125+ web files in a constantly updated compendium on Bermuda's business, culture, cuisine, customs, districts, economy, education, food, geography, government, history, internet access, laws, parishes, politics, religions, traditions, wildlife etc. For tourists, business visitors, employers, employees, newcomers, researchers, retirees, scholars. Funded by and linked to The Royal Gazette, Bermuda's only daily newspaper.

Bermuda's History from 1800 to 1899

The island's 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 he was released by order of the Privy Council in London. Methodism became legal and the first 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, a cure was not to be had. 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 he met and had a love affair with Hester Tucker, whom he called "Nea" in his love poems.
• 1805. The Bermuda-built 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 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.
• 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.
•  In 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. Ireland (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 Naval 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. May 4. A Royal Navy Captain of H.M.S. Swiftsure jumped overboard, "in a fit of temporary derangement", and was drowned, off the Bermudas.
• 1811. An Anglican day school for black children began in the Town of St. George.
• 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. 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. On 1 June. 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. In July, during the second British American war, 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. August 3. One of the British men-o-war which assembled at Bermuda to attack the American coast was theHMS 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. September. The captain of HMS Menelaus, Sir Peter Parker Bart. 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 Cockburn, and the HMS Hebrus, frigate, arrived in Bermuda from the Chesapeake.
• 1815. January 15.  "HMS Endymion" (Capt. Hope), the "Pomona", and the "Tenedos" engaged in firing shots at the "President", forcing surrender. The USS "President", Capt Stephen Decatur, was brought to Murray's Anchorage, Bermuda.  Midshipman Richard Sutherland Dale died of wounds shortly after arrival and was buried at St Peter's, St George's. Midshipman R B Randolph 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 possibly 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.
• 1818. Construction of the RN Hospital near the Dockyard, 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. 

1820-1830

• 1820. George IV (see right) ascended the throne in London.
• 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. 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 got married.
• 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. Arrival in Bermuda from England on February 4 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.
• 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.
• 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. 1830s. Construction of HM Dockyard in Bermuda was expedited. 1832. In June, a hurricane struck Bermuda and did great damage. 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 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 in complying that legislation was necessary. All former slaves and "freed black" men and women were given the same rights and privileges enjoyed by the other inhabitants of the colony. But this did 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. 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. Slave ship Enterprise, traveling from Jamestown and Alexandria, VA to Charleston, SC, got blown off course by a hurricane and landed at Bermuda. 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. When Smith tried to flee in defiance, the island's Friendly Societies 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. Only one wished to return to the USA.

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 March. From this came the Pembroke Canal.
• Lieut. Richard Nelson, Royal Engineers, wrote his paper "On the geology of the Bermudas", Trans. Geological Society, V.1.
• 1838. Government education grants of approximately £300 were given to all elementary schools, one of which at least existed in each parish.
• 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. On 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.
• 1842. Such was the American concern of the new 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. 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. On November 1, a 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.
• 1845. The Bermuda Cricket Club was founded in St. George's in 1845 and played its first game against the garrison. 
• 1845.  Early in the year, 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 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. On 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. 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. 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. November. The first Portuguese immigrants were imported to Bermuda from 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. 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. In Hamilton, Bermuda, during the term of Mayor Henry James Tucker, the cornerstone of the original Hamilton Hotel was built. On completion a year later it had 36 rooms. It was the first hotel in Bermuda and pioneered Bermuda's fledgling tourist industry. 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 1957.
• 1852. The American brig Enterprise called at Bermuda for provisions. 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. All hell broke loose, with slavery having been declared illegal in Bermuda a full 19 years earlier and with 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. Their slaves would be granted their freedom, with absolutely no compensation payable to ships' owners and cargo investors. 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. A large crowd gathered around the dockside to watch the slaves being escorted offshore, while crew members were put under a Royal Navy armed guard. The bewildered slaves were taken before the court, not to have the stern hand of justice meted out to them but to have its softer touch of sympathy bestowed on them. They were informed that under British and Bermuda law they were no longer slaves but free, and were welcome to remain in Bermuda if they wished to do so, to find employment. The crowd that had gathered to watch them step ashore displayed typical Bermudian generosity, with a spontaneous collection, doled out to each proportionately, to assist them in their first taste of freedom.
• 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. 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. 
• 1858. A Board of Education was established and an inspector of schools appointed. The annual education grant allocation was increased to £450.
• 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, now known as Black Seal Rum.
• 1860. When the American Civil War began, it was not long before 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.
• 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. The first plan for a Bermuda Moongate  was brought from a Chinese flower garden by a Bermudian sea captain - and began a tradition.
• 1861. On 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.
• 1862. April. The last Bermuda-built brig, Cedrine, launched on January 16 this year, 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. 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. The "Mary Celestia" a Confederate blockade runner, which had been to Bermuda before, struck a reef off the South Shore and sank in 20 fathoms in six minutes.  Vessel was a total loss, cargo nearly so.

