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Bermuda's History 1900 to 1951

Significant events in world wars, military bases, social and economic development

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

When referring to this web file, use "bermuda-online.org/history1900-1951.htm" as your Subject

1900

• 1900. The Causeway is reopened.
• Birth in Massachusetts of Alice Margaret Kennedy who, at the age of 18, entered a Roman Catholic convent, became Sister Jean deChantal Kennedy of the Sisters of Charity and later became a Bermuda schoolteacher, choir director, artist, historian, librarian and author of four Bermuda books.
• 1900. West Indian workers were brought to Bermuda to work on the construction of the dry dock at the Royal Naval Dockyard.
• 1900. December 23, Reginald Fessenden transmitted intelligible speech by electronic waves from Cobb Island in the Potomac River. The next day, he did so from Brant Rock, MA to ships in the Atlantic and Caribbean. With his Bermudian connections, he was a father of radio.
• 1900. Birth in Massachusetts of Alice Margaret Kennedy who later became a nun of the Sisters of Charity. As Sister Jean deChantal Kennedy. she was a schoolteacher, choir director, artist. historian, librarian and author. mostly in Bermuda, initially in Canada and USA.

1901-1910

• 1901. Port's Island Hospital was built for Boer War prisoners-of-war. More than 4,500 South African prisoners of war (men and boys) arrived on HM ships and were transported to exile on various islands in Bermuda from 1901 to 1902. Bermuda was one of the places selected as a prisoner-of-war-camp for the Boers because of its distance from South Africa. The Boer War Cemetery in Bermuda was built by Boer prisoners. Unfortunately for the local civilian population, HM ships and the British Army garrison, the POWs brought with them an outbreak of enteric fever.
• 1901. June 28. SS Armenian arrived in Bermuda with 963 Boer prisoners of War, who were distributed to Darrell's and Burt's Islands. 
• 1901. 19 July. The SS Ranee arrived in Bermuda with 518 Boer prisoners of war, who were distributed to Darrell's and Burt's Islands.
• 1901. July 24. The New York Times reported that "the Boer prisoners of war confined on Darrell's Island make almost nightly attempts to avoid the patrolling gunboats Medina and Medway and to gain the mainland by swimming. The water between Darrell's Island and the beach is calm, and all night long the gunboats sweep it with their searchlights."
• 1901. August 1. The SS Manila arrived at Bermuda with 607 Boer prisoners of war, distributed to Tucker's Island. 
• 1901. August. Watford Bridge was begun, mostly for Royal Navy personnel to access the Royal Navy Dockyard on Watford, Boaz and Ireland  Islands. Until 1900, a “horse ferry” -  a small flat-bottomed boat that could accommodate a horse and carriage - traversed the channel. The bridge eventually spanned the 450 feet of the channel. Great cast-iron cylinders were sunk into bedrock and filled with concrete. Some 3,000 tons of local stone, 200 tons of cement and 55 tons of granite were required for the works, along with 433 tons of steel for the bridgework and central swinging span.
• 1901. September 13. The SS Montrose arrived at Bermuda with 932 Boer prisoners of war, distributed to Tucker's and Morgan's Islands.
• 1901. December 20. The SS Harlech Castle arrived at Bermuda with 340 Boer prisoners of war, distributed to Hawkin's Island.
• 1901. The first automobile to be seen in Bermuda, a steam-driven vehicle, drove along Front Street.
• 1901. On the death of his mother Queen Victoria, King Edward VII (see right) was enthroned.
• 1902. January 17. The SS Montrose arrived at Bermuda with 1259 Boer prisoners of war, distributed primarily to Hawkin's Island.
• 1902. The Cup Match cricket tournament between St. George's and Somerset was played for the first time, at Somerset.
• 1902. The first bridge to and from Watford Island, begun in August 1901, was completed.
• 1902. Bermuda Biological Station was founded.
• 1903. On March 31, famed American painter Winslow Homer wrote to his New York dealers to inform them he was sending "three Bermuda drawings that should attract attention as it was about the time all Bermuda hotels close for the season and the people return to New York."
• 1903. April. Professor Edward Laurens Mark, with Charles Bristol of New York University, two of the founding fathers of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR), arrived in Bermuda to look for a site for the BBSR. A temporary site was found, the Hotel Frascati in Flatts. June 22. The first group of students arrived.
• 1903. A group of Bermudians formed Bermuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company for the sole purpose of insuring fire and marine risks within Bermuda.
• 1903. September 24. The formal opening of the first Watford Island Bridge, completed in 1902, in heavy rain. “The bright smart-looking khaki of the soldiers quickly assumed the appearance of brown paper; many pretty dresses became limp and bedraggled, and clung affectionately to their fair owners.” But the weather cleared for the opening of what was considered the crowning structure in the work of providing continuous overland communication throughout Bermuda following the completion of the Causeway at St. George’s Parish in 1871. The people of Somerset had constructed a triumphal arch at their end of bridge and a great crowd gathered. The Governor, Sir Henry LeGuay Geary, KCB, pressed an electric bell and the swing span opened to allow a procession of boats, including as passengers all the schoolchildren of Somerset, to enter Mangrove Bay. This particular Watford Island Bridge lasted for 54 years. 
• 1903. The Rev. Charles Monk, an AME minister and publisher of the "People's Journal" defended exploited workers at the Dockyard and was sued in a criminal libel trial.
• 1904. Carl Gibbons and Edgar Hollis, two boys searching for a lost soccer ball, accidentally discovered the Crystal Cave in Hamilton Parish. It was opened to the public three years later.
• 1905. Lizards were brought to Bermuda from Jamaica.
• 1905. The  SS Bermudian made her first appearance at Bermuda and, with the Trinidad, continued service until WWI.

SS Bermudian

• 1906. First Newport (Rhode Island) to Bermuda yacht race. Eight vessels participated.
• 1907. The Tercentennial Celebration of Jamestown is held at Hampton Roads.
• 1907. Crystal Cave was opened to the public, three years after it was discovered.
• 1907. Woodrow Wilson and Mary Peck enjoyed a vacation in Bermuda.
• 1908. The first bus on the island was a 12-seater that operated in 1908. It frightened a horse, causing a doctor to be tossed to the ground. That incident is believed to have been one of the catalysts that led to the passing of a law in May 1908 that would ban all motor vehicles from Bermuda's roads for nearly 30 years.
• 1908. In March, electricity was introduced to an initially small group in Bermuda by the Bermuda Electric Light Power and Traction Company Ltd.
• 1908. The Bermuda Electric Light Power and Traction Company started providing electricity to a small group of users.
• 1909. The Tercentennial Celebration of Bermuda was held in the city of Hamilton and town of St. George. It included a tribute to Admiral Sir George Somers inlaid at the Bermuda Cathedral in Hamilton.
• 1909. In July, a group of local dignitaries went by boat to see the largest pinnacle at North Rock. They returned with a plan to encircle it with reinforced concrete and put a 50-foot metal frame on top, with a gas-powered beacon that would be visible at sea for more than 8 miles
• 1909. The three-masted passenger Quebec-built 19th century barque Edinburgh, one of the world's last classic sailing ships, foundered off the shores of Bermuda and was washed up on a beach. after more than 25 years of transatlantic service. She had an exquisitely carved, life-sized figurehead (see below). In early 2007, an unidentified European collector captured this "masterpiece" of Canadian folk art after it was sold at auction in New York and paid more than more than Canadian $300,000. The 180-kilogram oak carving of a buxom female figure was created in 1883 by renowned New Brunswick artist John Rogerson. The carving was recovered from the Edinburgh by an American diplomat in Bermuda. It was later held by several US museums, and its likeness was used in the 1970s on a special issue by the US Postal Service celebrating the country's bicentennial. The figurehead is believed to have been modeled on the Duchess of Edinburgh, the Russian-born daughter of Czar Alexander II and daughter-in-law of Queen Victoria.

