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Bermuda's History from 1800 to 1899

The island's record of nineteenth century social and economic development

By Keith Archibald Forbes (see About Us) exclusively for Bermuda Online

To refer to this web file, please use "bermuda-online.org/history1800-1899.htm" as your Subject

1800-1899

• 1800. To counter Stephenson, Parliament passed a law permitting only Church of England ministers to preach in Bermuda. Stephenson was arrested when preaching a service at the home in St. George's of silversmith Peter Pallais. So was Pallais but only Stephenson remained behind bars. He continued to conduct services from his cell until in active defiance of the authorities until he was released by order of the Privy Council in London. As a direct result, Methodism in Bermuda became legal and the first of what became a number of Methodist churches in Bermuda soon followed.
• 1801. May 11. Burial in Bermuda, at St. Peter's Church, St. George's, of Anne Bingham, in her 37th year, born in 1764, daughter of Thomas Willing of Philadelphia. At the age of 16, she married Senator William Bingham, possibly the wealthiest man in America, owning at one time more than a million acres of the state of Maine. She was said to be the most beautiful woman in the USA. They spent some years in Europe and it was there that Anne contracted an illness, for which Bermuda was prescribed as a place of cure. Unfortunately for her, a cure was not to be had and she died in Bermuda. Her headstone was restored in 1883 by her relative Edward Willing. Anne Willing Bingham's reputation and fame yet survives, for she is supposed to have been the model for the famous Draped Bust portrait on the obverse of the American silver dollars and other United States coinage between 1796 and 1804. The famous artist Gilbert Stuart is said to have made a portrait of Anne in 1785, when she was 21 years old. From that sketch, the "Miss Liberty" of the Draped Bust coins was probably created. Her grave is visited periodically by the the Somers Isles chapter and other visiting members of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
• 1804. Irish Poet Tom Moore arrived in Bermuda. During his four month stay and work as an official with the Admiralty he met and had a love affair with Hester Tucker, whom he called "Nea" in his love poems. Otherwise, he was quite bored. Unfortunately for him, his Bermuda stay led to many financial problems for him, through no fault of his own but for which he was blamed for the cheating of another. Tom Moore's Tavern was later named after him. In Ireland, he is never referred to as "Tom Moore, always as Thomas Moore.
• 1805. The Bermuda-built sloop - small warship - HMS Pickle of the Royal Navy played a unique role in the Battle of Trafalgar in which the Royal Navy, with 448 dead  and 1,241 wounded, soundly defeated the French. Their navy had 4,408 dead, 1,545 wounded and lost 23 of their 33 ships in the battle. HMS Pickle, built of Bermuda cedar wood, was the fastest and one of the hardiest ships in the Royal Navy. Thus it was chosen to cover the 1,000 mile journey from Cape Trafalgar to England with exclusive news of the battle. It was a 9-day journey, during which the ship ran into a gale. On arrival at Falmouth, the officer with the dispatch raced to Whitehall in London by horse and carriage. He arrived at 3 am. Prime Minister William Pitt, the King and Royal Family and newspapers, were awoken to hear the news of the victory and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson. The Bermuda Sloop, developed on the island, was the fastest boat afloat in the 1700s and became highly desirably to seaman, particularly those in illegal trades such as piracy, and for privateering and as advice vessels for the Royal Navy. Bermudians used their ships for commerce and travel between the island, the Caribbean, the continental Americas and wider afield and they were manned by men from all sectors of the community, free and slave, the latter until Emancipation in 1834.

HMS Pickle, from a painting in the UK.

• 1806. Writing to his London headquarters, Simon Frazer, Royal Artillery, Commissioner for the UK military in St. Georges, noted the potential value of Bermuda if held by enemies of Britain or, if armed by the British, against the United States. As a direct result. three years later,,the Dockyard was built and Bermuda was fortified.
• 1806/1807. First Bermuda-rigged sloop or schooner was built in Bermuda. She was the Laura, a Ballyhoo schooner, based on the Royal Navy's "Lady Hammond" class, but designed for fast transport of perishable cargo and as a dispatch vessel. She was designed to be way over-canvassed, on a very low freeboard and with a huge mainsail on a 60 feet boom. She was a fast and maneuverable boat, much envied by foreign sailors.