Sinking of the Mary Celestia, 1864

• 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. 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). 
• 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.
• 1868. The Lunatic Asylum moved from the North Shore to the former Devonshire College and eventually became known as St. Brendan's.
• 1869. July 28. Bermuda's first Floating Dock arrived after being towed from the United Kingdom to Bermuda's Royal Navy Dockyard. It was in use there until 1904 (while being towed away to a ship breaker's yard, the dock broke loose and stuck at the foreshore, Spanish Point, where some remains are still visible in the water). The floating dock lay in Grassy Bay until the following April when it was brought to the North Basin and moored against the Great Wharf. As a functioning Dockyard, this facility had ammunition depots, deep water berths, barracks, chapels, soldiers and sailors to guard it. The soldiers were based at the fort here, the largest in Bermuda (now the Bermuda Maritime Museum).

Floating Dock arrives in Bermuda 1869

• She was towed out by HMS Agincourt and HMS Northumberland (see above) as far as Porto Santo, Madeira, where HMS Warrior (Britain's first iron-hulled battleship, built in Blackwall on the River Thames in 1860 as a counter to the naval ambitions of Emperor Napoleon III of France, the fastest, largest, strongest and best-armed warship in the world but by 1869 she was obsolete) and HMS Black Prince took over. With HMS Terrible and a small gunboat fast astern, the voyage took 35 days. 

• 1871. The opening of the Causeway, the road linking St. George's with the Main Island of Bermuda. Over the years it has has been damaged and at times been put out of bounds due to hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Fabian in 2003 and the closure to traffic during September 2006's near miss from Hurricane Florence.
• 1872. British cricket arrived for local civilians via Captain J. Moresby of the Royal Navy. He began this 2 day sporting tradition. He introduced it at a carnival in Somerset "40 years since the unjust thralldom of slavery." 
• 1872. The Anglican Cathedral in Bermuda was completed.
• 1874. In St. George's, Bermuda, the Unfinished Church began.
• 1875. Governor of Bermuda General Lefroy persuaded photographer James B. Heyl to make an expedition to North Rock to photograph the pinnacles. North Rock, called on early French maps "La Petite Bermude", is the northernmost land in the Bermuda archipelago, at least some of it is during the hours of low tide. Lefroy wanted a image to publish in his upcoming book on the early history of Bermuda and he, his Aide-de-Camp, Capt. Trench RA, and a group of friends all went on the adventure. As the "wet-plate process" was then in use, Heyl had to take his chemicals and a tent to develop the photographs immediately, as so required by that process. The tent-darkroom and the camera were set up on the eastern perimeter of the North Rock boiler and the resulting images captured the site on film, possibly for the first time. To the he east of North Rock, a channel to the open sea is defined to the east by the Great Breaker, which always breaks, and therefore around which the ocean constantly heaves.
• 1876. Governor Lefroy, great compiler of the earliest historical records of Bermuda, made sure a memorial tablet was erected in the Somers Garden, St. George's, with the following inscription: "Near this spot was interred in the year 1610 the heart of the heroic Admiral Sir George Somers who nobly sacrificed his life to carry succor to the infant and suffering Plantation now the State of Virginia. To preserve his fame to future ages, near the scene of his memorable shipwreck of 1609, the Governor and Commander in Chief of the Colony for the time being caused this tablet to be erected, 1876."
• 1877. Major-General John H. Lefroy RA,  Governor of Bermuda, wrote his magnificent "Memorials of Bermuda."
• 1877. Mark Twain made his first visit to Bermuda.
• 1877. At Fort Albert (expanded in 1860) in St. George's, a huge fire occured. With much gunpowder stored there, all St. George's was threatened. Heroic efforts by men of the Royal Artillery and 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers stemmed the fire.
• 1878, March 24, 4:30 pm. There was a tragedy at sea on an elderly British warship, HMS Eurydice, bound from Bermuda to the United Kingdom. She was caught in a sudden and severe gale in blinding snow which came down the channel from the northwest. Off the Isle of Wight, the ship capsized and sank with only two survivors. More than 300 passengers aboard her died. One of them was Captain Louis John George Ferrier of Belsyde in Scotland, Commanding Officer since 1877 of the 32nd Company of the Royal Engineers in Bermuda. He was going home on leave and had boarded the ship on 6 March in Bermuda. His body was identified by his brother Captain George Henry Ferrier of the 105th Foot which was stationed at Colchester. Captain Louis John Ferrier was 38 years old. That "hurricane" also caused much damage to the Floating Dock in Bermuda at the Dockyard.