1910-1936

• 1910. On the death of his father King Edward VII, King George V (see right) was enthroned.
• 1910. Bermuda was granted its own Coat of Arms.
• 1910. A Canadian corporation attempted to bring regularly scheduled, motorized public transportation to Bermuda and went so far as to form the Bermuda Trolley Company Limited. Unfortunately, nothing came from it as there was a bitter altercation between some of its principals and various people in Bermuda that reached its climax in 1924 when an entirely separate entity, the Bermuda Railway Company, was formed. Had the Canadian owned Bermuda Trolley Company not been interfered with, it would have brought public motorized transportation to Bermuda far earlier than when such train services finally began in Bermuda in the 1930s.
• 1911. The Bermuda Cathedral was consecrated
• 1911. The liner Oceana was bought by the Bermuda North Atlantic Co and operated between New York and Bermuda until purchased by Spain and renamed Alphonso XIII. She was built by William Denny & Bros., Dumbarton in 1890,  6,844 gross tons when launched; length 477 ft; with clipper stem, 2 funnels, 2 masts, twin screws and speed of 16 knots. Passenger accommodations: 208 first class, 100 2nd, 100 3rd class. Launched 30 Dec 1890 as the "Scot" for the Union Line's UK to South Africa service. Maiden voyage 25 Jul 1891, leaving Southampton for Madeira and Cape Town. In 1895, she was rebuilt to 7,859 tons with 531 ft length and passenger accommodations for 400 1st class, and 25 2nd class. In 1899 was used as a troop ship during the Boer War. Sold 1905 to Hamburg America Line, renamed "Oceana" and initially cruised between Naples and Alexandria. 8 Jun 1906 started 1st Hamburg-NY voyage and by 25 Dec 1910 made 7.5 round trips on this service. Scrapped in Italy 1927.
• 1911. On February 15, the Memorial Monument to Sir George Somers was unveiled in St. George's, with the 1st Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment in attendance.
• 1911. The Bermuda Advertisements Regulation Act prohibited unsightly advertisements in Bermuda.
• 1911. The House of Assembly finally approved the plan for North Rock referred to in 1909 and work began. It was finally completed in 1912, after some mishaps.
• 1912. Another Prince George, grandson of Queen Victoria, Marquess of Milford Haven, visited Bermuda briefly, as a lieutenant on HMS New Zealand.
• 1912. The Quebec Steamship Company (later, absorbed into Furness Withy and its Furness Bermuda Line), released this 1912 (see right) poster of Bermuda and the West Indies.
• 1913. Bermuda Trade Development Board was founded.
• 1913. Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, then a naval cadet, visited Bermuda on HMS Cumberland. He became King George VI in 1937.
• 1914. August 4. World War 1 - the Great War - began in Europe. Units from the Bermuda Militia Artillery and Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps left the island for service in Europe. Many were killed in action. (See under November 11 in Public Holidays and Bermuda's War Veterans. Bermudians enlisted for service overseas in considerable numbers. The local forces at that time were divided largely on the basis of colour, with black Bermudians serving in the Bermuda Militia Artillery, attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery, while white Bermudians were to be found in the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, mostly associated with the Lincolnshire Regiment. Individuals, including some from the local forces, signed up separated with other units overseas, such as the Royal Navy, the Royal Flying Corps and various army regiments.
• 1914. According to the Haig Report (written by Field Marshal Earl Haig, British Army Commander-in-Chief), the Bermuda contingent of the Royal Garrison Artillery, men of the Bermuda Militia Artillery, served with the Canadian Corps during the operations subsequent to the capture of Vimy Ridge. "They were employed on heavy ammunition dumps, and great satisfaction was expressed with their work. Though called upon to perform labor of the most arduous and exacting nature at all times of the day and night, they were not only willing and efficient but also conspicuous for their cheeriness under all conditions. On more than one occasion the dumps at which they were employed were ignited by hostile shellfire and much of their work was done under shellfire. Their behavior on all these occasions was excellent, and commanded the admiration of those with whom they were serving."
• 1914. The Port's Island Hospital for Boer War prisoners-of-war was used to house 3 German nationals interned and 58 German merchant seamen in the 1914-18 Great War. They grew vegetables to supplement their diet and spent most of their time making souvenirs, marked GPOW Bermuda.
• 1914. September 22. The first Bermudian to die in the Great War was William Edmund Smith, a black man, who was drowned when his ship, HMS Aboukir, was torpedoed by a German submarine on this date. His name, with 18,000 other service personnel, is on an obelisk at the Royal Naval Memorial in Chatham, south east England. Officer’s Cook First Class Smith joined the Royal Navy in 1912 aboard HMS Sirius which formed part of the Royal Navy’s North America and West Indies Squadron. At the end of that tour, he joined HMS Aboukir as conflict commenced.
• 1915. February. The Governor of Bermuda received word from Downing Street in London of the possibility of "several thousand" German military prisoners-of-war arriving in Bermuda. He warned London that they would have to be inoculated before they arrived because of the damage caused in 1901 to the local population, HM ships and British Army garrison when 4,500 Boer War POWs arrived. As it happed, those expected to come never arrived.
• 1915. In September, a hurricane caused the steamer Pollokshields to be wrecked on the reefs of the South Shore. The master lost his life. 
• 1915. In the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps a contingent was attached until the end of the Great War to the 1st Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment. An official British Army report states: "Originally they joined as a complete machine gun unit, and were found invaluable when there was a scarcity of this weapon in Flanders. After the formation of regular Machine Gun Companies, the Bermuda Volunteers were transformed into Lewis Gun Sections, in which sphere they have done good work. Physically and intellectually they are as fine men as any to be found to their Brigade, and their conduct has always been exemplary. It is hoped that many more soldiers of this stamp can be sent from the Island of Bermuda."
• 1916. In Hamilton, the single room at the old Customs House (later, the Colonial Secretariat, later yet the Cabinet Building) was far too small for the Public Library (later, the Bermuda National Library). It was transferred to Par-la-Ville, in premises owned by the Corporation of Hamilton, where it is today (mostly in an extension built and opened in 1957, no longer the original Par-la-Ville).
• 1916. On September 23, a hurricane hit Bermuda.

• 1917. September 17. Four Bermudians, all members of the Bermuda Militia Artillery and Royal Garrison Artillery, were killed on duty in an accident involving a mast at Daniel's Head when a section of the structure gave way. They were Sergeant William James Fowler and Gunners Richard Thomas Ambrose Alick, Joseph William Wilson Butterfield and Clarence Wentworth Dill. All four men were buried  with full military honours, with Union flags covering their coffins and the band of the Bermuda Militia Artillery preceding them. At least twenty carriages followed, containing relatives and friends of the deceased. Fowler was buried in St. George's, but the other three were laid to rest in "the new military cemetery on Somerset Island, which lies close to the seashore". Their deaths were considered to have been in the execution of their duties just as much as if they had died at the Front. His Excellency the Governor was in attendance, along with contingents of the army and navy, and hundreds of spectators lined the road to the cemetery." The BMA/RGA men are memorialized in a stained glass window of the Cathedral in Hamilton, along with other Bermudians killed in action.