Bermuda sloop Laura, 1806

• 1807. Slave registers, including those in Bermuda,  were made compulsory by the British Government after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act , 1807. They were intended to monitor plantation owners and other masters to ensure they did not buy new slaves.
•  1808, Vice Admiral Sir John Warren submitted a report that led to the creation of a dockyard at Ireland Island and the acquisition of other land and islands for what was eventually considered “the Gibraltar of the West”. In Richard Norwood’s 1616 survey of Bermuda, the dockyard island was already named apparently after a Mr. Ireland, but the land appears to be general or common. By 1663, Ireland Island had been subdivided by a “Mr. Perinchief” and Norwood’s survey of that year records some 18 plots. Captain Florentius Seymour owned the easternmost area at Ireland Point. 25 families in all then owned Ireland Island. Others included Joseph Seymour, Hinson Gilbert, Darrell and Henry Harvey, families of Fowles and Burrows, Dickinson, Young, Morris, Outerbridge, Talbot, Burch, Young, Taylor, Roach, Williams,  Evans, Leaycroft, Bedlow, Gibbs, Woods, Jauncey and Righton. Ten of the properties seem to have been owned outright by women. 
• 1808. Three years after she achieved her claim to fame at the Battle of Trafalgar, the Bermuda-built cedar schooner HMS Pickle struck a shoal when entering the Spanish port of Cadiz and was lost.
• 1809. Great Britain's Royal Navy Commander-in-Chief in the West Atlantic, Vice Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, Bt, KB, was in operational command when Bermuda's Ireland Island (75 acres), Boaz and Watford Islands were sold to the British Government by way of compulsory purchase for the establishment of a naval base. Its purpose was to serve as a replacement for all the ports on the eastern seaboard of the new United States that were, until 1783, British possessions. From the reaches of Maine, with all its great ship timbers, to Boston, New York, the Chesapeake and Charleston, His Majesty's Fleet had nowhere to retire for rest and repair, in between various spats with the French and now the new "Americans." Having retained the Canadian Maritimes to the north and some of the Caribbean islands to the south, Bermuda, halfway between, was both the logical and only sound geographical position for the creation of a new naval base. From there, the new United States could be controlled, as long as the Royal Navy ruled the sea-lanes of the Western North Atlantic. As a British officer would later declare, it was a nation "hitherto unable, if not unwilling, to control among its people a wild spirit of aggression dangerous to the maintenance of peace." Ireland Island was chosen for the new Dockyard base, after considering cutting a channel into Harrington Sound because of its protected harbour. Such a major engineering work would have been simple and inexpensive, when compared to the final cost of the western site, for all of it was composed of some of the hardest, "bastard", rock of the Walsingham formations. Undeterred by geological intransigence, the Royal Engineers, "purveyors of technology to the empire", began blasting soon after the erection of a few buildings on flat ground, facing the original cove of Grassy Bay.
• 1810. Ireland Island in Bermuda began construction as a Royal Navy Base, to replace Castle Harbour, four years after the Hon. Thomas Grenville, First Lord of the Admiralty, spoke in the House of Commons on the strategic value of Bermuda as a base between British Canada and the West Indies following Britain's defeat in the USA's War of Independence. 
• 1810. The Zion Chapel, at the corner of Church and Wesley Streets, was the first church where blacks and whites worshipped together as equals. Built under the direction of Reverend Joshua Marsden, it was the first Methodist church in Bermuda. 
• 1810. May 4. A Royal Navy Captain of H.M.S. Swiftsure fell overboard and was drowned, off the Bermudas. He was Captain John Conn R.N. (August 1764 - 4 May 1810), a senior captain, whose shining career included service at the battles of the Saintes, the Glorious First of June, Copenhagen and Trafalgar ended tragically in a shipboard accident before he could reap the rewards of his long service. Conn could also claim membership of Nelson's "Band of Brothers", a clique of dashing naval officers who participated in Nelson's campaigns during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as a close friendship with the admiral himself, who once said: A better or more zealous officer than Captain Conn is not in His Majesty's service. Born to a Royal Navy warrant officer of Irish extraction in Devon, England, on 1764, Conn gained first hand experience of the sea at twelve on his father's ship HMS Weasel, before securing a place on HMS Arrogant as a midshipman on board which he saw action at the battle of the Saintes in 1782. In 1788 he was made a lieutenant but had to wait five years before being given a good position, during which married Margaret, a vicar's daughter. Serving aboard the flagship HMS Royal Sovereign at the Glorious First of June, he came to the attention of Admiral Lord Howe and further distinguished himself in 1798 in HMS Foudroyant at the battle of Donegal which resulted in the destruction of a French invasion fleet headed for Ireland. In 1801 As a commander at the first battle of Copenhagen, his expertise with bomb vessels caused terrible damage to the Danish fleet, and he participated in Nelson's disastrous attack on the French invasion force in Boulogne shortly afterwards, gaining his commanding officers attention and respect. Promoted to Post Captain in 1802, Conn commanded the veteran ship HMS Culloden accompanied by his nine year old son Henry, before transferring to the French prize ship HMS Canopus and being specially requested by Nelson in the Mediterranean. In 1805 he was given temporary command of the first rate flagship HMS Victory and his old ship HMS Royal Sovereign whilst their commanders were on leave and further contributed to his reputation as a reliable and steady officer. On 10 October he returned the Royal Sovereign to Admiral Collingwood and was given the fast new second rate HMS Dreadnought to command. Eleven days later Conn and his crew where thrown into battle as the Franco-Spanish fleet attempted to break out of Cadiz. Situated halfway down Collongwood's division, Conn struggled to reach the action, only getting there around the time Nelson was mortally wounded in the northern division. Making up for the delay, Dreadnought tangled with the San Juan Nepomuceno, rescuing the battered HMS Bellerophon, killing the Spanish captain Cosmé Damián Churruca and forcing his ship to surrender. Charging on from this victory, the Dreadnought engaged the Spanish flagship Principe de Asturias, mortally wounding the Spanish admiral, but being unable to defeat the enemy, which succeeded in escaping back to Cadiz. Conn even managed to rescue his prize, the San Juan Nepomuceno being one of only four captured enemy ships to survive the storm. Following the battle, in which Dreadnought suffered 33 casualties, Conn continued in service taking over the massive 112 gun HMS San Josef and then the 120 gun HMS Hibernia as flag captain before moving as a commodore to the West Indies in HMS Swiftsure in 1810. Admirals' rank was not far away when tragedy struck on the 4 May when during the chase of a small French ship near Bermuda, Conn became overeager, slipped and fell overboard. Swiftsure was halted and a search was conducted but Conn had drowned before help arrived. His passing was mourned in Britain and especially in the Navy where he was a popular and much-respected figure. Sir John Borlase Warren, an old commander and friend, expressed regret at the death of so deserving an officer as Captain Conn.
• 1811. An Anglican day school for black children began in the Town of St. George.
• 1811. With the formal abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire including Bermuda, the authorities in London asked the colonies to keep a census of their slave populations as a way of trying to control that trade. 
• 1812. Bermuda, as a colonial outpost of Britain strategically close to the USA, was strategically involved on the second war that began this year with the USA. Largely overshadowed by the Napoleonic Wars of Europe, it not only guaranteed Canada's independence but helped define the Anglo-American relationship for the next century and a half. The war's causes are obscure even today but the American invasion of Canada this year was repulsed. Later, British historians and the British Government viewed the war as an ill-fated attempt by the brash young American republic to annex Canada. For British Canada, populated by many Loyalists who had fled the American Revolution and had paid a huge price in having their homes and lands confiscated forever, it was a war for survival. Without any doubt at all, the single major reason for the war was to capture Canada by force of arms, to assert the nationhood of the Americans on the global stage and simultaneously expand their territory both northward and southward.
• 1812. The British 18 gun brig "Frolic" was consort to 14 merchantmen homeward from Honduras and was separated from her convoy on Oct 16 in a heavy gale. She was repairing damage on the 17th when she sighted  sail which proved to be the American brig "Wasp". The following day, after 43 minutes of fighting, Frolic lost both her masts, 2 officers, and 15 seamen, 43 wounded out of the total ship's company of 110. The Wasp lost 8 men and about 8 wounded. A few hours later, the British 74 gun ship "Poictiers", Capt Sir John Poo Beresford, hove in sight, captured the "Wasp" and recaptured the "Frolic" and brought them both to Bermuda. Capt Beresford's wife died in Bermuda and was buried in St George's. He was the brother of Marshal Beresford who organized the Portuguese Division in Wellington's Army in the Peninsula. Both were bastard sons of Earl of Tyrone, afterwards 1st marquess of Waterford. Jacob Jones commanded the Wasp at the capture of the Frolic on Oct 18, 1812. The next day the Wasp and her prize were taken by the Poictiers to Bermuda. 
• 1812. William R. Higginbottam - sometimes spelt Higinbottam - became US Consular Agent in Bermuda.  
• 1812. Marryat arrived in Bermuda aboard the HMS "Africa."
  1812. 27 August.  The "Lydia", master and owner Captain Comfort S Rena, sailed from New London, Conn. bound for St Bartholomew in the West Indies with a full cargo. She was a combination brig/schooner (brigantine), 113 tons. A week out she was captured by the British ship-of-war "HMS Orpheus", Capt Hugh Pigot & master's mate John Hooper, and set for Bermuda where she made port 8 Sep. There she was brought before the Admiralty Court as a prize. 
• 1813. American forces invaded Canada for the second time since 1812 but were again repulsed. Until that happened they had destroyed property throughout Canada; turned citizens out into the cold in the depths of winter and burnt their homes. 
• 1813. June 1. The "Shannon" (38 guns) captured the "Chesapeake" (44 guns) off Boston Light after a sharp and decisive engagement that lasted only fifteen minutes. The commander of the "Chesapeake", James Lawrence, who was mortally wounded in the fray, was related to the Cox family of Bermuda, and his senior officer was William Cox, son of a Bermudian who had emigrated to America.
• 1813. The Bermuda Post Office was established, initially in the Town of St. George.
• 1813. A midshipman's grave was dug at Clarence Cove, originally Abbott's Bay. He was a 16-year Royal Navy midshipman, Charles Francillon, of the Royal Navy ship HMS Spartan. He died from phthisis, a form of tuberculosis, a highly contagious disease of the time, on April 18, 1813 - during the 1812 to 1814 War. Francillon was born in Harwich (then in Essex, England), the fourth son of Francis Francillon of Harwich, a Purser in the Royal Navy. He was 15 years old when he joined the ship as a First Class Volunteer, a rank created in 1794. It was a first step for boys, who later became Midshipmen for three or more years, then Lieutenants. He was a patient of what was then the Royal Naval Hospital - much later, Admiralty House - when he died. The letters D. D. appear beside his name, which mean he was "Discharged Dead". He probably received the posthumous rank of Midshipman while still technically a First Class Volunteer.
• 1814. July. HMS Dictator, and HMS Diamond, both 64s, along with HMS Royal Oak, 74, arrived at Bermuda between July and August 1814 with the 4th, 44th, and 85th Foot aboard. Altogether a brigade of 3,500 troops disembarked on the North Shore, near Devonshire Dock, at a place still called "Forces Point", under the command of Maj-Gen Robert Ross of an Ulster family.
• 1814. July. 6 British frigates arrived at Bermuda  from "up the Straits" having on board the 7th Fusiliers and 3 other regiments. They were soon joined by those brought on the Royal Oak, Dictator, and Diamond. 
• 1814. July. One of the British men-o-war which assembled at Bermuda to attack the American coast was the HMS Royal Oak, with Major (later Lt-Gen) Sir Harry Smith (1787-1860) age 27 who wrote an account of the arrival at Bermuda. She left Bermuda with Rear Admiral Malcolm and 30 or 40 sail of transport, on board troops recently arrived from Southern France, to rendezvous in Chesapeake Bay with the "Tonnant" and the "Surprise". "The wind blowing from the east made it difficult for the "Royal Oak" to leave the anchorage. The Admiral resolved on the boldest thing ever attempted, to take the fleet out through the North East Passage, never done before save by one frigate. There was but one man capable of piloting the "Royal Oak" (Joseph Hayward, "Uncle Joe") and he feared her bows would touch when the rudder was clear. Sir Harry Smith wrote: "To my honour there appeared not a foot to spare, it was a most extraordinary thing ever seen, the rocks visible all around the ship." At one moment the wind was very light, it almost died away; the only expression of Admiral Malcolm was "Well, if the breeze fails us it will be a good turn I have done the Yankees". The undertaking was successful, the expedition went up the Pawtuxent and carried out the attack on the city of Washington." 
• 1814. August. A British Royal Navy fleet, piloted by James Darrell of St. George's until it reached the open sea, assembled in and sailed from Bermuda to successfully attack and burn Washington DC, in retaliation for the American attack on and burning of Yorktown, now Toronto, in Canada. Pilot Darrell — known as Jemmy — is often cited as the first black man to buy a house in Bermuda and it is certain that he was one of the first to own land. He was a slave until he piloted the British ship HMS Resolution through a difficult passage to Murray's Anchorage in the east end. His nautical prowess led to him becoming one of the Island's first King's Pilots and eventually his release from slavery, aged 47. The father-of-one later campaigned for better pay for pilots and for a change in the law to allow black people to leave their property to their family. After it burnt Washington, it attempted the same thing on Fort McHenry in Baltimore. During that engagement, Francis Scott Key wrote the words of what became the Star Spangled Banner, as a temporary detainee on one of the British warships. The melody is from a bawdy British drinking song by a London based composer. The fleet's voyage ended in Halifax, where hundreds of slaves who had lined the shores of the Pawtuxent River and elsewhere nearby to implore British troops to help them escape from bondage had been rescued and were also on the British warships cheering on and actively assisting the sailors who had set them free, were promptly and officially given their freedom.
• 1814. August 1. HMS Tonnant, with Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane K.B. and the frigate "Surprise" with Sir Thomas Cochrane, sailed from Bermuda, destined for Chesapeake Bay.
• 1814. September. The captain of HMS Menelaus, Sir Peter Parker, BT, died in battle against the USA and his body conveyed on the "Hebrus" to be buried in the Islands of Bermuda. He was buried 14 Oct 1814 at St George's Church burial grounds by the Rev George Rennell, Chaplain of the HMS Albion.
• 1814. The present Fort St. Catherine was built, from an earlier fort.
• 1814.  Thomas Tudor Tucker, born at Tucker House, St George’s, Bermuda and named for his uncle, the Treasurer of the USA, commanded HMS Cherub in an engagement off Valparaiso in the company with HMS Phoebe, when the USS Essex was captured.
• 1814. The Georgian style house at Par-la-Ville (then not in Hamilton) in Bermuda was completed by Hamilton merchant William Perot whose son William Bennet Perot, first postmaster of the town (later a city), lived here all his life. The house fringes a beautiful park, originally laid out as a private garden of the Perot family.
• 1814. When it was announced that the seat of the Bermuda Government was to be transferred to Hamilton from St. George's, N. T. Butterfield (later, the Bank) moved to Front Street. 
• 1814. October 8. HMS Albion, Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, A Scot, and the HMS Hebrus, frigate, arrived in Bermuda from the Chesapeake.
• 1814. At Ghent, British and American negotiators resolved to end the War of 1812 between Britain and the USA, in which Bermuda had been involved. But peace was not easily and instantly achieved in the days before the telegraph. Since on three previous occasions America had insisted on modifications after her envoys had signed treaties, this time Britain insisted that the treaty could and would not become effective until both parties had ratified it and why it continued into 1815. 
• 1815. January. The units the British Army used in the Battle of New Orleans included the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders, who charged the Americans led on my their pipers. Lieutenant C. H. Gordon later described how, within 150 yards of the American lines " a most destructive and murderous was opened on our column of round, grape, musketry, rifle and buckshot, with officers and men mowed down by ranks." Although the battle was a defeat for the British the war was a success for Britain for it guaranteed Canada's independence from the USA. It also gave a further impetus for the British to defeat Napoleon for good in Europe.
• 1815. January 15.  "HMS Endymion" (Capt. Hope), the "Pomona", and the "Tenedos" engaged in firing shots at the US Navy warship USS "President", forcing the latter's surrender. The "President", Capt Stephen Decatur, was brought to Murray's Anchorage, Bermuda.  

• 1815. February 22. Midshipman Richard Sutherland Dale, the oldest son of Commodore Richard Dale from Philadelphia, died in Bermuda from his wounds and was buried at St. Peter's Church, At. George's. . He was 20 years old when he lost his leg after his ship President engaged the British warships above in the 1815 war between Britain and the US. He was brought to St. George's for treatment and cared for in Stennet's Hotel where the Bank of Butterfield now sits in the Town Square. However, he succumbed to his injuries. But he was never forgotten. Every February 22, when the US Marine Corp was stationed on the US base in St. George's, a small parade would be held to honour the Midshipman who gave his life in the last military action on the seas between the US and England. The ceremony ceased when the base withdrew in 1995. However, the Friends of St. Peter's Foundation, which works to preserve and increase interest in the church in St. George, reintroduced the ceremony in 2006. Midshipman R B Randolph, also from the President, later escaped the islands for NY.