HMS Eurydice sinking of the Isle of Wight

• 1879. November 21. Following a meeting at the Town Hall in Hamilton, six pages of a minute book were filled with signatures agreeing to a declaration to promote the “object and intention” of the recently-formed Berkeley Educational Society. At least nine of those who signed were unable to write their names and were obliged to simply make a mark on the paper – evidence, if any were needed, that the society’s goal, to found a school to educate all, was desperately needed in Bermuda. It was to be 18 years before that school, Berkeley Institute, was established but its name can be traced back to 1724, when Irish philosopher Bishop George Berkeley formulated a plan to build a college for white boys and North American Indians in Bermuda. A Proposal For The Better Supplying Of Churches In Our Foreign Plantations And For Converting the Savage American To Christianity By A College To Be Erected In The Summer Islands, Otherwise Called The Isles Of Bermuda contained a detailed scheme for St. Paul’s College – but the project was abandoned for a number of reasons, including a lack of funding and the Island’s isolated location. Bishop Berkeley never made it to Bermuda but his surname has, for more than a hundred years, been one of the best-known and most often referred to on the Island. For though it was not recorded anywhere at the time of the founding of the Berkeley Educational Society in 1879, it is believed that the parent body which eventually opened the Berkeley Institute in 1897 was named after the Bishop.
• 1879. On November 3, the lighthouse on St. David's Island in Bermuda was lit for the first time. Of Bermuda stone, it 55 feet high and inland, not on the shore line. It was constructed to stop St. David's Islanders from luring ships with other kinds of lights to come too close to the reefs and get their bottoms torn out for easy plundering. When the lighthouse defeated their illegal activities, they became fishermen and excellent pilots.
• 1880. A hurricane struck Bermuda and did great damage.
• 1880. (Another) Prince Albert, 16, and Prince George, 15, sons of the-then Prince of Wales, later, Edward VII), arrived in Bermuda as midshipmen on HMS Bacchante.
• 1883. January. Princess Louise Caroline Alberta (1848 to 1939), third daughter of Queen Victoria, wife of the Marquess of Lorne, Governor of Canada, made her first trip to Bermuda. She stayed for 10 weeks at Inglewood, Paget. In her honor the Pembroke Hotel was renamed The Princess.
• 1883. The first black member of Parliament in Bermuda was William H. T. Joell, of the city of Hamilton.
• 1883. Bermuda's original Anglican cathedral, then known as the First Trinity, was completed in 1883, having been commenced in 1844.
• 1883. The paper "An Account of Bermuda, Past and Present" was written by John Ogilvy, born Aberdeen, Scotland 1831, died Frimley, Sussex, England 1899. He entered the British Army in 1853 as assistant surgeon, retired before 1885 with the honorary rank of Surgeon General. Listed in the Army List as Principal Medical Officer to Bermuda, 1882.
• 1884. January. The church, known as the First Trinity, only completed in 1883, was almost completely destroyed when arsonists torched the building. Five months later a building committee was organized and architect Mr. Hay, who had been working at the East End on what would become known as the “Unfinished Church” at the time, was called back. Ironically he abandoned this impressive gothic vestige looming out over St. George’s on the eve of its completion, perhaps in part because the funds were diverted to the rebuilding of Hamilton’s fire-ravaged Cathedral. Mr. Hay called in another architect, George Henderson - the men later formed a partnership - and together work began on rebuilding the Cathedral. As they set about the project the men decided to use something they had an abundance of, native Bermuda stone. And they imported Caen stone from Normandy, France to frame the doors and windows. The final result was a typical Restoration Gothic-style cathedral in the shape of a Roman Cross. The Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity was finally completed in 1905 with the addition of a nave and tower under the watchful eyes of Mr. Henderson’s assistant, Alan Lawrie Goodwin, who took over the work following Mr. Henderson’s death some months before. Mr. Goodwin was also responsible for the rebuilding of the choir area from 1906 to 1911, while the tiled roof was replaced in copper in 1926 by Harold Tarbolton and completed by Lawrence Harrower Smart in 1927.