• 1918. The first United States military base in Bermuda was established in the Great Sound at Morgan and Tucker's Islands, for the US Navy.
• 1918. April 10. U. S. subchaser No. 126, displacement 77 tons; grounded and partially sank near Two Rocks Passage, Bermuda Harbor; finally sank about 100 yards south of Agar's Island; salvaged; no casualties.
• 1918. November 11. The Great War ended.
• 1918. Watched by members of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, German prisoners-of-war interned in Bermuda since 1914 left Tobacco Bay in St. George's in lifeboats for a ship moored at Five Fathom Hole which took them to Germany.
• 1918. En route to the USA from Britain with a cargo of Dover chalk, the three-masted, steel-hulled, 236 foot vessel Taifun, built in Greenock, Scotland in 1894, was badly damaged at sea in a bad storm. She was stranded there for 3 years and in February 1921 was further damaged by a steamer in the harbour. She was left to decay.
• 1918. Spanish influenza epidemic in Bermuda, imported from the USA.
• 1918. Ninety people lost their lives fighting for Bermuda and the UK in the 1914-1918 war.
• 1919. The Bermuda Union of Teachers was formed. It was Bermuda's first union.
• 1919. Furness Bermuda Line was awarded the mail contract for the New York to Bermuda service.
• 1919. Quebec SS Co was acquired from Canada SS Lines by Furness, Withy & Co and operated as Furness-Bermuda Line. (The Trinidad Shipping & Trading Co was taken over in 1920, and in 1921 the two companies amalgamated to form the Bermuda & West Indies SS Co. In 1929 the Red Cross Line (C. T. Bowring & Co) was purchased. The Bermuda & West Indies SS Co ceased operation in 1959 but the passenger service to Bermuda continued under the management of Furness Withy until 1966).
• 1919. Autumn. First appearance in Bermuda of the US Navy's new type of naval vessels, submarine chasers. Long vessels, narrow in the beam, they were surface reactions to the new underwater threat of the submarine, the devastating effect of which the German Navy had demonstrated early in the First World War. A group of them passed through Bermuda on their way home to the United States.
• 1919. Frenchman Pierre Louis Dowle - known locally as Peter - arrived in Bermuda, later married a Bermudian, had twin daughters Josephine and Jeane. But his real claim to fame came when he set up a photographic studio in the 1920s and proceeded to take photographs from the air of both the US Navy submarines, submarine chasers and more, mentioned below.
• 1919. May 22. First aircraft seen in Bermuda,  a Burgess N-9H Jenny. A-2646. It was flown over the City of Hamilton Harbor by United States Navy Ensigns G. L. Richard and W. H. Cushing. With registration number A2646, it was powered by a Wright-Hispano 150 horsepower engine. It was a naval scout hydro-airplane that normally traveled on the deck of her mother ship the USS Elinore. The aircraft had a gross weight of 2765 pounds and a top speed of 80 miles per hour. The 8725 ton cargo vessel was launched in 1917 as the General de Castelnau and was transferred from the US Shipping Board to the US Navy for war service. After the war, she had dumped gas drums and mustard gas shells in deep waters off Virginia.  In 1919, she was in the town of St. George in Bermuda after a scientific research voyage south of Bermuda, sheltering from bad weather. The sole passenger on the airplane was Governor General Sir James Willcocks. He dropped from the open cockpit the first "Air Letter" posted in Bermuda. 
• 1919. June 6. The last Bermudian to die from the effects of the Great War was black Bermudian, Hayford Douglas Simmons. He died of the effects of the war when still in service.
• 1919. July 1. Symons, Joseph Henry Fulton, Gunner, BMA (who was reported to have been killed during the Great War), returned home.
• 1919. First company of Girl Guides was formed in Bermuda, for white girls only.
• 1920. May 28, 1920, an American “O” class submarine (O-2) arrived as the first of seven vessels of the Eighth Division, out of New London. This news was published the following day, the reporter noting that “a flock of R-boats will be here next week probably”. On Saturday, May 29, the O-7 and O-9 came in, the former “little war-boat” going aground on “Sugar-loaf Rock” in the harbour and interested groups gathered along Pitts Bay road and many watched the salving operations from Point Pleasant. The local newspaper noted that it had often been suggested that that reef should be removed: a few charges of TNT properly applied would shatter it. The following Thursday, June 3, four “R” class submarines of the Second Division steamed in, bound for Honolulu, and accompanied by the tenders, USS Beaver and “Eagle Boat” 14, bringing a total of 11 submarines at Bermuda. On Monday, June 7, all seven of the “O” class submarines left on the return run to New London, after a week of maneuvers in Bermuda waters. 
• 1919. Bermuda and West Atlantic Aviation Company formed. (See Aviation in Bermuda)
• 1920. The first official Royal Visit to Bermuda was when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later, briefly, King Edward VIII) concluded his tour of the British Empire. He was then a serving Royal Navy officer. It was the first of three visits to Bermuda by him, on the 1920 refitted Royal Navy battle cruiser Renown, on a tour of Bermuda, the Caribbean, the USA and Australia. HMS Renown, lead ship of a class of two 26,500-ton battle cruisers, was built at Glasgow, Scotland. Completed in September 1916, she served with the Grand Fleet in the North Sea during the remaining two years of World War I. On this first occasion, one of his official duties was the opening of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital on its present Paget location, formerly the much smaller Cottage Hospital in Paget Parish. Another was to St. George's, where he was the principal guest at the 300th anniversary celebrations of the establishment at the State House of Bermuda's first form of self government and the completion of St. Peter's Church in 1620 and to formally open the Somers Gardens, the main feature of which is a monument - the Somers Memorial - to Admiral Sir George Somers whose body was shipped to England but whose heart was buried here. 
• 1920. At Elliott School in Devonshire, Mr. E. P. Skinner was imported from Barbados, with his Bermudian wife, to run the school. She taught music.
• 1920. The Furness Withy shipping group from the United Kingdom began to invest in Bermuda's tourism industry. It did so by taking over the old Quebec Steamship Company and calling its new service the Furness Bermuda Line.
• 1920. In Bermuda, legislation was enacted for the expropriation of certain land at Tucker's Town to be used for the building by Furness Withy of the Mid-Ocean Golf Club and the development of Castle Harbour Hotel. Mostly black home and land owners were dispossessed but compensated.
• 1920. The Governor instructed the Commissioner of Police to recruit white police officers from the United Kingdom, after a legislative consensus that the island's police should not be predominantly black.
• 1921. Acquisition of the 21-acre Montrose Estate doubled the size of the Public Gardens, later Bermuda Botanical Gardens.
• 1921. Members of the Colonial Parliament of Bermuda debated labor shortages and commented on what they perceived as the undesirability of West Indians.
• 1922. On September 21,  a hurricane hit Bermuda.
• 1922. June. The Canadian Government Merchant Marine, a government financed operation, inaugurated a Montreal to Bermuda to West Indies service, with Halifax replacing Montreal in the winter months. The vessels Canadian Fisher and Canadian Forester were employed on the run.
• 1923. Plant Protection Service was established in Bermuda.
• 1923. Furness Withy began the development of the Mid Ocean Club and Castle Harbour Hotel.
• 1923. Caraquet, an English vessel, was wrecked of Bermuda.
• 1924-1926. Lady Ramsay, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, resided in Bermuda, at Soncy in Pembroke Parish. Her husband, Captain Alexander Ramsay, was stationed in Bermuda then.
• 1924. (See aftermath of Bermuda Trolley Company Ltd of 1910). An entirely separate entity, the Bermuda Railway Company, was formed. Had the Canadian owned Bermuda Trolley Company not been interfered with, it would have brought public motorized transportation to Bermuda far earlier than when such train services finally began in Bermuda in the 1930s.
• 1924. French angelfish, black fish boasting vibrant yellow highlights, not native to Bermuda, were released in local waters by the then-Aquarium curator, Louis L. Mowbray.
• 1925-1926. The Canadian Government participated actively in Bermuda's shipping services.
• 1925. The Bermuda Recorder was first published and for the next 50 years became the voice of the black community.
• 1925. First airship arrived in Bermuda from New York, carrying 200 lbs of airmail. (See Bermuda Aviation).
• 1925. The American movie "Eugene O’Neill and John Held in Bermuda" was filmed in Bermuda, as a black and while short film, a documentary. The cast were Eugene O’Neill [himself], John Held [himself]. A Print exists in the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House film archive.
• 1926. On 21st April, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary - later, Queen Elizabeth II - was born in London. 
• 1926. October 22. Havana-Bermuda Hurricane direct-hit, winds of 114 mph. It killed 88 in Bermuda and caused $100 million in damages. Among the buildings severely damaged was Elliot School, opened in 1848 and the Opera House. Category Four. When it passed directly over the Island, there were wind gusts of up to 143 knots. Two British warships, the Calcutta and the Valerian sank and the 88 who died during this storm were all sailors and officers onboard the Valerian. It was ultimately responsible for a total of 738 deaths, including 650 people in Cuba.
• 1926. October 22. From the hurricane, the Royal Navy ship HMS Valerian sank off Bermuda, with the loss  of 88 crewmembers. A commemorative plaque for those who lost their lives, first hung in the Dockyard RN chapel, is now at Commissioner's House at the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The quotation from The Muse in Arms by E.B Osborne, commemorates them, in one of the most powerful hurricanes in Bermuda's history.
  While the Valerian went down less than five miles from the safety of the Royal Naval Base at Dockyard, about 70 miles to the South, the steamer, Eastway foundered in the same storm, taking 22 crew members with her. A survivor of the Valerian, one of only 19, would recall the events of that day on the front page of The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily. But the events surrounding the loss of the Eastway, and the rescue were never published - until much later. The 1926 hurricane season was a devastating one that ultimately claimed over 1,400 lives and cause billions of dollars in damage to the Bahamas and Florida. As the naval headquarters for the Americas, HM Dockyard at Ireland Island dispatched the HMS Valerian, a minor vessel from its fleet, to render what aid it could to the Bahamas. Having fulfilled her obligation, the Valerian, under the command of William Arthur Usher, left Nassau on October 18, 1926 to return to her base in Bermuda. A day into their voyage, Captain Usher received reports from the US weather service that a tropical storm was forming to the South of Puerto Rico. Since the weather reports intimated the "eye" would pass some 300 miles north of the island, Captain Usher never gave it much thought. Besides, no hurricane had hit Bermuda in October for over 100 years - a dangerous precedent on which to rely. However, the storm grew far more powerful than the weather forecasters had predicted and unaware that the storm was heading straight for them, Captain Usher continued his voyage home. He nearly made it. At about 8 a.m. on October 22, 1926, and about five miles from Bermuda, the crew spotted Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. Even though the wind howled about them and waves broke on her deck, Captain Usher anticipated no difficulty in entering the Narrows, having done so before under similar conditions. As he later testified before a court martial: "Indeed, at that time, I felt assured of reaching harbour in safety as there was no immediate indication of a violent storm, also there was a complete absence of swell that sometimes denotes the approach of a storm." However, this was no ordinary storm and a half-hour later the weather changed so severely that Captain Usher realized he could no longer proceed through the Narrows. He turned the ship around and headed straight into the storm. Gale force winds were lashing the ship at 100 mph with a driving rain and flying spray obliterating everything from view. By noon the centre of the storm was reached and the clearing came, but with it mountainous seas that seemed to approach the ship from all sides, shooting the vessel onto a crest and dragging it down into the trough until it seemed she would snap in two. Once the centre of the storm had passed over, the wind picked up from the north west and again flung the ship from crest to trough as if it were no more than a bath toy. At 1 p.m. a series of squalls struck the ship on the port side with such force that she was thrown on her beam ends and heeled 70 degrees over to starboard in a stomach-churning movement. It was at this moment that the mainmast and wireless were carried away and with it any chance of an SOS. Above the howling wind, Captain Usher heard the engines stop and word reached him that the Valerian had run aground. Before he could catch his breath, the enormous vessel keeled over about 60 degrees and started going down. Word spread "all hands on deck" and with only enough time to cut away one raft, the crew had less than one minute to abandon ship before the ocean claimed her. Hanging onto the bridge, Captain Usher was swept away by waves, bumped his head and finally came up alongside a raft to which he and 28 of his men clung. In his account before the court later, Captain Usher recalled the events that followed: "Unfortunately the bottom of the raft got kicked out and this entailed much greater effort in holding on. The experience of clinging to this raft for 21 hours, with only a problematical chance of being picked up was indeed trying enough for the hardest. Luckily the water was warm, but the north west wind felt bitterly cold to those parts which were exposed. Sunset came and as it grew dark we looked for Gibbs Hill Light, or some other light, as we had no idea of our position, but nothing was seen, not even the glare. The 12 hours of night, with waves breaking over us, were an experience never to be forgotten and many gave up during that time. They got slowly exhausted and filled up with water and then slipped away. The raft was slowly losing its buoyancy and as everyone wanted, as far as possible, to sit on the edge, it capsized about every 20 minutes, which was exhausting; we all swallowed water in the process and the effort of climbing back again. Twelve held out until the end, when HMS Capetown was most thankfully sighted at about 10 the following day." By the time the Capetown picked up the survivors, the buoyancy of the raft was such that it would not have supported anyone for another hour. The Capetown, which had ridden the storm out safely at sea, had actually begun a search for the Valerian the previous day, but had been called way by the SOS of the steamer, the SS Eastway, which was about 70 miles south of Bermuda and in serious trouble. The Eastway left Norfolk, Virginia for Brazil on October 18, 1926 with 7,500 tons of cargo and 1,760 tons of bunker coal. She was commanded by Captain J.H Vanstone and carried a crew of 35. On October 21, the ship received a wireless warning that a hurricane was approaching, but on the course she was steaming, it was assumed that she would encounter only its outer fringes. This assumption proved a fatal miscalculation as by the 22nd, she was being swept by tremendous seas which smashed one of her port lifeboats, washed away much of deck gear and ripped off her hatch covers. She also developed a slight list which increased as the day wore on. Captain Vanstone personally supervised the efforts of his crew to place fresh covers over the hatches, and it was while engaged in this work without a lifeline that he was washed overboard and drowned. At 5.38 p.m. the Eastway sent an SOS: "Urgent bunkers awash and hatches broken urgent no life belts." This message was picked up by the steamship Luciline which returned the following message: "According to your position I am only 30 miles away am standing toward you at full speed suggest you send up rockets on chance I may see them." An hour and a half later, the Eastway turned on her beam ends and sank with 22 crew members, including all the officers, except the third officer, referred to in various documents only as "Mr. Davey". Crew had earlier unhooked the falls of the starboard lifeboat and cut the lashings so the boat floated clear when the vessel sank. Twelve men who were swimming in the vicinity, managed to scramble into her and could only watch in horror and shock as the steamer sank with 22 of their friends and fellow crew still on board. It was thought that those below were unable to come up when the vessel turned onto her beam ends, while those on the bridge were unable to get off because of the heavy seas and the ships' 15 degree list. The Luciline arrived on the spot at about 10 p.m. and searched the area until noon the following day when she came upon the survivors who had drifted all night. They were brought to Bermuda and transferred to the tug, Powerful at daybreak on October 24, 1926. During a formal investigation in the United Kingdom in April the following year, it was revealed that the Eastway was overloaded by 141-tons when she left Virginia. This decision cost the crew their lives, and the registered manager, Watkin James Williams, was found "blame-worthy" and culpable, and ordered to pay 1,000 Pounds towards the costs of the inquiry.
• 1927. April 28. Birth in Bermuda of John Irving Pearman.
• 1927. Following the Canadian Government's participation in Bermuda's shipping services from 1925-1926, the Canadian National Steamships Company was established by Act of Parliament in Ottawa, to consolidate shipping services from Halifax and Montreal to Bermuda, the West Indies and elsewhere. The Canadian National Steamship Company was owned by Canadian National Railway Co. and operated services between Montreal / Halifax and the West Indies and to Australia (until 1936). They also ran Vancouver to Alaska routes. 
• 1927. June 1. Birth in Bermuda of Dame Lois Browne-Evans, DP, JP, a major player in Bermuda's Progressive Labour Party (PLP). She attended Central School and the Berkeley Institute. She became Bermuda's first female lawyer, first female leader of a political party, first female Attorney General. She was made a Dame (female equivalent of a knighthood in 1999) or services to Bermuda.
• 1927. August. Incorporation by Act of Parliament of the Bermuda Historical Society, upon a petition of Members William Sears Zuill, Catherine Fitch Tucker, Hereward Trott Watlington and Harry St. George Butterfield, who stated as the Society's objectives "the encouragement of the study of the history of the colony and the collection of books, pictures, furniture, weapons, dresses and other objects relating to such history." It was from its East Broadway site at the time that the Society began doing valuable work, influencing many of its members into undertaking research and writing papers on historical subjects and acquiring and preserving colonial records  (including the purchase in 1932 of the famous portraits of Sir George and Lady Somers and related period memorabilia).  
• 1928. The Canadian National Steamships Company took over the management of most of the fleet from the Canadian Government Merchant Marine Ltd.
• 1928. December 15. Arrival of first of the Canadian National Steamships Company "Ladyboats" - the Lady Nelson. In the days before established air services in the Caribbean, the five White Lady boats sailed from Halifax and Montreal, down the islands, and up the Demerara River to Georgetown in Guyana. These ships, oversized steamers, were named after wives of British Admirals. The Lady Nelson, Lady Drake, and Lady Hawkins sailed from Halifax year round to Bermuda, the Windward and Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Guyana, every two weeks. The Lady Rodney and Lady Somers (named after the wife of Admiral Sir George Somers who colonized and became the Father of Bermuda) which were much bigger than the other three, serviced Bermuda, Nassau and Jamaica, from Montreal in the summer, and Halifax in the winter. Later, Boston was added to the routes. They were not big ships as far as tonnage went. Built by the Cammell Laird & Co., at Birkenhead, England, the Lady Nelson had a gross tonnage of 7970 tons, the same as the Lady Hawkins and the Lady Drake built shortly afterwards. The Lady Rodney and Lady Somers were slightly larger, being 8194 gross tons but the passenger accommodation was different. In the first three, it numbered 132 first class, 32 second and 53 third plus 48 deck-only passengers, while the Lady Rodney and Lady Somers carried a total of 125 first class passengers only. But they earned the title of sisters for all were outwardly of the same design made by A. T. Wall & Co., of Liverpool and their interior resembled each other even more closely. The Lady Nelson  was the first to make a maiden voyage and was consequently flagship of the fleet. In 1928, one could get a passage on one of these ships from about $85 up. The ships were often loaded with Canadian produce on the way down, such as flour, butter, canned Brunswick sardines and refrigerated fruit - ice apples and grapes, which were treats at a Caribbean Christmas. They returned with raw sugar, molasses and up to 50,000 stems of bananas at a time. The larger Lady Somers and Lady Rodney carried all First Class passengers, and were in fact floating casinos, as well as refrigeration for 70,000 stems of bananas. Deck passengers could buy their meals for a nominal fee. The ships stopped for a few hours in the smaller islands and longer periods in the larger islands and Guyana. They were fast, safe, and reliable, docking at Bookers #1 wharf in Georgetown on Friday, and leaving on a Saturday, every fortnight. They employed both Canadian and West Indian crewmembers. 