• 1815. January 23.  The town of Hamilton became the capital of Bermuda. It replaced the historic Town of St. George in the east end of Bermuda, over the huge objection of its townsfolk and those of the Eastern Parishes. Richard Darrell was then Mayor. He remained as such from 1807 to 1848 (41 years).
• 1815. April 12, 1815. Death, in St. George's, of Pilot James Darrell, who piloted his name to fame in July, 1814.
• 1815.  April 2. HMS Hebrus, frigate, sailed from Bermuda and  took the body of Sir Peter Parker, commander of HMS Menelaus to England.
• 1816. With the Royal Navy station in Bermuda in course of construction at Ireland Island, the Bermuda Government deemed it appropriate for the colony to offer a permanent residence for the senior Royal Navy officer based in Bermuda and purchased the Dunscombe estate at St. John's Hill in Pembroke Parish, overlooking the sea. It cost the government £3,000 and was made over as a gift to the Crown. (John Dunscombe, who sold the property, became a prominent citizen of Newfoundland and eventually lieutenant governor of that colony. When the foundation was laid of Newfoundland's capital city, St. John's, it was named after his old Bermuda home).
• 1816-18. Colonel James Robertson Arnold of the British Army, the son of Benedict Arnold by his second marriage to the Philadelphia-based Loyalist, was stationed in Bermuda, in his 35th to 37th year, as the second recorded Royal Engineer to come here. (The first came in the 1790s and devised the construction, or reconstruction, of the forts on the islands in St. George's and Castle harbors). Colonel Arnold devised the early massive building and engineering program for HM Dockyard, that led to Bermuda being referred to later as the "Gibraltar of the West." His obvious accomplishments, skills and obvious leadership qualities in Bermuda were such that he was marked for prompt promotion and increased military responsibilities.
• 1817. Sessions House in Bermuda was constructed. On Church, Court and Parliament Streets. It was initially a a four-square Georgian structure, two years after Hamilton, instead of St. George's, became the capital. It was deliberately placed then atop the highest ground in the city, not far  from the Anglican Cathedral. To coincide with the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, it was embellished substantially on its southern ceremonial front, complete with towering arches, very likely by the Scottish architect William Hay who designed the Anglican Cathedral not far away on Church Street. Bermuda's Westminster style Parliament, referred to locally as the House of Assembly, meets here, upstairs, while the Supreme Court meets on the ground floor.

Bermuda's House of Assembly, Sessions House, built 1817

• 1818. The Royal Navy Dockyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was moved to Bermuda.  Halifax suffered a further economic malaise for a few years, that had started when peace was declared in 1815 between the USA and Britain.
• 1818. Construction of the RN Hospital near the Dockyard began, in the same pre-fabricated manner as the Commissioner's House. In addition to cast iron structural features, such as veranda columns, floor joists, and possibly cast and wrought iron roof trusses, some of the stonework for the building was the hard local limestone. During World War 2, it treated and often saved the lives of many brought in from torpedoed ships.  Royal Navy left in 1950s. That great building ended its life as an egg farm, then finally was deliberately burnt to the ground by the Fire Department in November 1972. Part of it became the site for Lefroy House, for senior citizens. 
• 1818. After serving in Bermuda since 1812, William R. Higginbottam - sometimes spelt Higinbottam - initially as US Consular Agent, was appointed Consul from 1818 to 1832. He opened an office in St. George's in August 1818. Earlier as US Agent for Commerce and Seaman appointed by President James Monroe, Higginbotham dealt with American shipping and trade issues. But he faced many diplomatic hurdles because Bermuda's English Governor did not officially recognize him.

• 1819. The British Government in London formally asked all territories of the British Empire including Bermuda to prepare slave registers and submit them to London. This was because although  the slave trade had been abolished in 1811 throughout the British Empire, there had not been much compliance.

1820-1830

• 1820. George IV ascended the throne in London.
• 1821. The first slave register from Bermuda was prepared and sent to London, in compliance with the British Government in London order of 1819. 
• 1822. Following its purchase in 1816, the St. John's Hill in Pembroke Parish property, bought by the government for £3,000 and made over as a gift to the Crown, was renamed Admiralty House and its location was changed from St. John's Hill to Clarence Hill, in honor of His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. (It is now St. John's Hill again). A side street was named Clarence Avenue.
• 1822. On the northern side of Fort Victoria, the Ravelin Tower gun emplacement was constructed.
• 1822. When West Indian ports were reopened to American shipping, Bermuda's trade suffered and the population dropped to 10,000 although the colony continued to maintain its lucrative trade in salt.
• 1823. Nathaniel T. Butterfield, later the founder of Butterfield's Bank, got married.
• 1823-1828. The Martello Tower at Ferry Reach was built by the British Army then in Bermuda. It is the Island's only egg-shaped fort and with walls as thick as nine to 11-feet, the fort remained largely resistant to cannon fire. Restored in 2008, including bringing in an "18-pounder" cannon from Fort St. Catherine and creating a cannon mound on top of the building so it would look as it did in the 19th Century. The fort is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Friday in the summer and in the winter by appointment only, by calling the Parks Department. This is the only one in Bermuda ever built as part of the unique system of British military fortifications that once was so prominent along the English coast from Kent to Sussex and spawned their own name in British history. Two others were planned but never built as British Army fortifications protecting the old Royal Naval Dockyard. This one was built after the one on the island of Barbuda in the Caribbean, after those in England.

• 1823. Commissioner's House began at the Royal Dockyard, Bermuda (and took 5 years to build). Finished in 1828, it epitomized British imperial style, power and engineering might in the 19th century. An experimental building, it was the first British domestic project to use cast iron to support its floors and roof. Taxpayers in Britain were irate at its cost.
• 1824. February 4. Arrival in Bermuda from England of the first ship, the Antelope, of 300 white convicts with guards, as a new labor force. The convicts were first used in the initial construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard. They were sent in part because the previous work force of Bermudians, mostly slaves and free men of color who were skilled tradesmen and laborers, worked so slowly yet expensively. They were housed in very poor conditions, on hulks, old or partly dismantled ships. Items they carved were used to barter for fresh fruit, tobacco and rum. Many items were thrown or swept overboard when the carver died. (Convict labor continued to be used until 1863, after all slaves were freed).
• 1825. Blacks of Bermuda were put on a regular education roster, which some alleged had a religious bias because it was the Society for the Conversion of the Negroes.
• 1825. Construction began at Dockyard (and lasted until 1843) of the immense Casemates Barracks for the Royal Marine Light Infantry who manned the guns and units defending the Dockyard, The barracks remained in use as a soldiers and officers sleeping and working quarters for over a century.

• 1826. When Col. Edward Fanshawe, Royal Engineers, British Army, wrote his Report on the Defences of Bermuda, it included the comment:  "I also think that the occupation of the Eastern Hill by a work under the command of Retreat Hill with a heavy Sea Battery would materially strengthen that side of St. George's, and cooperate in the defence of the Narrows."

• 1827. A second Bermuda slave register was prepared and sent to London in compliance with the 1819 directive of the British Government in London.

• 1827. November 10. Death in Warminster, USA of Bermuda-born-and-reared lawyer, trader, inventor, scholar, professor, judge, essayist, poet, gardener, stargazer St. George Tucker, born near Port Royal, Bermuda, in 1752, the son of Colonel Henry Tucker, a trader and owner of the Grove plantation. His christening name, St. George, had been in the family since about 1600, when Frances St. George married George Tucker of Kent, England. Tucker sailed for Virginia at age 19 to pursue an education in the law. He enrolled at the College of William and Mary in 1772 and read under George Wythe, who had instructed Thomas Jefferson. Wythe examined and approved Tucker for the bar on April 4, 1774. Virginia's courts closed as the Revolution began, and Tucker could not pursue his practice. He returned to Bermuda in June 1775, two months after the raid on Williamsburg's Magazine. Before he departed, he told Peyton Randolph and Jefferson of the existence of a similar magazine in Bermuda that might be a target for rebel retaliation. The Continental Congress had banned trade with colonies that remained loyal to Britain, and Tucker's father, the colonel, traveled to Philadelphia in July to argue for Bermuda's exemption. He received it by negotiating with Benjamin Franklin the capture of the powder his son had mentioned earlier. Two American vessels carried away 100 barrels from the Royal Powder Magazine in Bermuda the night of August 14, 1775. St. George Tucker hinted that he helped roll some of the barrels to the ships. Tucker returned to Virginia on January 3, 1777, landing at Yorktown aboard the Dispatch (a ship purchased for him and his associates by his father, the colonel) with a cargo of smuggled salt. Tucker became his father's Williamsburg agent and made himself financially comfortable in a deal that dispatched indigo valued at £10,000 in four ships from Charleston, South Carolina, to the West Indies to trade for arms. He also fell in love with a woman he met at Bruton Parish Church. The object of his heart was Frances "Fanny" Bland Randolph, 25, the widow of John Randolph and the mother of three. They married on September 23, 1778, and moved to the Randolph plantation Matoax near Petersburg. When the British entered Hampton Roads in 1779, Tucker joined the militia as a major. He later fought at Guilford Courthouse, where he sustained a minor wound; chasing a runaway soldier, he ran into the man's bayonet. Fluent in French, he served as Governor Thomas Nelson's liaison with the French army at the Battle of Yorktown. His letters and diary from those days are rich in historical detail, and his description of General George Washington's arrival in Williamsburg before the battle is widely quoted. After the war, Tucker practiced law in the Petersburg area until 1788 when Fanny died shortly after bearing their sixth child. That year he accepted appointments as the professor of law and police at the College of William and Mary, and as judge of the Virginia General Court at Richmond. He succeeded George Wythe at the school and, as was true of Wythe before him, Tucker's tenure was marred by disputes with the administration over instructional methods. Tucker favored lectures, and he preferred to teach in his home (the St. George Tucker House on Market Square, Williamsburg), where his law library was handy. He usually had about a dozen pupils. One of them, William Taylor Barry, wrote: "He is a Man of genuine Cleverness and of the most exalted talents." Tucker married again in 1791, this time to Mrs. Lelia Skipwith Carter, 24, a widow with two children. She bore him three more, all of whom died early. In 1796, Tucker wrote and published the pamphlet "A Dissertation on Slavery: With A Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It in the State of Virginia." Cogently argued, it nevertheless had little effect. During these years he also edited Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" to put them in an American context and make them more useful to students. It was published in Philadelphia in 1803 and earned Tucker the title the "American Blackstone." Twentieth-century legal historian Lawrence Friedman said Tucker was "one of the most eminent of Virginia lawyers." But he was best remembered in Williamsburg for writing a spirited defense of the city and its inhabitants. It was a reply to a critical passage in a geography and tour book published by the straight laced Reverend Jedediah Morse. Morse was a progenitor of Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraphic code – a subject that would have excited Tucker. In 1794, he was enthusiastic over the new French "Telegraphe," a semi mechanical semaphore signaling system. He had a colleague set up part of the apparatus at the Capitol to signal him at the college on the other end of Duke of Gloucester Street. Tucker is credited with the construction of Williamsburg's first bathroom; he converted his backyard dairy house and installed in it a copper bathtub into which heated water was piped. The tub had a drain. He also invented an "earth closet" for his home that removed "night soil" through the wall and designed a water pump driven by a steam engine. An amateur astronomer, and an avid gardener, he was a charter member and officer of "a Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge" in Williamsburg. Continuing disputes over his teaching methods led to Tucker's departure from the college of William and Mary in 1804, when he was appointed to the Virginia Court of Appeals in Richmond. He had built a law office modeled after a Grecian temple there in 1803, but the change of locale and his appointment were delayed by scandal. Gambler Robert Bailey of Staunton accused Tucker of soliciting a 100-guinea bribe for the acquittal of a current gaming charge. Tucker vigorously defended himself against the accusation, even traveling to Staunton to gather depositions about Bailey's character, thereby convincing the public of his innocence. At the new capital he lodged in the Swan Tavern, a legendary inn. Though he wrote memorable poetry, he was also given to humorous doggerel, and he wrote these lines:

  "There was a sorry judge who lived at the Swan by himself.
  He got but little honor, and he got but little pelf [i.e. wealth],
  He drudged and judged from morn to night, no ass drudged more than he,
  And the more he drudged, and the more he judged, the sorrier judge was he."

  In 1813, St. George Tucker became United States District Court judge at Richmond, serving until 1825. By then two of his sons were on the way to becoming prominent judges themselves. Tucker died at the home of his stepdaughter Mary Cabell in Warminster. He was 75 years old.

• 1828. The Royal Gazette newspaper of Bermuda was issued for the first time.
• 1828. A survey showed the sugar-loaf hill of Maria Hill Fort as the first fort of the Ireland Island, 19 years after the founding of the Dockyard on the shores of Grassy Bay in 1809. This small redoubt predates the establishment of the Dockyard and thus lays claim to being its first, if utterly obsolete, fort. Maria Hill Fort was not among the great works of the Royal Engineers, who left such an enormous legacy of their trades at Bermuda, but was constructed by the citizens of the west end of Bermuda. It enjoyed one of the best panoramic views in the western parishes. It was a small redoubt in the shape of a diamond, with a commanding position in the middle of Ireland Island South.
• 1828-1830. The diary of Surgeon Brown, Royal Navy, on board HMS Tyne at the Royal Navy Dockyard Bermuda, then being built by convicts sent from the UK and housed on prison hulks, read: "The Convicts in cutting through a portion of the rock near the fortifications discovered a very large cave, which I visited this forenoon. It was in the shallowest part 16 feet deep of water and had an evident ebb & flow communicating with the sea by some subterraneous passage. Into this they had lowered a boat & were in search of curiosities. One large piece while they were hammering separated, and felt into the boat, which sent them all floundering into the water. The roof of the cave is covered with stalactites some nearly a yard in length. It will require to be filled up ere they proceed with the works."
• 1829. Archdeacon Spencer opened a free day school in Paget, Bermuda, for the education of blacks. It was followed by the opening of three other day schools for blacks, as well as several Sunday schools. 
• 1829. Devonshire College opened for white students, with accommodations for 100 students drawn from Warwick, Pembroke and Devonshire Parishes, and was run on a £600 trust fund. (The site is now part of St. Brendan’s Hospital).
• 1829. A distinctly eccentric man arrived in Bermuda. His name was William Nisbett, an Anglican Church official who had been based in Nova Scotia, as a member of The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He had been one of those involved in the Society's Madras System schools for Africans in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. He had become disillusioned with his Negro charges in Nova Scotia and had claimed that they were universally superstitious, mad, ridiculous and given to monstrous absurdities in the place of religion. He dammed the Negro Refugees in Canada - those who had fled to Canada from slavery in the USA - for being indolent to an extreme, insensible to kindness, dishonest and untrue and in a deplorable state of moral degradation. In total exasperation, Nisbett quit his work with them, and arrived in Bermuda for what he considered a less fruitless task in a warmer climate where Negroes were considered to be closer to God. He began work in Bermuda with the Society for the Conversion of the Negroes. He began the Nisbett family still in Bermuda today, none of whom are his complexion.
• 1829. The 118-ton Bermuda-built cedar privateer, completed in 1825, also with the name Pickle in honor of the vessel of 1803, took part in a severe Royal Navy action of the northeast coast of Cuba that resulted in the capture of a Spanish slave-trading ship, the Boladora and the release of 330 slaves aboard.
• 1829. April (until May 1833) Lieutenant Nelsen, Royal Engineers (RE), was in Bermuda and wrote an extensive Paper XI in Vol. 4 of the RE series entitled "Engineer Details" on the comparative values of convict and other labor. He referred to Ireland Island  and St Georges. There is some narrative, details of rations, pay, convict shops, comparison of "task work" and "piece work."  The purpose of the paper was to compare production rates between various types of labor, civilian and convict directed by officers of the RE and under day-to-day superintendence of the NCOs -
  the Royal Sappers and Miners. Experiments on strength of mortar mixes etc. are also described as well as quarrying and trimming of dimension
  stone for quoins of fort walls etc.
  

1830-1837

• On the death of George IV, King William IV (see right) ascended the throne.
• 1830. A third Bermuda slave register was sent to London, in compliance with the British Government directive of 1819.
• 1830s. Construction of HM Dockyard in Bermuda was expedited. It included of the most important historic buildings of the Dockyard, the oldest standing building. Casemate Barracks was so named for it was a hostel for the men of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, who were responsible for the defence of the Dockyard, and because its roof, being vaulted in brick and concrete some eight feet thick, was built to make it bomb-proof against the incoming cannon balls and mortar shot of the day. Casemate Barracks had two floors with accommodation for 120 officers and men, along with canteens, messes and offices. The well that forms the roof has unparalleled views of the Dockyard to the northeast and the building, given its construction, could have been converted into a fort. The walls are several feet thick and being made of the local limestone needed no plastering to make them waterproof. A veranda was to be had on three sides of the building at the level of the ground floor. On either side of the Barracks was an ordnance yard and there are still found the gunpowder storage buildings, or magazines. The one to the southeast later became the bakery of the Dockyard and saw its last use as the visitors' entry block into Casemates, the prison of late decades (now replaced by the Westgate Correctional Facility).
• 1832. In June, a hurricane struck Bermuda and did great damage.
• 1832. July 25. US Consul William R. Higginbotham died at his post in St. George's.
• 1833. Samuel Cunard operated a shipping service between Halifax and Bermuda from this year to 1886.
• 1833. Population of Bermuda was  9,125 (62,400 in 2001). Of the 1833 population, 4297 were white, 3612 were slaves and 1,286 were free blacks.
• 1834. August 1. Slavery was formally abolished in Bermuda, with the enactment of the Emancipation of Slavery Act amid great rejoicing from the black population. It had been abolished years earlier in the United Kingdom but overseas landowners and slave owners were so slow and hugely reluctant in complying with the Act that British legislation from London applying to all Britain's colonies and dominions was deemed to be both necessary and enforceable by law. All former slaves and "freed black" men and women, finally emancipated, were given the same rights and privileges enjoyed by the other inhabitants of the colony. All Bermuda slave registers had been mandated by the British Government in London and were required from that date on to be stored appropriately in British Government-approved places and referred to when necessary. But the new-found freedoms did then not apply to voting. An Act to fix the qualifications for jurors, voters, and the electors and candidates for certain offices and positions of trust was introduced. The voting qualification was raised from a property value of £40 to £100, and to run as a member of the House, from £200 to £400. The population was given as 8,818 - 4259 white and 4559 black. There were fewer people in Bermuda than a year earlier.
• 1834. First steam boat arrived in Bermuda.
• 1834. February 10. Three men were returning to St. George's from the Dockyard, namely Lieut. Orlebar, Royal Engineers, Mr. Scott of the Ordnance Department and Mr. Sands, Clerk of Works. Just as the party left the open sea at Murray's Anchorage and gained access to the waters of Ferry Reach, their boat was upended by a squall and only Mr. Sands survived. The shouts of distress were heard by Mr. John Harford Pearman, who put to sea in his boat without regard to his own safety and rescued Mr. Sands and recovered the bodies of the others, one of who was let a lot of blood, but to no avail in his return to life. A soldier, William Lyall, 71st Regiment, swam out to the capsized boat to assist in the rescue, for which he was ultimately given an engraved "Patent Silver Lever Watch. Mr. Pearman declined to receive an award for his heroism. For this extraordinary bravery, Mr. Pearman was presented by his Excellency the Governor Sir S. R. Chapman, CB, KCH and the Officers of the British Army Garrison in Bermuda with a ceremonial tea pot, sugar basin and milk jug.
• 1834. In the year of Emancipation for Bermuda, this traditional Bermuda-rigged sloop was built in Bermuda of Bermuda cedar partially by slaves freed or about to be freed. She was a Ballyhoo schooner, believed to have been a significant local evolution of the Royal Navy's "Shamrock" class of boats.