• 1884. Bermudian John Smith, born at Bermuda in 1854 and in the US Navy at the time, received the Medal of Honor from the President of the United States. The Medal of Honor is the highest military award given by the US Government and is conferred on an individual by the Congress through the President for outstanding acts of gallantry under enemy fire and also in peacetime circumstances. He jumped overboard from his ship, USS Shenandoah, at Rio de Janeiro in 1880, and saved a shipmate from drowning. The USS Shenandoah was a wooden screw sloop of the United States Navy and was built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1862. It was involved in Civil War actions, including the December 1864 attack on Fort Fisher, a Confederate Army stronghold.
• 1887. Saltus Grammar School opened at the instigation of Samuel Saltus for the education of white boys, and was operated from part of the funds left from the defunct Devonshire College. It is no longer solely for whites, blacks have equal access.
• 1887. After a great storm cut communication between Somerset and the Royal Naval islands, it accentuated the need for a bridge. Later, when the Dockyard was to be expanded a “Watford Island Bridge” was deemed essential. Works on the South Yard of the Dockyard and what was intended for the new bridge meant that the descendants of any Bermudian families of today who now live in Somerset first came to Bermuda to be employed on the construction of the South Yard and the bridge.
• 1887. Buildings on Maria Hill near the Royal Navy Dockyard were erected as the Single Mechanics Quarters.
• 1887. Installation of Bermuda's first telephones. 
• 1888. The former Royal Navy gunboats Vixen and her sister ship the Viper were towed to Bermuda as coast defence ships after reaching the end of their careers. H.M.S. Vixen displaced 1,230 tons and was built by Lungley Shipyard, Deptford, England, in 1864, and launched in 1867. Vixen was the first twin-screwed vessel of the Royal Navy. Her iron hull was completely clad in teak wood. This design was made in an effort to overcome problems that iron hulled ships were having with marine organisms. The teak also produced extra drag on the ship, therefore, resulting in Vixen being the slowest ironclad vessel in the Royal Navy. Another very interesting aspect of this ship is that she was built with a ram type bow. Her heavily supported bow protruded forward almost nine feet under the water line. Unfortunately, after sea trials, the Vixen and her sister ship, Viper, were considered too slow as well as un-seaworthy. They were withdrawn from service in 1887.
• 1889. A hurricane devastated the Causeway linking St. George's Island to the Main Island. It had to be rebuilt.
• 1890. February. The New York Times newspaper noted that the streets of Hamilton were full of American people and the shops full of American customers. Unlike now, the season at that time was in winter when Bermuda could provide relief from the snows and frigid temperatures of the US East coast.
• 1890. August. (until July 1891). 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards arrived in Bermuda. After refusing to serve at Wellington Barracks in London, this unit was sent - exiled - to Bermuda as a punishment. It overlapped the stay of the Leicestershire Regiment and King's Regiment (Liverpool). Stationed in St. George's. Their many exploits included enlarging and leveling a playing field by the little lane running by it (now called Grenadier Lane). Brass tablets in memory of the six men who died in Bermuda were affixed in the Garrison Church (gone now), then Prospect Chapel (gone now), then St. Peter's Church in St. George's. The Bermuda Historical Society has many glass slides showing NCOs in family situations. Because of the stature of the Grenadier Guards and in ignorance of the real reason they arrived in Bermuda,  their presence in Bermuda marked more parties, more social events, more military involvement in sports and pastimes like sailing than any other period in Bermuda's British military history.
• 1891. A little over a decade after his first visit, Prince George returned to Bermuda in command of the gunboat HMS Thrush.
• 1892. The Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps Act was legislated. It saw the creation of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) and Bermuda Volunteer Engineers.
• 1892. The Bermuda Militia Act was legislated. It saw the creation of the Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA) and Bermuda Militia Engineers, under white officers.