• 1929. January 14. The third of the Canadian Ladyboats - the "Lady Drake" - arrived, serving ports between Canada and the West Indies. 
• 1929. April. The fourth and fifth of the Canadian Ladyboats - the "Lady Somers" and "Lady Rodney" - arrived, serving ports between Canada and the West Indies.
• 1929. The US Stock Market crashed. The resulting Great Depression and its repercussions impacted on Bermuda.
• 1929. December 18. 269 passengers plus a crew of 165 left New York and were aboard the Furness Withy vessel Fort Victoria en route to Bermuda. In dense fog, the vessel collided with the Algonquin, with 189 passengers.
• 1930. On June 6, Dr. William Beebe and Otis Barton descended into the waters off Bermuda in the bathysphere Barton designed in 1928 for the New York Aquarium.
• 1930-35. Bermuda's agricultural economy was devastated by US tariff laws.
• 1930. Ten years after the first radio station, KDKA, began in Pittsburgh, PA Bermuda's first commercial radio station was opened and owned by Thomas J. Wadson. He used the call letters TJW and did the broadcast from his Front Street shop (still open today). It was the forerunner of ZBM radio in Bermuda much later.
• 1930. February 12. Somerset Brigade Band was formed. 
• 1930. February. Lord Baden Powell, founder of the international Scout movement after his days in South Africa, visited Bermuda to inspect the Cubs and Scouts here then. (A stamp commemorating this event was issued in August 2007).
• 1930. In the summer, the magnificent Furness Withy liner "Bermuda" arrived in Hamilton to begin her weekly run from New York.
• 1931. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later, briefly, King Edward VIII) visited Bermuda again, en route to Buenos Aires to open a British Industries exhibition. During his stay he played golf on the Mid Ocean course.
• 1931. This Week in Bermuda, a magazine, began and eventually became one of the Island's oldest and most famous tourist information publications.
• 1931. Arrival in Bermuda of cruise ship Monarch of Bermuda for Furness Withy Line and it's New York to Bermuda service. She was 579 feet long with a beam of 76 feet. Completed in 1931 she was 22,424 gross tons and powered by steam turboelectric propulsion (engines by Fraser & Chalmers,  Erich (turbines), and by General Electric Co Ltd, Birmingham (motors)), driving 4 screws. She was fitted with 3 funnels, had 2 masts and a cruiser stern. Her service speed was 19 knots. Accommodation was provided for 799 passengers in 1st class and 31 in 2nd class.  She carried a crew of 456. 

Monarch of Bermuda

• 1931. August 31. Pilot C. Nelmes of Bermuda was killed when his aircraft a Curtiss HS-2L aircraft, of World War 1 vintage, of the type once used by the United States Navy and Canadian authorities but later deemed by the former to be too dangerous to fly after 1928, crashed at Grassy Bay off HM Dockyard when over-flying a ship. There were two survivors. This flying boat made its debut as a warplane by patrolling against enemy submarines. The manufacturer was Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co. Inc. of Hammondsport and Buffalo, NY, and the patrol flying boat was built under license by Galaudett Flying Boat Company, College Point, Long Island, NY. Its wingspan was just over 74 feet; height 14' 7"; length 38' 6"; top speed 91 mph; range 517 miles; empty weight 4,700 lbs; gross weight 6,432 lbs; fuel capacity was 141 gallons; crew were three people; service ceiling was 5,000 feet; engine was a Liberty 12 at 350 HP and the sea level climb was 220 feet per minute. The United States Navy flew them on anti-submarine duty off the East Coast from bases in Nova Scotia. When WW1 was over, they donated twelve of the planes to Canada. In 1919, the first HS-2Ls went into Canadian civil use in Québec forestry work, remaining the predominant bush aircraft until 1926 or 1927. It was to mark the dawn of the Canadian bush pilot tradition. The Ontario Provincial Air Service (OPAS) was formed by the Government of Ontario in 1924 to protect the province's vast forests. At the time it was one of the largest airborne forest services in the world. They constructed a hangar at the edge of the St Mary's River in Sault Ste. Marie to house their fleet of surplus Curtiss HS-2L's. Using aerial detection of forest fires, aerial transportation of fire crews and equipment, map making, aerial photography, and forest inventory, they ushered in a new era of ecological maintenance -- in their first year of operation alone, 600 forest fires were spotted. The wooden hull of the flying boat presented a few disadvantages. It could be damaged by rocks or dead trees, and had a tendency to get waterlogged after the long weeks and even months it spent in water. This increased the weight of the craft and caused performance to become sluggish. The aircraft needed to land in a fairly large lake to be able to take off again. It often required a mile to take off and climbed so slowly that it needed a lake or sea surface of 3 to 5 miles in length to achieve sufficient height to clear trees and hills. Its average speed was about 65 miles per hour (105 km/hr). The H-boat, as it was known, had an ambiguous safety record - it could land in rough water, but if it stalled and went into a spin, it was impossible to pull it out again. The U.S. Navy branded it as too dangerous for violent maneuvers, and afterward there were few accidents - as one USN officer said: "All the good HS-2L pilots were killed off by 1923, and therefore there were no more accidents." It is believed that Nelmes of Bermuda bought his Curtiss HS-2L in Canada, from OPAS.

Bermuda Railway over coastal bridge

• 1931. October 13, afternoon. The first full successful trial run of the Bermuda Railway was made from Hamilton to Somerset (as the line to St. George's had not yet been completed). 
• 1931. On October 31, the Bermuda Railway was officially opened, a few weeks after commenced operations with the first train, after a year of building. (But see 1910 and 1924). The official party assembled at # 1 Shed in the city where they were welcomed by a reception committee. Governor Cubitt and Lady Cubitt were greeted by Mr. and Mrs. O. A. Jones, for the construction engineers; H. W. Watlington, who had guided most of the railway legislation through Parliament; Mr. Stemp, Managing Director and traffic coordinator of the Bermuda Railway Company; and J. R. Conyers, Vice President. Then came Major R. W. Appleby, Attorney General of Bermuda at the time and one of the Railway Commissioners. (Later, he became a founding partner of one of the two great local legal partnerships).
• 1931. November. Watlington & Conyers announced that the ship "Monarch of Bermuda", its $8 million flagship, the first passenger ship in the world to have private baths and with other super new technology on board, had passed its speed and duration trials off England and would begin its New York to Bermuda run as planned.
• 1930's. Further protectionism in the USA ended agricultural imports.
• 1932. Watlington Waterworks opened in Devonshire.
• 1932. First company of black Girl Guides, First Excelsior, was formed in Bermuda. There was also a Brownie Pack and Rangers.
• 1932. The well-known American pioneer in the field of radio with a distinct Bermuda connection and Bermudian relatives, Professor Reginald Fessenden, died.
• 1932. Biggest lobster ever caught in Bermuda weighed 16 lbs.
• 1933. Arrival, for the first time, of the QTEV Queen of Bermuda, a lovely vessel and cruise ship belonging to the UK-owned Furness Withy shipping line. She steamed between New York and Bermuda on a weekly basis until 1966, except for war service.