Bermuda schooner 1834

• 1835. Fort Victoria in St. George's Parish was completed. It had a water well 124 feet deep, in use until World War 2. 
• 1835. A law was passed in Bermuda to encourage the education of poor white children.
• 1835. February 11. Slave ship the brigantine Enterprise, traveling from Jamestown and Alexandria, VA to Charleston, SC, got blown off course by a hurricane and landed at Bermuda for provisions after 21 days at sea. Only when local customs officials inspected the particularly smelly ship did they discover that she was a slave-ship, with a cargo of 78 enslaved people chained in appalling unsanitary and inhumane conditions, including children not yet six years old. The ship's master was Elliot Smith. He carried with him a manifest that made no mention of slaves but instead listed the ship's cargo as tobacco, bricks and feed. But 78 slaves were discovered on board, some men but mostly women, children and babies. Captain Smith was informed by customs officials that because Emancipation had occured a year earlier, the ship's cargo was illegal under Bermuda law and the slaves were entitled to their freedom. All foreign nations having been warned by British authorities that any slavers found in Bermuda waters would be subject to arrest and seizure. Their cargoes were liable to forfeiture. The local authorities promptly ordered the captain to discharge his human cargo ashore and a gunboat was summoned from HM Dockyard to back up the order. Enterprise crew members were put under a Royal Navy armed guard. The slaves would be granted their freedom, with absolutely no compensation payable to ships' owners and cargo investors. When Smith tried to flee in defiance, the island's Friendly Societies, in particular the Young Men's Friendly Lodge, intervened. They were organizations that provided support to and looked after the welfare of the black community in the period after Emancipation. They appealed to the court and obtained a writ of habeas corpus from the Chief Justice to have the slaves freed. They were brought ashore and taken to court. It was then discovered that many of them had been kidnapped by raiders from plantation houses in the free state of Washington-Maryland. The court asked them if they wanted to remain as slaves or stay in Bermuda as free men and women and children. As reported by The Royal Gazette newspaper, the slaves landed at Barr’s Bay Park in Pembroke near Hamilton and were welcomed by an immense crowd. They appeared before the Chief Justice in a courtroom overcrowded by concerned locals, to declare whether they wanted to continue to Charleston to be sold, or to take up residence in Bermuda. Bermuda became the new home to all but one women and her five children of the freed slaves of the Enterprise. Their descendants live in Bermuda today. Shelter for them was provided by the Worshipful William M. Cox in one of his storerooms in Hamilton, while the Friendly Society helped them to integrate into the Bermuda community. A spontaneous collection was arranged by the watching Bermudians, doled out to each proportionately, to assist them in their first taste of freedom.
• 1836. The Lane School, on East Broadway, near Hamilton, was built as the first educational facility for black children after emancipation. The hopes, dreams, prayers and aspirations of generations of slaves for over 200 years went into the building of its walls. Once built, it continued to offer not only an education for ex-slaves, but also spiritual guidance in its role as a chapel at weekends, a place of socialization and community, and a meeting place for the Young Men's Friendly Society (famous for their role in saving the slaves on the brigantine Enterprise). It was a place where black Bermudians could finally have the freedom to meet, talk, socialize and discuss their future, to make a better life for themselves, in conjunction with  the friendly societies in sharing, educating, supporting and offering comfort to the black community. The role of the latter was extraordinary. Most importantly they provided socio-economic direction to the black community. Until then, Bermuda's history was written only by whites and naturally reflected their interests, concerns and philosophy. Historically black society and achievements were considered irrelevant and of no importance. Very little attention was paid to their lives and experiences, nor the many contributions made by enslaved and free blacks.

1837-1899

• 1837. On the death of King William IV, Queen Victoria (see right) ascended the throne.
• 1837. In Bermuda's first post-Abolition of Slavery General Election, James Athill, a successful ship builder from St. George's, born in Antigua in 1788 and who came to Bermuda when he was about 19 years old, cast his vote and was also elected a Church Warden of St. Peter's Church.
• 1837. Fort Albert, on Retreat Hill, was begun and completed in 1840. Near the Town of St. George. 
• 1837. Governor John Henry Lefroy persuaded the Bermuda Legislature to vote a sum of money for the drainage and improvement of the constantly flooding Pembroke Marsh. From this came the Pembroke Canal.
• 1837. Lieut. Richard Nelson, Royal Engineers, wrote his paper "On the geology of the Bermudas", Trans. Geological Society, V.1.
• 1838. January 8. Sinking off Bermuda of the French warship L'Herminie, launched in 1824 but not completed until some four years later. For a naval warship of her day, she was huge, 300 feet long and carrying 60 cannons. Earlier, in 1837 she was ordered to Mexican waters to enforce France's claims during the revolution. But, upon arrival in Havana, Cuba, on August 3, 1837, 133 members of her crew came down with yellow fever. Figuring her crew would be useless in battle, France's high command recalled her back to France. Under the command of Commodore Bazoche, L'Herminie left Havana for home on December 3, 1837. During her Atlantic crossing she encountered increasingly heavy seas. The captain decided to take shelter in Bermuda. By the time land was visible, however, the big ship had inadvertently wandered well inside a treacherous stretch of the Bermuda's northwestern facing barrier reef. Shortly after, L'Herminie got grounded on the reef. Before the ship started to break up, a group of local boats from Ely's Harbour came to her assistance. Given the sea conditions, it is amazing that all 495 members of L'Herminie's crew were safely evacuated from the doomed ship. The following day, several of the ship's stores were successfully salvaged. Today L'Herminie rests in 35 feet of water four miles west of Ireland Island. Since her wooden hull has been down for 160 years, little remains of her other than 58 of her original 60 cannons.  The wreckage is scattered across white sand in the middle of the reef. Two cannons lay atop one another forming a cross. Surrounding the wreckage are the very coral heads that ripped the hull to pieces. ther than the cannons, divers can also see one of L'Herminie's two massive anchors propped up against a large coral head, as well as several of her square shaped, iron holding tanks, now half eaten by the sea. They once held the ship's supply of drinking water. Buried in the sand are some of the ship's timbers and cannon balls, as well as a collection of small artifacts such as broken glass, bottles and pottery.
• 1838. Government education grants of approximately £300 were given to all elementary schools, one of which at least existed in each parish.
• 1839. Newfoundland and Bermuda were formed into a separate Diocese, and the Rev. Aubrey S. Spencer, who came out as a missionary to Newfoundland in 1819, but who was Archdeacon of Bermuda at the time of the foundation of the new see, was consecrated its first bishop. "At my consecration," says Bishop Spencer, "to the see of Newfoundland, I found only eight clergymen of the Church of England in the whole colony; the Church itself in a most disorganized and dispirited condition; the schools languishing, many of them broken up. The clergy of Newfoundland are maintained mainly by the noble Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands; but the people are called on by the Bishop to provide a house and a small stipend, according to their respective means, for their several missionaries." The Bishop set himself at once to establish a Theological Institution for training young men for [85/86] the ministry. He also divided his Diocese into three Rural Deaneries Avelon, Trinity, and Bermuda. In his letter to the S. P. G., 1841, he says--"In the course of my visitation during the present year, I have travelled by land and by water 1188 miles, visited thirty-five stations, confirmed 1136 persons, consecrated six churches, organized or assisted in the building of twenty-one new churches, ordained two priests and eight deacons, and founded or restored more than twenty day schools or Sunday schools."
• 1839. Governor Sir William Reid arrived in Bermuda (and stayed until 1846). He was the author of "The Law of Storms, based on his study of the aftermath of the Barbados hurricane of 1831 which killed 1,477 people there. For that first scientific study of hurricanes, Reid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, the oldest learned society still in existence. One of his first duties, which he took very personally, was to begin the Public Library as we know it today, now the Bermuda National Library. Also, Governor Reid caused the revitalization of agriculture, as a direct result of which the first agricultural exhibition (now an annual tradition) was held that year. As a further tribute to him, Reid Street in Hamilton became the new name of the through way.
• 1839. September 17. A hurricane (Reid's hurricane, after the Governor and author of that name) struck Bermuda and did great damage.  Governor Sir William Reid was able to see his recently published book on storms come alive.
• 1840. Lieut. Richard Nelson, Royal Engineers, reported that "the Bermuda Rock is a stratified and calcareous sandstone, of all degrees of hardness and density, ranging from a loose sandstone to a compact limestone; the sorts used in building varying between the softest Bath stone, and a second-rate Portland. The distribution of these varieties is most irregular: at St. George's, and generally throughout the islands, the former abound; but at Ireland Island, the eastern half is one quarry of the latter and harder description."
• 1841. The Bermuda Legislature enacted the Currency Act, under which the local pound, previously at 40% discount to the London pound, was raised to parity.
• 1841. This elegant and important building was completed. It was remodeled in 1938 as the Colonial Secretariat, and after 1968 became the office of the Premier of Bermuda, heading the Bermuda Government. It also houses the Senate of Bermuda - which meets here every Wednesday in the 8 months or so the House of Assembly is in session at Sessions House).
• 1841. 28 April. The Bermuda Legislature passed an "Act for the Safe Custody of Insane Persons charged with Offences. " It was the first local legislation to deal specifically with persons with mental problems. Persons charged, if found to be insane, were kept in custody until they could be sent to an asylum.
• 1841. After being moored at the wharf behind the Custom House in New London, Connecticut, for a year and a half, La Amistad was auctioned off by the U.S. Marshall in October 1840. Captain George Howland, of Newport, Rhode Island, purchased the vessel and then had to get an Act of Congress passed so that he could register her. He renamed her Ion and, in late 1841, sailed her to Bermuda and Saint Thomas with a typical New England cargo of onions, apples, live poultry, and cheese.
• 1841. Such was the American concern of the new British military works at Bermuda and the British West Indies islands that Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State, sent a secret agent to assess the situation. His name was Albert Fitz, who immediately was made aware that Bermudians were “particularly jealous and distrustful of American visitors, and also of Frenchmen, whom they consider our probable allies.” Nonetheless, Albert, playing the tourist, was able to get about and look at the fortifications then erecting, with the possible exception of the dockyard at Ireland Island, which was out of bounds to anyone “disconnected” with that naval establishment. Once back at his hotel, he made sketches of the forts and these have survived in the National Archives at Washington. Agent Fitz noted that there were no fortifications between the dockyard and the Martello Tower at Ferry Reach and thus the Americans could land their forces on the South Shore beaches and march east to attack St. George’s and west to assault the dockyard. He notes the presence of signal stations at Ireland Island, Gibbs Hill, Government House and Fort George and comments on the access to Bermuda’s harbors by channels through the reefs. Plus, Timlin’s Narrows by Hinson’s Island had recently been blasted to allow ships with a draught of 14 feet to enter Hamilton Harbour. None of the great forts of St. George’s Parish were completed by Fitz’s visit in January 1842, with the exception perhaps of Fort St. Catherine. From gossip, he surmised that the British Government was thinking of buying Prospect Hill in Devonshire Parish for a great military camp, as it had “an uninterrupted view of the sea upon every side”. From Bermuda, Secret Agent Fitz extended his “holiday” to the Bahamas, Jamaica and Barbados, the last he ranked as first in strength in the British West Indies. The locals made him aware that the climate in the Caribbean was deadly to the European soldier, so that it was intended “to raise two more Regiments at Sierra Leone”, that is, African soldiers to man the West Indies stations for the British. Such regiments were already deployed at St. Helena, the west coast of Africa, British Guiana, the West Indies and British Honduras. However, all the forts in the West Indies were fast going to ruin and only at Bermuda were new works being constructed. The strategy in the Caribbean would be to reply on the guns of the ships of the Royal Navy, rather than the shore batteries. Fitz painted the contrast, for while he was at Bermuda, the Fleet, comprising seven ships-of-the-line, was at anchor at Grassy Bay off the dockyard. These vessels of war mounted almost 300 cannons, three times the number in the Bermuda forts of the day. Throughout his visits Fitz stated that “great caution and assiduity have been requisite. I have confidence in asserting, that in no instance, has a suspicion been excited of the real purpose of my tour, and that the whole transaction remains a profound secret.” And so it did until Professor Anthony Brescia published Fitz’s report in 1994 in the Journal of the Bermuda Maritime Museum.
• 1842. Another American spy was sent to Bermuda by US Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Captain Minor Knowlton was no stranger to Bermuda when he was sent to look at its defences by General J.G.Totten, Chief Engineer, US Army. He came originally for his health, as he suffered from epilepsy. This did not deter him from a spying mission to Canada, where he examined Fort York at Toronto two years prior. His policy in Bermuda was "to form few acquaintances and to avoid entertainments altogether." He gave the impression that his walkabouts, even up to the fortifications, were to improve his health. Customs officers, however, must have wondered why his luggage on departure contained "two blocks of shell limestone, each a little more than one foot cube, which I brought from Bermuda as specimens of the type of stone used in the fortifications of those islands. It is a soft kind of shell sandstone which may be advantageously shattered by hollow shot." Upon his return in June 1849 to New York after three months in Bermuda, Knowlton wrote to Totten promising a full report, of which there is no trace. What has survived is an original plan of the Dockyard by George Taylor, Survey of Buildings to the Navy Board in London, which Knowlton must have obtained by paying someone from the dockyard.
• 1842. March  1. The first steamship to enter Bermudian waters anchored at Five Fathom Hole. She was the Royal Mail Steam Packet Thames, inaugurating what would become a regular call on her trips between the West Indies and England. Her route originated at Nassau in The Bahamas and the stop at Bermuda afforded an opportunity to both pick up and deliver mail in transit to and from the English port of Southampton.
• 1842. At Queen Street, at the junction with Reid Street, William B. Perot, nineteenth century first Postmaster of the city and Assemblyman of French Huguenot extraction, established his little post office. Six years later, in 1848, he hand printed Bermuda's first postage stamp from this little post office and produced the first British Empire "colonial" stamp. One was sold in November, 1985, for $92,000. A photograph of the famous stamp is on display inside. Perot built his home adjacent, in the building now housing the Bermuda Historical Society, next to the Bermuda National Library. He ran this little post office on the edge of his estate until 1862 when he retired. It was restored by the Bermuda Government as a branch post office of the General Post Office in 1959, the year of the 350th anniversary of the settlement of Bermuda by the British. 
• 1842. A local savings bank was established under the auspices of the Bermuda Government (later the Post Office, until it was sold to the Bank of Butterfield in the 1970s).
• 1842. An Act to encourage emigrants to Bermuda from the United Kingdom was passed. It was an effort to increase the white population.
• 1843. What is now the Cabinet Building in Bermuda was constructed.
• Halifax, Nova Scotia, began to play a key role in the trade of Bermuda and the world. Entrepreneurs built their Bluenose schooners to ship forests of timber, coal, fish, even ice. Halifax was also the principal supplier to Bermuda of hardware, riggings, canvas, financer, insurance and more. 
• 1844. July 1. The foundation stone was laid and building began of Bermuda's original Anglican cathedral. The Right Reverend Edward Field, consecrated Bishop of the Newfoundland diocese which included Bermuda, had approached a Scottish architect working in Newfoundland at that time with designs for a Bermuda cathedral. William Hay, who also later designed the “Unfinished Church” in St. George’s, executed James Cranston’s original designs - with a few modifications. (The church, known as the First Trinity, was completed in 1883).
• 1844. November 1. A private yacht club, the Bermuda Yacht Club, was established by a party of thirty gentlemen, mostly officers in the British Army, in the 20th Regiment then stationed in Bermuda. It became the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.
• 1844. The Royal Dockyard School opened in Bermuda to provide technical education to apprentices and the general education of Admiralty employees. Attendance was compulsory and no distinction was made in race or color.
• 1844. March 28. Citizens of Hamilton resolved at a public meeting that the Parish Church of Pembroke, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, was considered not up to par by them or for the wants of the Church. A bigger and better church, a Cathedral, was called for. It was agreed to erect a major new edifice on Third (later Church) Street. A cornerstone was laid "opposite the Presbyterian Kirk, now occupied by Vallis's Saw Mill on July 1 that year. But that site proved unsuitable and so a new one was obtained where the Cathedral presides over the town today. Work began shortly thereafter and in due course the tower was roofed with a "dwarf finish", under a design by James Cranston, architect at Oxford. Difficulties ensued, despite obtaining the services of George Grove who had been engaged on the building of Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, and the famous architect William Hay of Edinburgh was brought in to assist. In his report Hay noted: "It is difficult in a Colony like this to form an estimate that can be regarded as anything beyond a mere approximation to the actual cost, where the labour is the chief expense and the habits of the workmen so variable and unsettled."
• 1845. The Bermuda Cricket Club was founded in St. George's and played its first game against the garrison. 
• 1845. Construction began, on what is now Church Street, Hamilton, of the first Trinity Church. It was a compact, stubby building, compared to its successor. It commenced at the east, or chancel end, and progressed very slowly to the west.
• 1845.  At the invitation of the Bermuda Yacht Club's Commodore, Lord Mark Kerr, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, the first Duke of Edinburgh, consented to become Patron of the Club and a year later gave permission for the Bermuda Yacht Club to become the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. (There are now approximately 850 resident and non-resident members).
• 1846. Prince Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria and the Royal Patron of the club, formally gave his consent to the new title of the Bermuda Yacht Club as the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.
• 1846. May 1. Gibbs Hill Lighthouse was put into service for the first time, to reduce the number of shipwrecks near the island. Its flashing beacon was lit for the first time and was visible up to 40 miles away.
• 1846. A further Act was passed to establish a hospital for the reception of "insane paupers." It enabled the Governor, Lieutenant Colonel William Reid, to buy land in a central parish for an asylum. Seven acres of land on the North Shore were  acquired for 400 pounds sterling and two cottages were built for 600 pounds sterling. The Governor had to approve admissions and discharges to the asylum and in which categories incoming people were, as a lunatic or insane person or idiot or pauper or person of unsound mind.
• 1847. The immense Indian rubber tree (still there) was planted in the grounds of the Georgian style house at Par-la-Ville by Hamilton merchant William Perot.
• 1847 to 1851 - 1st and 2nd Battalions, 42nd Regiment (Royal Highlanders), then the Black Watch.  The men wore dark tartan to distinguish them from Guardsmen or Red Soldiers - hence the name Black Watch. At one time (1848) Casemates at Ireland Island in Bermuda was their barracks. They were then guarding the convicts building the Dockyard. One of the officers was Captain G. W. MacQuarie, who lived in St. George's at what was then Rendell House, later the Redan Hotel, now Clyde's Cafe. It is believed one of the soldiers was Richard Brackey, married, whose son was born in Bermuda. Several of this unit's soldiers died in Bermuda from yellow fever and are buried at St. Peter's Church in St. George's. They include Ensign Maitland, Ensign Abercromby and beside them the grave of bandmaster Philip Goldbergh. Many members died and were buried elsewhere in Bermuda from yellow fever. In Aberfeldy, Perthshire, Scotland, a monument - still there - was erected in 1887 to mark the enrolment in 1740 of the Black Watch as the 42nd Regiment of the line. The "Watch" as it was known originally was first raised in 1667 by various Whig clan chiefs in Scotland "to be a constant guard for securing the peace in the Highlands and to watch upon the braes."  