• 1893. The Public Gardens - later, the Bermuda Botanical Gardens - were established.
• 1890s. Bermuda faced agricultural tariffs from its main market, the USA.
• 1894. March 11, Hospital Sunday. Patients of all classes who required hospital treatment were admitted to the little rectangular structure known as the Cottage Hospital which had only a handful of beds. It was the first civilian (but not military, as there were two) hospital in Bermuda. It was on elevated ground near the east end of Pembroke Parish on the Military Road from Fort Hamilton to Prospect.
• 1894. The St. John Ambulance Brigade was established in Bermuda. It is one of the oldest charities in the world, dating back to the 11th century. The brigade provides first aid and ambulance services to large and small events throughout the year.
• 1894. Many West Indians began their relocation to Bermuda.
• 1895. The Bermuda Historical Society was established, by Archdeacon George Tucker.
• 1896. After The Bermuda Militia Act four years earlier, the Bermuda Militia Artillery was officially formed as the result of a threat of world conflict and the need for local security. Its purpose was to operate coastal defense facilities previously manned by elements of Britain's Royal Artillery.
• 1896. After removal of her engines and machinery, the former Royal Navy gunship HMS Vixen, towed to Bermuda in 1888, was scuttled to block a narrow channel off Daniel's Head. The scuttling was done to prevent possible attacks by torpedo boats on the Dockyard.
• 1897. On September 6 the first school mostly black children in Bermuda, Berkeley Institute, was opened. It then had 27 pupils, one of whom was white. (See origins on November 21, 1879).
• 1897. Professor Edward Laurens Mark, with Charles Bristol of New York University, was one of the founding fathers of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research. He began his association when he brought a party of students to Bermuda by ship. 
• 1897. November. The Ordnance Survey of the Bermudas, the necessity for which both for military and civil purposes, had long been recognized by the authorities, was commenced by Lieutenant Savage of the Royal Engineers. Arthur Johnson Savage was only 23 years old when he arrived at Bermuda. He later served in South Africa and was awarded the DSO during World War One, passing away in 1933. The new technology he used was the “Ramsden theodolite”, which became the surveyor’s major instrument of land measurement, until it was rendered obsolete by the invention of the digital “total station.” He brought two theodolites to Bermuda for his survey, one capable of making astronomical observations. This system originated from mapping the Scottish highlands after the revolt of 1745 and in the 1790s, when threats from France precipitated a survey of the south coast of England. His survey became the foundation for land tenure at Bermuda for the next 60 years. Instead of spying from on high, Savage had to work on the ground, with his theodolite, measuring chains and machetes, for the island was then much covered with heavy bush. Surveying works on the method of triangulation, for which a base line is essential. Savage established a primary one on the causeway road on Longbird Island, with a secondary one on the breakwater at Dockyard. Once these lines were accurately measured and their geographical position set by astronomical observations, the survey could begin. A network of imaginary triangles, from which all other detailed surveys were undertaken, in effect covered Bermuda. Levels were recorded on “bench marks” throughout the island, based on the datum of “Mean Sea Level as accepted by the Admiralty and recorded on the Dockyard Fire Gauge at Ireland Island”. The Savage map was published in six sheets in 1901 and also appeared in a folded edition, of which few copies survive. Markers of dark grey granite defined the parish boundaries and a number of these little monuments are still to be found.  
• 1899. Lieutenant Andrew Savage undertook the first Ordnance Survey of Bermuda.
• 1899. Fort Hamilton, initiated in the 1870s, was completed by the Royal Engineers of the British Army. It was built to protect Hamilton Harbour from possible American or other invasion. It included a moat, dungeons and artillery.  
• 1899. In Bermuda, the Causeway was swept away during a severe storm.
• 1899. December. The noted American painter Winslow Homer arrived in Bermuda and stayed until February 1900. He arrived when the Bermuda tourist was then in operation and viewed tourists as the most likely purchasers of his Bermuda watercolors.