• 1933. British military seaplanes were based in Bermuda. A hanger was constructed at the Royal Navy Dockyard in Sandys Parish  and the small RAF Bermuda station began. Although controlled by the Royal Navy, the base was manned entirely by Royal Air Force personnel. But all British aircraft were all part of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA). They included a number of Hawker Osprey, Fairey Seafox and Supermarine Walrus seaplanes.
• 1933. On December 16, after almost 60 years occupation of 52 Front Street, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) acquired a fine water site at Albuoy's Point, Hamilton, built a large Club House on their new property and moved into their new (and present) quarters. 
• 1934. In June, after Herbert Leslie Lambert was murdered in Bermuda - chopped 119 times with a hatchet - Martha Annette Outerbridge was found guilty and hanged, singing hymns. She was the last women in Bermuda to get the death penalty.
• 1935. On April 3, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V, and his wife, landed at Penno's Wharf, St. George's. They were met by Governor Sir Astley Cubitt. They were on the last stop of a honeymoon tour.

1936-1952

• 1936. January. Southlands in Warwick was described as "one of the loveliest places on the colorful island of Bermuda". The woodland estate had "an air of ease and gracious living" and featured in the January edition American society magazine 'Country Life'.  Marni Davis Wood wrote of a charming era of days gone by, accompanied by the colorful sketches of Harrie Wood. "The driveway to Southlands, on the south shore of Warwick, is so typically Bermudian that it could hardly be any other place in the world. It is moreover, exactly what the approach to one's house should be — a promise of charming things to come. From the moment that you turn in the great stone gates, you are in a tunnel of shade cast by cedars and the green bay trees on the hillside. At the top of the ridge the drive goes through a huge cut in the limestone, between great walls, green with ferns and mosses, and festooned with swags of the Heavenly-blue morning glories that grow wild and rampant in Bermuda. It goes over the hill and winds down through a perfect carpet of freesias to the house, so amazingly white through the dark of the enormous overhanging cedars." Dr. J. Douglas Morgan's father James, having bought the estate 25 years previously in 1911, apparently once overheard himself being described as "some Canadian with more money than sense", as Southlands was considered a "bedraggled old place". But Ms Wood praises the late Mr. Morgan's imaginative vision and transformation of the estate, saying "every native plant or shrub has been beautifully used". She describes the "beautiful arrangements of the sub-tropical plants" in the quarry gardens, and is delighted at the fresh water interconnecting pools. "In one of the pools there are water hyacinths, umbrella plants, and papyrus from the Nile growing luxuriantly, quite at home in the shade of an overhanging acacia tree laden with yellow flowers. In another, little gold and silver fish dart about among the water lilies, and maidenhair fern grow to giant size along the edge. she writes.  In the spacious and inviting country house she went on: "all the Bermudian traditions have been maintained, the little butteries, the many white roofs, shuttered windows, a long one-story house rambling on and on. From the front terrace, bordered with geraniums, begonias, and red roses, where peacocks strut in vain rivalry with the colors of Bermuda waters, the view is perfectly superb — across rolling meadows where, most surprisingly, cows graze quietly, to a shining white beach and the ocean. In the summer, when the prevailing wind is from the south, the beach is ideal for long swimming parties and the superior picnics that are an integral part of Bermuda life. In what Bermudians are pleased to call winter the hill behind the house protects it from the winds that so often whip the north shore, and the high sides of the quarries shelter the gardens so that the most delicate things grow with amazing fecundity at Southlands. From the whippet and the wire-haired fox terrier who greet you at the terrace of the main house, and the monkey with his white bantam playmates, the peaceful cows, the many, many gardens, and the long rambling house, the little farmer's cottage tucked away behind one of the quarries, to the larger cottage The Periwinkle, with its garden stretching out to the gate like a friendly hand, the entire estate has an air of ease and gracious living which reflects a sensitive guiding hand."
• 1936. In December, King George VI (see right) took over the Crown from his brother Edward VIII, who abdicated when told his American wife-to-be would never be recognized as Queen because she was divorced.
• 1936. Wilfred Onions and Valmer Bouchard established a company known as Onions Bouchard, Architects. Traditional Bermuda architecture was the mainstay of the company's home designs, as it helped preserve the Island landscape of traditional cottages, with moon gates, Flemish gables, fishtail chimney caps, lime-washed roofs and 'eyebrows' over doorways. John McCulloch later joined the company, adding to its name.
• 1937. St. David's Island was connected to the rest of Bermuda by the Severn Bridge.
• 1937. Oliver Caisey, Sr. (with his race horse Fanny) became the first  black jockey at the Shelly Bay race track. His groom was Claude (Poker) Furbert.

Shelley Bay race track, as it was then (now long gone)

• 1937. On June 16, Imperial Airways (later British Airways) and Pan American World Airways together unofficially began the first scheduled air service to Bermuda from Port Washington, New York.
• 1937. By Act of Incorporation, the Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust was officially created, formed in 1936 and the forerunner of the Bermuda National Trust.
• 1937. King Edward VII Gold Cup, began in Bermuda when New Yorker Sherman Hoyt returned to its British tradition the prestigious King Edward VII Royal Trophy he won in 1911. He presented it to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. Now the Wimbledon of Match Racing, the oldest match race event in International One Design sloops.
• 1937. November. Death at sea of former British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, born in Scotland (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937). He had been a distinguished passenger on board the popular liner Reina del Pacifico which called at Bermuda often. He had been hoping to enjoy a cruise to South America, but never got there. He died aboard the vessel. As Bermuda was a route stop, the ship brought his body to Bermuda. Given his stature in life, Bermuda gave him a singular salute in death, an official funeral procession befitting a former British Prime Minister. His remains were received with full military and civilian honours and a ceremonial guard of honor from the Sherwood Foresters of the British Army then stationed in Bermuda, plus hundreds of other British and local military forces. His body lay in state at the Anglican Cathedral overnight in Hamilton. The next day, during a solemn procession first on Front Street then on Church Street which attracted more than 20,000 spectators - the largest crowd ever to converge in the city, British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Marine bearers, some brought to Bermuda especially for the occasion, carried MacDonald's flag-draped coffin to the Royal Naval Dockyard Bermuda paddle steamer tug Sandboy which loaded it onto HMS Apollo, waiting in the Great Sound to receive it for transport to England. The naval vessel then steamed off to England. In 1933 and 1934 MacDonald's health declined, and he became an increasingly ineffective leader as the international situation grew more threatening. His pacifism, which had been widely admired in the 1920s, led Winston Churchill and others to accuse him of failure to stand up to the threat of Adolf Hitler. In May 1935 he was forced to resign as Prime Minister, taking the largely honorary post of Lord President vacated by Baldwin, who returned to power. At the election later in the year MacDonald was defeated at Seaham by Emanuel Shinwell. Shortly after he was elected at a by-election in January 1936 for the Combined Scottish Universities seat, but his physical and mental health collapsed in 1936. A sea voyage was recommended to restore his health, but it was in vain.

Ramsay MacDonald's coffin coming ashore from the Royal Navy's paddle steamer tug

Royal Marines outside the Cathedral for the funeral

Sherwood Foresters and others at the funeral procession, in their Army Bermuda Shorts and long socks

Royal Navy march-past with coffin at Ramsay MacDonald's Bermuda funeral

Soldiers and sailors salute the coffin at Ramsay MacDonald's Bermuda funeral

Pictures kindly supplied by Trevor Smallman, son of one of the British Army in Bermuda Sherwood Foresters. His father was present at the funeral.