Black Watch in Bermuda 1847 to 1851

• 1847. May. Captain Sir Michael Seymour, RN, painted HM Dockyard, Bermuda, from Commissioners' House.
• 1847. The Legislature voted £400 as an encouragement bounty for the owner of the first vessel that brought in Portuguese settlers.
• 1848. March. About two acres of land in Devonshire, Bermuda was purchased by John Williams and William Robinson for £80 from three granddaughters of William Watlington. Mr. Robinson subsequently bought the property in its entirety and set aside a small portion of it, 35 feet by 25 feet, for a school for the black children of Devonshire. It was the very beginning of what became Elliott School, Elliott # 1, Elliott # 2,  and Howard Academy.
• 1848. April. Elliott School opened, with Henry Robinson as its first teacher. It was called Elliott because it was financed by the Governor, Captain Charles Elliott. Education of both black and white children was one of his main concerns.
• 1848. Death in Bermuda of Hezekiah Frith. Born in Bermuda in 1763 he had a reputation for being the most feared privateersman on the high seas. Through plundering ship's cargo with the full consent of the British Admiralty he became the wealthiest man in Bermuda. He captured at least 40 ships during his career, won an election to the House of Assembly and lived at Spithead, on Harbour Road, Warwick.

Hezekiah Frith, from a painting originally at Spithead

• 1848. June 20. Arrival in Bermuda via the "Scourge" of British prisoner/convict John Mitchel, an Irish nationalist,  who had earlier established a newspaper in Dublin, through which he advocated a "holy war to sweep this island clear of the English name and nation. Mitchel was tried for treason-felony and was sentenced to transportation overseas for 14 years. At the Dockyard, Mitchel was to find his "appointed home", as a solitary on the hulk Dromedary for the next ten months.

• 1848. The Chapel of Ease church was established at St. David's, governed by St. Peter's in St. George's.
• 1849. Black Watch Well was dug. When the Governor of the period ordered British soldiers to seek a fresh water supply for the poor of Pembroke Parish and their cattle during a prolonged drought, the Black Watch Regiment (see under 1847) of the British Army then in Bermuda was the first to volunteer and dug so thoroughly the facility still exists today. At the site, a sign says: "This is the well of the Black Watch - so-called in memory of some soldiers from the First Battalion, 42nd Regiment, Royal Highlanders, by whom it was sunk for the relief of the poor and their cattle. " 

Black Watch Well in Bermuda

• 1849. November. The first Portuguese immigrants were imported to Bermuda from the Portuguese island of Madeira. They arrived on The "Golden Rule" owned by the Watlington family, under the command of Captain B. W. Watlington. She was purchased from Captain John Thomas Watlington's uncle Joseph Dill of the Bermuda firm Dill, Wood & Co. (She was later sold to purchase the "Koh-I-Noor").

