 3 September and 31 December, 38 sloops entered or cleared Norfolk, and of this total, 25 were registered in Bermuda, the famous cedar-built Bermuda sloops. Their hulls, with significant deadrise, combined with low freeboard, less superstructure and lighter spars to enable them to increase speed and stability. Strong, light cedar found in abundance in Bermuda, and used for framing as well as planking, reduced vessel weight, and the common sail plan, with raked mast and square topsails, made Bermuda sloops good sailors with speed under fair conditions.
• 1741. In Bermuda, the Spanish privateer Francisco Lopez landed a raiding party at Boat Bay in Southampton Parish. The Spaniards seized local fishing boats and towed them behind their ship. The local militia and two armed Bermudian sloops arrived too late to retrieve them. The boats and the Spanish were never heard of again.
• 1744. Freemasonry was acknowledged to exist in Bermuda when the Earl of Strathmore, Grand Master of England, appointed a Provincial Grand Master for the Islands of Bermuda.
• 1746. So many prisoners-of-war were brought in by Bermudian privateers that the only place available to accommodate them was Paget Fort. They were guarded by locally-quartered troops and had a food allowance of one shilling a day.
• 1747. The death, in Bermuda, at more than 100 years old, of Sarah Durham (nee Hunt). Her husband - who pre-deceased her -  was several times Commander-on-Chief, Bermuda. She was the child of Richard Hunt and his wife Sarah, of Bromley, Kent, England, who arrived in the Bermuda Islands in 1647, with their child, also named Sarah.
• 1752. Like the rest of the British Empire, Bermuda changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.  Eleven days were lost when September 3 under the old system became September 14 under the new one.
• 1755. The death, in Bermuda where he had close family ties, of the South Carolina planter and historian Edward Wigg. He was believed to have been buried at St. Peter's Church.
• 1759. The Honorable George Forbes, originally from Strathdon, Aberdeenshire and an emigrant to Bermuda, by then a Councilor and member of the Executive Council  of the Bermuda Government - purchased Paget Island  - then called Paget Ford Island and 36.35 acres - in St. George's Parish for sixty pounds sterling.

1760-1820

• 1760. King George III (see right) was enthroned. 
• 1761. A slave 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. 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.
• 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. 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 stole the island's 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1783. Captain Andrew Durnford, Royal Engineers, wrote his "Bermuda Defence Report" of that year.
• 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. 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.