• 1938. Imperial Airways (later British Airways) and Pan American World Airways together officially began the first flying boat and aircraft service between Long Island and Bermuda.
• 1938. Women of Bermuda gained the right to vote, if they were eligible. 
• 1939.  March. Pan Am's Boeing 314 NC 19604 began flying to Bermuda. It replaced the S-42 on the PA 160/161 New York service. With amenities modeled on those of the great luxury liners of the period, the 12 Boeing-314 Clippers operated by Pan Am and British Overseas Airlines Corporation remain the most luxurious aircraft ever to take to the skies. The sumptuous flying boats, which used to fly through Bermuda in the 1930s and '40s, are highlighted here. The lavishly illustrated book includes sections on the aircraft's extensive use of the Darrell's Island airport in Bermuda. They were the largest aircraft of their type ever built, with a maximum of 74 passengers and 10 crew. They used island airports such as the one then in Bermuda as intermediate stepping stones for ocean-spanning flights across the Atlantic and Pacific. The aircraft were commissioned from Boeing by Pan Am founder Juan Trippe – also the developer of Bermuda's Castle Harbour Hotel – specifically for trans-oceanic flights. PanAm operated nine of the aircraft while three were purchased by Imperial Airways, forerunner of today's British Airways and also flew through Bermuda en route to New York and other destinations. The aircraft were built between 1938 and 1941. 84,000 pounds, four-engined, they were 106 feet long, had a wing span of 152 feet and had a top speed of 199 miles per hour. After World War Two, seaplanes became obsolete because new, long-range aircraft such as the Lockheed Constellation could cross the Atlantic and Pacific non-stop.
• 1939. Piggly Wiggly began operating in Bermuda, copying the name from an American operation. It was started by the Crisson family and remained theirs until 1946. 
• 1939. With World War 2 imminent for Britain, a 99 year lease was granted by the UK to the USA for land bases at St David's Island and Morgan and Tucker's Islands.
• 1939. September. When war started, a Bermuda Government station began operating from a studio in the Walker Arcade in Hamilton. (It finally went off the air in 1944).
• 1939. September. The Queen of Bermuda made her last cruise to New York. The disembarkation of her 700 passengers was especially hurried. A fuel barge arrived almost immediately and the vessel was gone to war by 11:00 a.m. There would be no sailing at three that afternoon or until well after the war, in February 1949.
• 1939. When World War 2 started, the entire British Empire joined the UK against Germany. Bermuda became a busy Royal Navy port. Countless thousands of seamen and civilians were rescued at sea from vessels torpedoed by the German Navy. The anomaly in the command structure referred to in 1933 was rectified when this part of the Royal Navy Dockyard was transferred to the FAA and given the name of HMS Malabar.
• 1939. Construction of brand-new Royal Naval Air Station on Boaz Island. As part of the  preparations for World War 2, the increased workload at HMS Malabar caused problems due to the limited space available. With so many of the locally-based or in-transit Royal Navy warships carrying catapult-launched seaplanes such as the Hawker Osprey, Fairey Seafox and Supermarine Walrus seaplanes, the need for prompt, efficient and spacious aircraft maintenance was a high priority. Thus, the new station was built. It had two good-size hangers and launching ramps on either side of the island and they allowed continuous operation in any wind direction. With the Battle of the Atlantic over, the station was reduced to care and maintenance status in 1944. Some remnants still survive.
• 1940. The Hamilton Princess Hotel became the HQ of British postal censorship activity in Bermuda, much to the annoyance of some anti-British, pro-German Americans whose ships and aircraft were subject to scrutiny. The censors used basement rooms in the hotel and depended greatly on British Intelligence reports.
• 1940. November 26. Death in Bermuda of Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, born April 26, 1868, Hampstead, London, England. British newspaper proprietor who, with his brother Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, built the most successful journalistic empire in British history and created popular journalism in that country. A shy individual, he let his brother handle the public and journalistic side of the business, while he handled financial matters. He is buried in grave 271, a prominent one, by itself, at St. Paul's Churchyard, Paget Parish.
• 1940. Construction started in Bermuda from scratch of two new military bases for the USA, one on St. David's Island at Fort Bell for the US Army and US Army Air Force and the other at what became the US Navy Operating Base. They took two years to build and cost US taxpayers over US 45 million.
• 1940. August. Bermudian graduates of the Bermuda Flying School left Bermuda for England on SS Mataroa, bound for the Royal Air Force. They included Geoffrey Bird, John Brewer, Bobby Burnard, Royston Dodwell, Joseph Robert Gibbons, William Kempe, Jim Lang, Geoff Osborne, Jack Pitt, Teddy Nicholl, Pete Perenchief, Percy Roach, Martin Smith, Francis Stephens, Jackie Thomas, Jimmy Vallis, Alan (Smokey) Wingood, Jimmy Whitecross. Other Bermudians too joined the RAF, as graduates of the Bermuda Flying School. Those who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force included Fred (Red) Adderley; Harold Dale; Arthur (Copper) Jenkins; Norman Jones; David Kopec; Charles Nunn; Arnold Redman; Richards (first  name unknown); Norman Sumpter; Squires (first name unknown); Robert Oatway; Geoffrey Welch; Herbert (Chummy) Zuill.  
• 1940. Former King Edward VIII (who abdicated in December 1936 and was replaced by his brother, George VI), arrived in Bermuda with his divorced wife, the Duchess of Windsor. He was en route - via a Canadian Ladyboat - to the Bahamas, as Governor. He and his wife spent a week in Bermuda at Government House. British UK and other sources are wrong in saying he went directly from London to Nassau. In Bermuda, he stayed at Government House, created some problems there for staff, and played golf.
• 1940. November 5. Loss of Bermuda-based  armed merchant cruiser Jervis Bay" - Halifax/UK convoy HX84 with 37 ships and this ship as its solitary escort (Capt Fegen). It was attacked by the German 11 in-gunned pocket battleship Admiral Scheer in mid-Atlantic. The convoy was ordered to scatter as Jervis Bay headed for the "Scheer", guns firing. The end was in no doubt and she went down, but her sacrifice saved all but five of the merchant ships. There is a memorial to the ship at Bermuda's Albouy's Point. The brass plaque on the monument asks us to "Remember Captain E.S.F. Fegen, VC Royal Navy, the Officers and ship's company of H.M.S. "Jervis Bay" who cheerfully gave their lives in successful defence of their convoy, fighting their ship to the last against hopeless odds. The SS Jervis Bay began life in 1922 out of the great Vickers shipyards at Barrow in Furness and was taken into the service of the Aberdeen & Commonwealth Line, which operated ships to and from Australia. All of its vessels were named after Australian bays, Jervis Bay being some 90 miles north of Sydney. After the outbreak of war between England and Germany in 1939, the ship was commandeered by the Royal Navy and fitted out with eight six-inch guns. First sent on station to the South Atlantic, the vessel was assigned to Bermuda Convoy Escort Duty in May 1940, and from June 1940 to the Bermuda and Halifax Escort Service, a service that would last but a mere six months, ending its demise on November 5 at position 52.26N, 32.34W. In its last days, Jervis Bay was the only armed escort for the 37 merchant ships of Convoy HX84, out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, bound for Great Britain. Meanwhile, the pocket battleship, KMS Admiral Scheer had broken out of the North Sea, making its way through the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland en route to raid Allied shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. Convoy HX 84 became its prey in the dusk of November 5, 1940, as the sun set on the cold, grey reaches of the North Atlantic. Captain Edward S. Fogarty Fegen, commanding officer of the Jervis Bay, immediately ordered the helmsman to set a beeline directly into the guns of the Admiral Scheer, to allow the convoy to scatter and escape as best it could. The Jervis Bay was out of action in 15 minutes and sank two hours later with the loss of 190 men, still drawing fire from the Admiral Scheer. Sixty-five of the crew were rescued by the Swedish vessel Stureholm. Captain Fegen was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, later donated to the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth by his daughter, Barbara Fegen. The citation for his VC notes his "Valour in challenging hopeless odds and giving his live to save the many ships it was his duty to protect". The Admiral Scheer then proceeded to sink six other ships of the convoy, being the Mopan, Maidan, Trewellard, Kenbane Head, Beaverford and the Fresno City. A tanker, the San Demetrio, was also shelled and set afire, its crew abandoning ship. The ship was found by some of her crew in a lifeboat two days later, still on fire. They climbed back on board, put out the fires, repaired the engines and limped into port almost two weeks after the tanker was declared to be a loss, such is the courage of the merchant mariner.  The Jervis Bay had seven six-inch Mark VII guns, examples of which can been seen at St. David's Battery, being manned in 1940 by the Bermuda Militia Artillery. The ship also had two three-inch anti-aircraft guns, which figured little in the ensuing battle. It was the proverbial sitting duck, with guns half the range of its opponent. The Admiral Scheer was sister ship to Admiral Graf Spee of River Plate fame. She was refitted as a heavy cruiser and began raiding in November 1940, sinking 17 merchant ships for 114,000 gross tons. After "faultily concentrating her effort on the armed merchant cruiser, Jervis Bay", she allowed Convoy HX84 to scatter. Thereafter the Admiral Scheer disrupted Allied shipping as far away as the Indian Ocean, returning to port in April 1941, having never been located by Allied hunter forces. Under Captain Theodor Krancke, the ship was the most successful capital commerce raider of the war. She was then used ineffectively in the Artic and Baltic and was sunk by RAF bombers in Kiel on April 9, 1945, later buried under a new dock.  The raider weighed in at 16,200 gross tons, which could be propelled at almost 30 knots. It was commissioned in November 1934 with a length of 610 feet and a beam of 71 feet. The vessel mounted six 11-inch guns in two turrets of three; eight 5.9-inch guns and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes in two quadruple sets.
• 1941. Bermuda Workers' Association (BWA) was formed and founded by Dr. Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, a Trinidad-born medical doctor who was trained at the University of Edinburgh and once had his practice in Kingussie, Scotland. His wife also trained at Edinburgh for a medical degree but did not complete it. His Bermuda-born children were Pamela and Patricia.  The union was the forerunner of the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU).
• 1941. Before the USA entered World War 2, its troops occupied Bermuda as the two US military bases were being built. They completely changed Castle Harbour in the east and the Great Sound in the west.
• 1941. July 15. Sinking by the Italian submarine Morosini in 37.23N 20.32W of the SS Lady Somers, 8194 tons, built in 1929, with many lives lost. She was the first of the five white Ladyboats to suffer from the war, owned by the Canadian National Steamship Company. The popularity of the Lady Boats peaked just prior to World War II in 1939, and then things changed dramatically. White paint became grey, few passengers surfaced; there were regular blackouts and no bananas, but lots of torpedoes to keep them company. Within four months of the Loss of the Lady Somers, German U-boats attacked three of the four remaining Lady Boats.
• 1941. Concurrently with the building of the US Military bases in Bermuda, the oyster-shell scale (insulaspis pallida) and the Juniper Scale were imported accidentally. Both arrived in separate shipments of conifers. The Juniper Scale began to decimate virtually all Bermuda's endemic Cedar trees.
• 1941. April 7. Captain Jules James, USN, read his orders as Commandant, USNOB Bermuda and hoisted his pennant over the former residence of Mrs. Margaret V.B.T. Wooley-Hart on Tuckers Island. (This building later became the Religious Center). 
• 1941. August. Spitfire Bermuda One Mark IIb P8507 was bought for the Royal Air Force by Bermudians, by public appeal. It shot down five German aircraft before it failed to return on this date.
• 1941. August 9-12. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland and created the Atlantic Charter, the basis of the Allied war plan during World War 2.
• 1941. English censorette was murdered in Bermuda. Harry Sousa was later convicted and hanged.
• 1941. 11 September. HMS Bermuda, a Colony class cruiser, displacement 11,040 tons, overall length 555 ft 6", with twelve six inch guns in four triple turrets. was launched at Clydebank, Glasgow, Scotland and completed 21 Aug 1942. She served in WWII and was then refitted 30 Jun 1944 to 27 Mar 1945. She visited Bermuda 3 times: Feb 1958, Jul 1959, and Feb 1962.