Ship Golden Rule

• 1850. Temperance Hall, in Hamilton Parish, was built.
• 1850. Samuel Cunard began a steam packet service from Halifax to Bermuda.
• 1850. A British convict, William Wheeler, arrived in Van Diemens Land (original name for Tasmania) on the ship Neptune from Bermuda via the Cape of Good Hope. 
• 1850. The Earl of Dundonald, the Bermuda-based Admiral Cochrane of the Royal Navy, nicknamed Cochrane the Dauntless, was aghast at British Government proposals to spend £11,000 on rebuilding Admiralty House in Pembroke Parish. In pithy terms, he warned against it, citing the horrendous expenditure on Commissioner's House at the Bermuda Royal Navy Dockyard as example of wasting money. At Admiralty House, he organized a grand ball, and also displayed for the first time the unique changes he had made there, including a tunnel to the fruit and vegetable gardens and the excavated caves, accessed via a flight of stone steps into a room 14 feet by 40 feet over the sea with places for small boats to tie up.
• 1851 (some say 1952). In Hamilton, Bermuda, during the term of Mayor Henry James Tucker, the cornerstone of the original Hamilton Hotel was laid by Governor of Bermuda Captain Charles Elliott, RN. Hamilton had long experienced the urge for respectability. Efforts were made to tidy up Front Street, where the debris of trade, the smells of goods unloaded from trading ships of the day, the rotting odor of the horse's d'oeuvres carrying the goods and the filth of garrison privies blighted the waterfront, made all the more pungent on a hot and humid summer day. Originally, it was designed to  have 36 rooms. It was the first hotel in Bermuda and pioneered Bermuda's fledgling tourist industry. It would take nine years before the structure was completed, with a mere 26 rooms, at the northern end of Queen Street. There it stood for almost a century, with many elaborations. It was deemed  "necessary to the prosperity of the town, and required by its commercial and geographical position." It was extended and modernized at the beginning of the 20th century. It stood where the City Hall Car Park is now located. It was destroyed by fire in 1955.

Hamilton Hotel begin in 1851, finished in 1852

• 1852. A third American spy was sent to Bermuda by American Secretary of State Daniel Webster. The only plan record that survives of the first phase of Fort Albert is preserved in a sketch of the forts at Bermuda made that year by Lieut. Frederick Prime, the American spy. The drawing shows that the fort was constructed to the Duke of Wellington's specifications, but in addition, it had two eight-inch howitzers and two ten-inch mortars, thus incorporating the three types of artillery of the day, the cannon (for low level and long-range), the howitzer (for higher level, shorter range) and the mortar (for high level, short range, for "plunging fire" again the unprotected decks of ships). The fort was constructed of Bermuda stone, with some details in the harder limestone, probably carved at the dockyard, and had a deep ditch with reverse fires and a "Keep" for housing the officers and gunners. Lieut. Frederick Prime also reported to General Totten at Washington, DC. Having graduated first in his class at West Point in 1849, he found himself at Bermuda three years later. Prime was clearly taken by Bermuda, so much so that he returned to the subject of its invasion while on duty at Fort Alcatraz some years later. In his "Notes on an expedition against the Bermudas", he examines all of the channels, the strength of the garrison and the nature of the fortifications. Prime defines the weakest point as Castle Harbour, which could be entered easily without coming under fire from the major forts on St. George's Island, those on Castle Island being in disrepair. Having reduced the Martello Tower at Ferry Reach, the American invaders could effectively cut off St. George's and its forts from the rest of Bermuda. By taking St. George's from the rear, the subjugation of the rest of the island would soon follow, as the enemy would control the Narrows Channel, the only sea access to the dockyard and Hamilton, a blockade from the land as it were. The most remarkable piece of this espionage is Prime's sketch of the major Bermuda forts in 1852, reproduced here from the National Archives in Washington, DC. These little fort maps are remarkable for their detail, considering that the forts were "visited but once and sometimes under such circumstances that nothing would be committed to paper for many hours after". This detail is important as all of the major forts of the 1820s-1860s were heavily altered in the 1870s and some again in the 1890s.

• 1852. Alexandrina Hall in Court Street, Hamilton, became a lodge built by black Bermudians following the 1834 emancipation from slavery.
• 1853. William Dowding opened St. Paul's School for "white boys and youths of African descent" but this attempt at a college failed through prejudice against the education of the latter.
• 1850s-60s. From the United  Kingdom, the Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocese was the one that began the British Army's Military Chaplaincy in Bermuda in the 1850s and 1860s. It was because a number of Catholics soldiers serving in Bermuda were from Ireland. 
• 1853. Bermuda was struck by a terrible epidemic of yellow fever. Father Thomas Lyons, the Catholic priest quiet hero who had been administering to the spiritual needs of the convicts on the prison hulks, began to work among the sick. It did not matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, he did what he could for everyone. He and a visiting Priest, Father Phelan, went and did where and what others were afraid to go and do, lest they catch the disease. In addition to acting as priests, Lyons and Phelan acted as doctors and nurses as well. Unfortunately, the long arm of the disease finally caught Father Lyons in its iron grip, due to his selflessness. He died of yellow fever on November 13, 1853. Because there was no Catholic cemetery in Bermuda at the time, he was buried in St. John's churchyard in Pembroke Parish. He was a man who truly followed in the footsteps of the Lord. 
• 1853. Easter Lilies were introduced to Bermuda from Japan - and began a tradition.
• 1853. In July, the first fitted dinghy races were held in Bermuda - and began a tradition.
• 1854. Gibb's Hill Lighthouse in Bermuda was built.
• 1855. St Paul's School opened as a non-segregated institution for the education of Bermudians and students form the West Indians. It was modeled on Bishop Berkeley's plans but met much opposition. It closed in 1856.
• 1856. Men of the 3rd Company of the 56th bivouacked at the Oxford home in Pembroke Parish belonging to Mr. John Bluck, in hope of escaping the Yellow Fever disease, at the order of Bermudian physician Dr. Harvey. They were lucky enough to escape the disease-carrying mosquito. To record their genuine thanks, as so many of their comrades had been felled by the epidemic, the men erected at the very top of Bluck's Point a stout monument surmounted by a cannon ball. The landmark still exists.
• 1856. Maria Hill Fort was demolished, with the hill partly quarried away to supply the Dockyard with soft Bermuda stone, a quality of the rock indicated in several military reports.
• 1857. In his report titled Defence of Bermuda" Colonel A. J. Hemphill, Royal Engineers, included this comment about the defence of the Dockyard:  "There are mounted altogether on the Land Front and its outworks four 32-pdrs, fourteen 24-pdr guns and eleven 24-pdr carronades, and in rear of it, covered by its ramparts is a Bombproof Barrack, constructed for 13 officers and 307 men, with tanks underneath for 120,000 gallons of water; and on the flanks of the barrack, but at a lower level, bombproof magazines for 2500 barrels of gunpowder, (but now unused owing to the dangerous proximity of the Dockyard new blacksmiths), and a range of bombproof buildings, containing Commissariat offices, storehouses, bakery, etc., and barrack stores."
• 1858. A Board of Education was established and an inspector of schools appointed. The annual education grant allocation was increased to £450.
• 1858. Trinity Church, in Hamilton, begun in 1845, progressed so slowly that by this date there was only the stub of what one presumed should have been a long nave and the edifice lacked a spire. As historian Thomas Reid noted: "One bay of the Nave was built and the West end boarded up, presenting a rather old appearance, reminding one of a Norwegian church of the 14th Century." 
• 1860. Gosling Brothers Ltd. imported its first barrels of Caribbean rum into Bermuda. Numerous different blends were tried until one was formulated and deemed ideal, from British Guinea (now Guyana) now known as Black Seal Rum.
• 1860. Fort Hamilton in Bermuda was built by British Army Royal Engineers.
• 1860. Fort Albert, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Redoubt, was expanded by order of Governor Sir Stephen Chapman.
• 1860. Theodore Godet's 1860 treatise on Bermuda was published.
• 1860. The first plan for a Bermuda Moongate  was brought from a Chinese flower garden by a Bermudian sea captain - and began a tradition.
• 1860. March 8. Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Milne arrived at the Bermuda Dockyard to become commander-in-chief of the North America and West Indies Station, a position he was to hold through all but the last year of the American Civil War. Forty-three years earlier, when the Dockyard was but an embryonic facility, Milne had been on station as a midshipman in HMS Leander, once the flagship of his father, Sir David Milne, "one of the most distinguished seamen in British naval History". Milne, the son,  in 1837, while commanding HMS Snake, captured two slavers on the Brazilian Station.
• 1860. US Civil War began. It lasted for nearly 5 years.  Bermuda, with its convenient access to open ocean and its St. George's in particular, became the second-largest, after Nassau, Bahamas, transshipment base for large British-built but not British-approved (because Britain was officially neutral) ships crossing the Atlantic and smaller but faster, also mostly British-built but Confederate-owned fleet of blockade runners. In contemptuous defiance of British neutrality laws or regulations, large ships from the United Kingdom unloaded in St. George's huge cargoes of arms and ammunition, cannon, gunpowder, lead and other tools or weapons, plus huge amounts of smokeless anthracite coal from Wales, into town warehouses, where they were stored until loaded aboard fast steamers bound for Confederate ports. Confederate purchasing agents and British speculators - English, Scots, Welsh and Irish - rented every available wharf, storehouse and warehouse, often at exorbitant rates, while Bermudians made fortunes from renting or leasing their wharves or warehouses. It turned usually sedate St. George's into an overcrowded, polluted, often lawless and dangerous town, especially with sailors looking for liquor and women. Bermuda was openly on the side of the Confederacy, to the consternation of Britain. However, many young black Bermudians joined the Union not the Confederacy and fought bravely (see 1865). To geography, the physical nearness of the US Southern atates, was added the political advantage that many in the islands were sympathetic to the Confederacy: "This feeling, in Bermuda at least, effervesced to the point of violence toward United States citizens, and extreme courtesy to Confederate commissioners and agents". Bermudians came down on the side of hard cash, for it was with the southern, not northern, states, that money could be made in the Civil War. The Confederacy was short of many types of supplies, especially war materiel and such had to be imported from Europe. The line of transportation, however, was due to be interrupted by the blockage of the southern ports by the navy of the North and so a new system of importation was devised. By that method, freighters brought cargo to St. George's, Bermuda, and Nassau in the Bahamas, at which harbours the goods were transferred to a new type of ship, the blockade runner. This was a fast, sail and steam powered vessel, with a low hull profile to help escape detection.
• 1860. An oarfish -  a little-known creature with oar-shaped pelvic fins and a blood-red dorsal crest running the length of its body which lurks in the depths of the ocean - was seen in Bermuda, swimming off Hungry Bay, Paget. It was spotted by a Scottish botanist and a drawing was published in Harper's magazine. Described by sailors for centuries as a strange fish which propelled itself with "oars" it was determined much later that these fish live some 2,000 to 10,000 feet below the surface and are only spotted, usually in poor condition, near the shoreline. They float to the surface after storms or if they are sick. No one has photographed an oarfish in the ocean and the shape and contours of a live specimen can only be imagined from photos of dead ones.