HMS Bermuda

• 1941. June. The Free French submarine Surcouf was sent to Bermuda, but from late July to late November, the boat was refitted in New England.
• 1942. January 14-16. Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Bermuda after visiting President Roosevelt in Washington DC.
• 1942. January 19. The "Lady Hawkins" a regular caller at Bermuda, one of the much-loved Ladyboats, 7988 tons, was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat U-66, with the loss of 250 lives, en route from Boston to Bermuda, off North Carolina at 35-OON 72-30W.
• 1942. February 4. The Canadian tanker Montrolite, 11,309 tons, was torpedoed by German U-boat U-109 northeast of Bermuda at 35-14N 60-05W.
• 1942. February 11. Northwest of Bermuda, the German U-boat U-564, under the command of Reinhard Suhren and sent for operations off the US East coast, destroyed the Canadian tanker SS Victolite, 11,410 tons, bound for Venezuela. 36-12N 67-14W. None of Victolite's crew survived.
• 1942. February 18. The huge Free French submarine Surcouf, a frequent and popular visitor to Bermuda, ordered by the French Government in December 1927, launched on 18 October 1929 and commissioned in May 1934, was accidentally sunk by collision with the American freighter Thompson Lykes, on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Captured by the Royal Navy on July 3, 1940, instead of being sunk at Mers El Kebir, Surcouf was sent to Bermuda in June 1941, but from late July to late November, the boat was refitted in New England. Lost with all hands, it was the world's greatest submarine disaster to that date. Her range was 18,500 kilometers (about 10,000 nautical miles) at 10 knots, 12,600 kilometers (6,800 nautical miles) at 13.5 knots and 110 kilometers (60 nautical miles) at 5 knots, submerged. Her test depth was 80 meters or 250 feet. Her capacity was 280 tons. Her complement was 8 officers and 110 men. Her armament was two 203 mm (eight inch) guns in a twin turret, two 37 mm anti-aircraft cannon, four 13.2 mm anti-aircraft machine guns, eight 550 mm torpedo tubes, with fourteen torpedoes carried and four 400mm torpedo tubes, with eight torpedoes carried. She also carried one aircraft, a Besson MB 411 float plane. On February 12, she had left Bermuda for the war in the Pacific. An official joint U.S. and Free French report stated that she left Bermuda on 12 February and was accidentally rammed and sunk, with the accident due to both vessels running at night with no lights because of the menace of German U-boats. A later French investigation commission corrected the initial report and stated that the Surcouf had been sunk by US planes in the morning of the 18th in a "friendly fire" accident. There has been much other speculation.
• 1942. May 1. The ship James E. Newsom, 671 tons, was shelled by German U-boat U-69 northeast of Bermuda at 35-SON 59-40W. 
• 1942. May 5. The "Lady Drake" one of the much-loved Ladyboats, was torpedoed and sunk north of Bermuda at  35-43N 64-43N by German U-boat U-106, en route from Bermuda to Boston. As a result, the service stopped until 1947.
• 1942. May 22. The ship Frank B. Baird, 1,748 tons, was shelled by German U-boat U-158, south east of Bermuda at 28-03N 58-50W.
• 1942. June 7. USS Gannet (AVP-8) was sunk after being torpedoed by German submarine U-653 off Bermuda.
• 1942. June 30. The German U-boat U-158 was depth charged west of Bermuda by US naval aircraft.
• 1943. May 19. the Angelus, 255 tons, was shelled by German U-boat U-161, north of Bermuda at 38-40N 64-00W. 
• 1943. The introduction to Bermuda of a mosquito larvae-eating minnow in places including the Pembroke Canal.
• 1943 - 45. August. Appointed last week as new Governor and Commander in Chief of Bermuda was David George Brownlow Cecil, Lord Burghley. Young (38), straw-haired, a scion of the house of Cecil, which has furnished Britain with some of its most distinguished statesmen and soldiers. His father is the Marquess of Exeter; from him some day Lord Burghley will inherit enormous estates in Northamptonshire and Rutlandshire. His wife is a sister of the Duchess of Gloucester. 
• 1940s. Many new plant species were introduced to Bermuda.
• 1944. The House of Assembly enacted legislation granting women the right to vote. The first women to vote did so at a by-election in Paget on October 4.
• 1944. Bermudians Allan (Smokey) Wingood and Hugh Watlington, both Flight Lieutenants in the Royal Air Force, went to Buckingham Palace in London to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross and Distinguished Flying Medal respectively, for bravery in battle, from King George VI. They were flying Wellington bombers. They were accompanied by Mrs. Peggy Wingood, wife of Allan Wingood, and their baby daughter Katherine.
• 1944. Dr. E. F. Gordon, originally from Trinidad but by then a Bermudian, became President of the BWA.
• 1944. The Parliamentary Committee on Emigration issued a report noting that due to over-population, Government should look for places where Bermudians could emigrate.
• 1944, June. an Armed Forces Radio Station, which used the call sign WXLQ, transmitting on the 1240 kcs medium wave band frequency, went on the air from Kindley, for a two-year stint. At the same time and as a consequence, the Bermuda Government station, which had operated from a studio in the Walker Arcade in Hamilton since the war started in September, 1939, finally went off the air.
• 1944. June 19. Arrival in Bermuda (until May 20, 1945 of the captured German submarine (unterseeboot) U-505 and crew, held incommunicado until the end of the 1939-45 world war. She was a Type IXC/40 submarine, one of 54 of this type that got put into operation, a long-range warhorse of the German Navy that could operate in the Caribbean or Atlantic or Indian oceans without refueling. She went into service in 1941, with a range of 13,000 nautical miles.  She was captured off western Africa, towed to Bermuda and hidden, with no news of its capture until the end of the war in Europe on May 7, 1945. She was one of the U-boats which had departed from a massive concrete submarine pen at an occupied French port. Her target was the southeast Caribbean, where most of the fuel supplies for the Allies was shipped from Venezuela, Trinidad and Curaçao. She was built at the yards of Deutche Werft AG in Hamburg. Commanded by Oberleutnant Harald Lange, she was commissioned in August 1941. She was on her 12th patrol, having sunk eight vessels over those voyages. In February 1944, Lange took the boat south to the sea lanes off southwest Africa to prey on supply vessels bound for Europe with supplies such as iron ore. On June 4, she was intercepted by TF 22.3 under the command of Captain Daniel Gallery, USN and was depth-charged. Lange brought the damaged boat to the surface to save his men and thus surrendered, actions for which he was for a time after the war ostracized at Hamburg, although they had taken all standard procedures to scuttle the boat. Captain Gallery, USN, of Task Force 22.3 managed to get a boarding crew onto the U-505 before it could sink and they saved the boat intact. It was the first time since 1815 that the US Navy had captured an enemy vessel at sea. The men of TF 22.3 were sworn in writing to secrecy and the boat was towed across the Atlantic by USS Abnaki to the US Naval Operating Base at Bermuda, accompanied by the ships of TF 22.3, USS Guadalcanal, Chatelain, Pillsbury and Pope. The U-505 was destined to become one of the most famous submarines of the war, not only for its capture with secret code books and machines intact, but for its enduring presence as a memorial to men lost at sea as a major museum exhibit. The U-505 departed Bermuda for the Philadelphia Navy Yard on May 20, 1945 after 11 months undetected in the Great Sound, the crew having left for POW camps in the United States in the autumn of 1944. Oberleutnant Lange had been taken from the water unconscious and severely injured and at Bermuda a leg had to be amputated, so he remained here longer. While in Bermuda, Lange was cared for by a young nurse of the Jones family of 'Inwood', Shirley, the late wife of Lt. James Humphreys, USNR, of Paget. She related that Lange's major worry was that his wife would remarry in his absence, since it would have been assumed in Germany that the U-505 had been lost with all hands. Lange himself did not believe that his boat had survived the scuttling attempt until Captain Gallery showed him family articles from his cabin. The U-505 was taken to Chicago in 1954 and forms a major exhibit and war memorial at the Museum of Science and Industry. In the company of Rear Admiral Gallery, Harald Lange toured his last command in a meeting of friends in 1964. One member of the crew of the U-505 moved to Chicago and for several decades until his death was an intimate tour guide for the submarine. An outside display for many years, the U-505 has since been moved into a purpose-built building to ensure its survival into the future as the only Unterseeboot to survive the war above water.
• 1944. November 13. Direct taxation for Bermuda was the subject a major debate in the House of Assembly. The establishment of an income tax department was moved by Henry P. Vesey as chairman of the Finance Committee. He pointed out that customs duties were exceedingly high and had a direct impact on the cost of living. He suggested relief in this area by imposing, in the place of customs duties, a form of income tax to spread the burden of taxation more evenly. The motion was defeated. Also thrown out were land tax and inheritance tax. Both Mr. Vesey and Mr. Eldon H. Trimingham, as Deputy chairman of the Finance Committee, submitted their resignations from the latter, as they had submitted their recommendations on a matter of principle and had the courage to believe it was the right thing to do.
• 1944. Castle Harbour was changed forever by the completion of construction of the USA's Fort Bell, later a US Army Air Force, later a USAF, later a US Navy base.
• 1944. In August, the Royal Canadian Navy established a small training base at Convicts Bay, St George's, which was commissioned HMCS Somers Isles (eventually decommissioned in October 1945 but not before 125 RCN and 12 RN escorts passed through before going to the war. 
• 1945. January. An American Army Hospital ship got stuck in the reefs off Bermuda.
• 1945. Howard Academy began in Bermuda as a place for secondary education for black children.
• 1945. Dr. E. F. Gordon, MCP, President of the Bermuda Workers Association, a Trinidadian doctor of medicine who had studied at Edinburgh University, qualified in Britain and then settled in Bermuda, petitioned the British Government for democracy for Bermuda's working class and mostly black population.
• 1945. Founding of Bermuda Tuberculosis, Cancer & Health Association, to assist patients fighting TB.
• 1945. Elliott School # 1 became The Skinner School in Devonshire, Bermuda, under Mr. E. P. Skinner.
• 1946. First commercial flight to Kindley Field Airport, Bermuda. 
• 1946. The original Bermuda air travel agreement took its name from this island where UK and US transport officials met to negotiate a new, inter-governmental air services agreement between Britain and the United States. That agreement, which was highly restrictive at the insistence of the British negotiators who feared that "giving in" to US demands for a "free-for-all" would lead to the then financially and operationally superior US airlines' total domination of the global air transport industry, was the world's first bilateral air services agreement. It became a blueprint for all subsequent air services agreements.
• 1946. The Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Bermuda was purchased from the Crisson family by the Pimental family and remained in their hands until 1950.
• 1946. The Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) was formed from the membership of and to replace the BWA. Dr E. F. Gordon took a petition to the post war Labor government in the UK. It protested the racial and economic conditions in Bermuda.
• 1946. April. The Public Transportation Board (PTB) launched its first bus service on the island. The first six buses were 21-seater Model 773s from the Yellow Bus Company. The original buses were left-hand drive, which meant passengers had to alight into traffic.
• 1946. On September 1, automobiles were allowed by law in Bermuda, after being banned for over 40 years except for the military in World War 2.
• 1946. ZBM Radio began broadcasting in Bermuda, 26 years after birth of radio broadcasting in Pittsburgh, PA in 1920 and 16 years of the first-ever commercial radio station in Bermuda in 1930 by Thomas Wadson . It was Bermuda's second commercial radio station. It was owned by the Bermuda Broadcasting Company Ltd. (Z of ZBM is pronounced the English way). It broadcast at 1235 kHz on the AM band. 
• 1946. August 22. President Harry Truman of the USA arrived in Bermuda on the presidential yacht Williamsburg for a week-long informal stay. He swam, fished and toured the island by automobile.
• 1946. A cedar blight destroyed 98 percent of all cedar trees in Bermuda.
• 1946. November 30. Senior Representative of British Intelligence, Sir William Stephenson or code name "Intrepid", who helped to trap German spies and agents in the US (Stephenson was the wartime British security coordinator for the Western Hemisphere) received the Medal for Merit, highest honour the United States can grant a non-citizen, in a New York ceremony. (See AP photo at right). Major-General William J. Donovan presented the medal, with Col. G. Edward Buxton, wartime assistant OSS director, background, Mary Simmons, or Lady Stephenson as she became later. Sir William eventually settled in Bermuda. Sir William retired in 1964 and moved into a suite at The Princess with his wife. They eventually moved into a home in Paget were he lived until he died at the age of 93 in 1989. The hotel was closed at the start of the war. It was re-opened by the British Government with the nickname, "Bletchley in the Tropics" after Bletchley Park, the English country house where the "Enigma" code was broken. The Hamilton Princess Hotel was  the censors' headquarters, the base for intense intelligence operations for the British Government during the Second World War. The hotel was the operations centre for twelve hundred secret agents, experts, scientists and linguists in the former Adam Lounge, dubbed Room 99, from 1940 to 1945. It was chosen because of because of it's strategic geographic location. Working out of a two-storey wooden building, the Gazebo Lounge and the Adam Lounge, the Gold Lounge today, the men intercepted all postal, telegraph and radio traffic between the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Flying boats to Darrell's island would drop off packages which were delivered by launch to the Princess dock. The mail was sorted in the present-day Gazebo Lounge area before being sent over to the Adam Lounge to check all the details. The parcels were then searched by the Imperial Censorship staff for microdot messages that could have been sent by German spies. The men would decode the secret correspondence, extract the letters from the tightly sealed envelopes and put them back without anyone knowing.
• 1947. October 14. Bermuda Sky Queen downed. She was the former Pan Am Boeing 314 Capetown Clipper (NC 18612), renamed Bermuda Sky Queen when she was taken over by non-scheduled carrier American International Airlines and put on the Poole UK) to New York route, via Foynes and Gander Lake. Most of the passengers were British delegates going to the United Nations. After severe and sustained high winds, the aircraft landed in the North Atlantic, near a combined weather and warship. Passengers were transferred to the ship in heavy seas via a line but the aircraft collided with the ship. Still afloat but a hazard to shipping, she was finally sunk by gunfire from the same American warship, the U. S. Coast Guard cutter Bibb. It was a combination ocean station patrol and search and rescue operation that brought Bibb and her crew international recognition when, while operating on Ocean Station Charlie, the Bermuda Sky Queen was forced to make a landing during a gale with high winds and in rough seas when the flying boat ran low on fuel. The Bibb, under the command of CAPT Paul D. Cronk, had picked up an aircraft on radar heading west at 0232 (GCT) on 14 October 1947. It was the Boeing 314 flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen (NC-18612), on a trans-Atlantic flight from Foynes, Ireland to Gander, Newfoundland with 62 passengers and 7 crew on board. After flying beyond Bibb, the pilot of the flying boat, Captain Charles M. Martin, decided to return to the cutter to attempt an emergency landing because unexpectedly strong head winds had caused the aircraft to consume too much fuel for them to make landfall safely. After establishing communications with Bibb, Martin made a successful landing in the 30-foot seas at 1004 (GCT) near the cutter. After maneuvering close to the Bibb to secure a mooring line, the flying boat lost control and collided with the cutter's hull, damaging the nose of the aircraft as well as both wings and their attached floats. With the waves cresting at 30 feet and the cutter rolling 30 to 35 degrees, getting the passengers and crew of the Bermuda Sky Queen aboard Bibb proved to be a tremendous challenge. Attempting various methods, including using a pulling boat and various rubber rafts from both the cutter and the flying boat, three passengers of the latter volunteered, only two hours before sunset, to attempt to make it to the cutter using one of the flying boat's small rafts. The Bibb laid down an oil slick downwind of the Bermuda Sky Queen prior to crossing her bow to create a lee for the three men. They then began paddling towards the cutter, but the seas were too great. As they cleared the flying boat, Bibb drifted as close a practicable and threw lines to the men, bringing them safely aboard. This method would prove impossible for the women and children on board, so the cutter launched her motor surfboat that towed a 15-man raft to the Queen. Using that raft as a bridge between the flying boat and the motor surf boat, the Coast Guardsmen managed to save 28 persons in three trips and get them back to Bibb. On the fourth trip, the surfboat, taking on water after being battered against the hull of Bibb, began to sink. Fortunately Bibb was able to pull all 21 survivors and Coast Guardsmen on board the surfboat and in the raft to safety, leaving 22 on board the Queen. One more attempt was made with a pulling boat that night, but again the rough seas and darkness prevented their success and captains Cronk and Martin agreed to wait until the next morning to save the remaining passengers and crew.
   The following morning the seas had abated somewhat and Cronk ordered a rescue attempt with his personal gig. After one successful trip, the gig's engine broke down and the Coast Guardsmen once again launched a pulling boat. The pulling boat successfully rescued the remaining passengers and crew and the captain's gig finally got its engine going again and both boats were then brought back aboard Bibb. Cronk and Martin agreed that it was impossible to tow the Queen to safety and Cronk then ordered her sunk as a hazard to navigation. Obtaining permission to leave the ocean station and return to Boston with all of the souls who had been on board the Queen, the cutter arrived to a hero's welcome. The rescue demonstrated the utility and importance of the ocean station program and historian Robert E. Johnson noted that "The Bermuda Sky Queen incident must rank with the Coast Guard's outstanding rescue feats."
• 1947. In Britain's House of Commons a White Paper on Bermuda was debated. The matters raised in Dr Gordon's petition were referred back to Bermuda for Bermudians to deal with.
• 1947. Kitson Insurance was established in Bermuda.
• 1947. Nurse Sylvia became the first black Bermudian to work at the Health Department and was the first Duty Nurse to become a Health Visitor.
• 1947. The "Lady Rodney" and re-floated, re-fitted "Lady Nelson" resumed their service between Canada and West Indies via Bermuda, until 1952.
• 1947. November 20.  Elizabeth Alexandra Mary - later, Queen Elizabeth II - and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, son of Prince Andrew of Greece, were married at Westminster Abbey in London.
• 1948. Bermuda Air Tours Ltd. established. Formed by Bermudian Flight Lieutenant Hugh Watlington, DFM, RAF, who during World War 2, flew bombers.
• 1948. The Building Authority established the first building standards and regulations in Bermuda.
• 1948. American International set up offices in Bermuda.
• 1948. "Queen of Bermuda" returned to her weekly cruises between New York City and Bermuda. She provided a much-welcomed economic boost to the Bermuda tourist trade, just beginning to get re-established following the end of World War 2. She was owned by the Furness Bermuda Line and had been refitted from her war-time roles, most recently as a troop transport.
• 1948. The British flagged ship Leicester - formerly the SS Samesk - was in tow off Bermuda.