1860 sketch of an oarfish in Bermuda

• 1861. May 6. The first Royal Visitor to Bermuda was Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, on board HMS St. George. He was met by Governor Colonel H. St. George Ord and stayed six days.
• 1861. September 28. The SS Bermuda, named after its port of departure, was the first of a new type of cargo ship, a blockade runner, a fast, sail and steam powered vessel intended to supply the Confederacy, and with a low hull profile to help escape detection, arrived at Savannah, Georgia.. (After other successful runs, the Bermuda was captured in April 1862).
• 1861. November. Civil War matters came to a head with the famous "Trent Affair" when two commissioners of the Confederate (or southern) States were forcibly removed from a British vessel, the Royal Mail Steamer Trent in Bahamian waters, in effect a neutral ship, by the U. S. Navy. War fortunately was averted and Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, C-in-C Royal Navy, Bermuda, who had intervened successfully in the affair and used his diplomatic skills to prevent war between the USA and Britain, spent much of his remaining time on the Station dealing with the defence of British America and the issues surrounding the transshipment of goods from England and Europe, via Bermuda, to the Confederacy. This became a boom time for the island, as well as for the Bahamas, as they were best situated geographically for such shipping activity to and from the coast of what is now the southern United States.

• 1861. December 31. "If Bermuda were in the hands of any other nation, the base of our operations would be removed to the two extremes, Halifax and Jamaica, and the loss of this island as a Naval Establishment would be a National misfortune." As written by Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, then commander-in-chief of the North America and West Indies Station, based in Bermuda.

• 1862. April. The last Bermuda-built brig, Cedrine, launched only a few months earlier on January 16, designed by John Martin and built by Davis and Outerbridge, crashed and sank off the shore of the Isle of Wight, England. It was the end of an era for Bermuda boat-building. She was carrying convicts back to the United Kingdom who had served their sentences in Bermuda. All survived.
• 1864. January. The Nola, built as a paddle-wheel steamer in late 1863 and intended for use out of Bermuda in running the blockade, was on her maiden voyage to the Confederacy.  But she struck the reefs near the Western Blue Cut and was lost.
• 1864. A Board of Health hospital was established at Cedar Hill, St. George's, for victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic then raging in Bermuda.
• 1864. September 13. The "Mary Celestia" a 225 foot long, 207 tons, Confederate blockade runner smuggling much needed guns, ammunition, supplies and food to the troops in the South, sank off Bermuda. She was under the command of Captain Sinclair and piloted by a local Bermudian, John Virgin. One of the swiftest of her class, she had made at least five successful trips delivering goods into the south. After leaving St. George's bound for Wilmington, South Carolina, she struck a reef off the South Shore off Gibb's Hill Lighthouse and sank in 20 fathoms in six minutes.  First officer Stuart announced some breakers he had spotted ahead, but the local pilot who was steering the vessel replied that hew knew every rock there. Within moments, the vessel had slammed hard into the reef. The ship's cook was the only casualty. He had returned to his cabin and never made it out of the sinking ship. The vessel was a total loss, cargo nearly so. The circumstances were described as "suspicious." The remnants of its paddle wheels and a portion of the deck still sit on the sands and are a major attraction for scuba divers. British Bermuda-based Edward James memorialized the sinking in a watercolour.

Sinking of the Mary Celestia, 1864 by James

• 1864. September 25. Lynx was a long, very fast paddle-steamer with two stacks and two masts, all painted white. She met her end bound for Bermuda, running out of Wilmington NC, under Captain Reid, with 600 bales of cotton, passengers and special cargo, including $50,000 in gold. She was hit eight times, six below the waterline, by the 100-pounder and 30-pounder rifles of much slower USS Howquah, assisted by Niphon and Governor Buckingham. Sinking, with one of her wheels damaged, Lynx was beached about six miles below Fort Fisher. The Confederates all escaped, along with the gold, although Federal sharpshooters got near enough to wound one crew member. The ship's remains were set afire.
• 1865. January 1. The Princess Hotel in Pembroke Parish opened for business. The hotel quickly became a beacon to travellers and saw Bermuda go from a winter destination for wealthy New Yorkers who arrived by steamship to a spring break capital for east coast college students to a destination for discerning travellers looking for something different from what other Islands offer. The opening date was just two years after Princess Louise, who was the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, visited Bermuda and called it "a place of eternal spring." From that day, hotel became part of the fabric of the Bermuda community. It was when Bermuda's nascent tourism season was winter, when guests arrived by steamship from New York and stayed on the island for months, when horses and buggies transported passengers along dusty roads. In those days, as ocean liners entered Hamilton Harbour and sailed past The Princess, it was tradition for our staff to welcome them, dressed in white jackets and waving pink handkerchiefs. Over the years it had its fair share of celebrities, including Mark Twain who was known to recite poetry while smoking a cigar on the veranda. The hotel has played a leading role in more recent Bermuda tourism. A key ingredient in the hotel's success from the start was the loyal, dedicated and professional staff, many who have been there for more than 20 years and the commitment by the hotel's various owners since the opening, who have kept the Grand Dame tastefully decorated and equipped with the latest furniture and fixtures, and first-class hotel amenities. This hotel also played a significant role in Bermuda's economy.
• 1865. In January, when Wilmington, North Carolina was captured by Union forces, the fleet of blockade runners based in Nassau and St. George's, Bermuda, vanished - and so did the prosperity that the US Civil War had brought Bermuda by being so hugely on the side of the Confederates.
• 1865. British painter Edward James painted St. George's Harbour. (He painted in Bermuda from 1861 to 1877).
• 1865. Fort Albert was modernized for four ten-inch Rifled Muzzle Loaders by the British Army.
• 1865. When the US Civil War ended with victory for the Union, it emerged that many Bermudians had fought for it, some with great bravery. They included Wate O. Harris, 6th US Colored Infantry; Samuel Rollins, 26th US Colored Infantry; Robert J. Simmons, 54th Massachusetts Infantry: George Smith, 29th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; Robert Tappin (Tappan), 31st US Colored Infantry; Joseph Thomas, 31st US Colored Infantry; John Thompson, 26th US Colored Infantry; James Jacobs, 5th Massachusetts Cavalry: John Wilson, 31st US Colored Infantry. US Military records reveal that at least 40 Bermudians of African descent served in the Union navy. Despite its small size, Bermuda was among the foreign nations with the highest number of black sailors in the Union Navy. Bermuda's numbers exceeded many South American and Caribbean nations that had larger African descent populations. In comparison to Jamaica and Canada, Bermuda had a higher representation of sailors per each country's population size. Many of the Union foreign sailors of African descent like those from Bermuda were already experienced seamen prior to their enlistment. At least half of the 40 Bermudian sailors reported having nautical occupations at the time of their enlistment. Some may have already been in the American Navy prior to the outbreak of the war so their enlistment may actually have been a re-enlistment. It is worth noting that of the known Bermudians who served in the Union Army, most were sailors prior to their enlistment. Aboard the USS Hartford was Bermudian Augustus Simmons; and on the USS Brooklyn was Bermudian John Tucker.
• 1866. March 19. A confidential Dispatch from the Major General in command of British and Canadian troops in Halifax, Nova Scotia, warned the Officer Commanding HM Troops, Bermuda, that a signal had been received from Sir F. Bruce, the British Government's Minister in Washington, DC., that a Fenian attack under General Sweeney could be made on Canada and Bermuda. Military precautions were taken but the attack from America never materialized. On May 15, 1866, as part of the precautions referred to above, the ship on which the 2nd Battalion, the 16th Foot, British Army, was traveling from Nova Scotia to Barbados, ran aground on a Bermuda reef when trying to enter harbor. The voyage was delayed for five days.

• 1866. March. Following the establishment a few weeks earlier in St. George's of the joint-stock St. George's Marine Slip Company located on the western edge of the town for the purposes of hauling, repairing and maintaining ships, it's first operation was the slipping of the Norwegian bark Grenmar. It's arrival was recorded by the Bermuda-based British painter Edward James who had earlier painted many ships which had called at Bermuda during the American Civil War.

• 1867. The wealth Joseph Rainey had acquired in four years in Bermuda instantly elevated his social status when he and his wife Susan returned to South Carolina. Already the son of Georgetown's richest black man, he settled into his father's house and worked actively in the Republican Party, soon becoming its county chairman.

• 1867. November. First Bermuda visit of Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was a passenger on the SS Quaker City, 1,800 tons, powered by steam and sails. She had left New York City on June 8, 1867 for the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Holy Land. Her first call was at Horta in the Azores on June 21-23, then Gibraltar and points east. She arrived back in New York on November 19, via Bermuda. During the voyage, he penned The Innocents Abroad. During t his first visit, Twain viewed the enormous rubber tree (still there) in the grounds of Par-la-Ville Park, in front of where the Bermuda Historical Society now stands. It had been the town house of Postmaster William B. Perot, who laid out the gardens in the mid 1800s.  Mark Twain pretended to be disappointed with the rubber tree. He complained - with a twinkle in his eye - that it did not bear a crop of hot water bottles and rubber overshoes! He was noted for his humor and consideration for others.  He penned the famous phrase that Bermuda was a paradise but one had to go through hell to get there. It was because ships' voyages made him sea sick. He hated ships but had no other means of crossing seas and oceans. He became Bermuda's most famous visitor by far, so much so that several busts of him remain in Bermuda, plus a famous local hotel named a prestigious suite after him. He used the 1867 voyage to introduce his readers to the history of Bermuda, a British colony that for purely coldly profitable reasons had openly and massively supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War and given the North's Consul in Bermuda a consistently hard time with often open hostility directed against him. As a result, Bermuda was a place few Americans wanted to visit in the post-war years. More than any other person or entity, it was he and he alone who introduced Americans to traveling to Bermuda for its own distinctive long-term charms not its short-term American Civil War history and not just for a short summer vacation but for an extensive visit over several months in America's often bitter winter but Bermuda's balmy winter where there was never any snow and the climate was much more invigorating than in the Caribbean 1,000 miles to the south. It was from Bermuda, because of its newly-established telegraphic facilities, he dispatched letters to San Francisco's Alta California news journal. In their revised form (1869), they were his The Innocents Abroad which won him virtually immediate international attention.

• 1868. When U.S. blacks became citizens in this year, they were able to serve in the state militia, so Joseph Rainey - lately of Bermuda - joined, rising through the ranks to become a Brigadier General. Also that year, voters in Georgetown, South Carolina elected him to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention where he was instrumental in drafting one of the most progressive state constitutions in history. Under that new Constitution, he was elected to the State Senate, immediately appointed to the State Senate Finance Committee, and then made its chair.