SS Leicester being towed off Bermuda

• 1948. In Bermuda, the last train went from Hamilton along the 22 railway bridges between Somerset and St. George's.
• 1948. October 18. The manager of Bermuda's Belmont Manor Hotel stiffly requested the U.S. Navy to make the hotel "off bounds" for enlisted men. Rear Admiral Austin K. Doyle, the U.S. commandant, even more stiffly replied that he would put it off bounds for officers too. Said he: "The customs of my country do not permit discrimination between officers and men in public places."
• 1948. In a General Election in Bermuda, women cast their votes for the first time. Hilda Aitken was elected the first woman MP.
• 1948. A British passenger plane, 440 miles north east of Bermuda and heading for it, disappeared. 29 passengers and crew were lost without a trace.
• 1949. February. The 19-knot Queen of Bermuda, having survived the war, returned to the Bermuda run and sailed on it until, when deep into maritime old age, she was sold to scrappers up in Scotland in late 1966.
• 1949. Bermuda lost forever the one-track Bermuda railway, the most expensive train ever built. It began in the early 1930s and once brought trains right up to the pier for bigger ships. The train carried millions of tourists in its eighteen years. It was sold to Guyana in 1948 and shipped in 1949. Some of the original track still exists, now a walk.
• 1950. Argus Insurance was established through a need for medical insurance and it also formed the Somers Isles Insurance Company.
• 1950. Major Cuthbert Brook-Smith (he appears in the Army Lists as C B Smith but used the surname Brook-Smith) - pictured here on the right - was posted to Bermuda as GSO II to the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda. He was there as a staff officer (not in any way attached to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry posted there later). He had been commissioned into the King's Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) on 30th January 1936.  He was appointed temporary Lt Col on 28th June 1945 but reverted to his substantive rank of Major shortly afterwards. In Bermuda, he married a Bermudian, the daughter of Mrs. Helen Arnell. (His brother-in-law was Jack Arnell). He relinquished his appointment in Bermuda in 1952 and returned to 1 KSLI. He took over command of the Battalion in Kenya. It is believed that he accidentally walked into an ambush that had been set on a track to lure the Mau Mau, but instead he was shot by members of his own unit and died instantly. He was buried in Kenya.
• 1950. On 1st February, the Bermuda Reserve Constabulary was formed officially (and legislated on July 1, 1951). In the late 1990s it was renamed the Bermuda Reserve Police.
• 1950. The Marketplace grocery store in Bermuda changed hands again, from the Pimental family to Mr. Fernance Perry. In 1960, he formed a limited liability company, Piggly Wiggly Limited. In 1964, he decided to expand in a westerly direction and built the Somerset Piggly Wiggly Plaza. The following year the decision was made to expand again, this time in an easterly direction, and the Shelly Bay Piggly Wiggly Plaza was built. Nine years later in 1974, the Heron Bay Piggly Wiggly Plaza was completed. 
• 1950. July 1. The US Naval Operating Base in Bermuda was decommissioned and became, instead, the US Naval Station.
• 1950. 1st August. The Bermuda Red Cross was established as a branch of the British Red Cross Society, initially as a nursing reserve. At its opening ceremony were Governor Alexander Hood, Patron; Lady Hood, President; Mrs W. D. Tucker, Hon Vice President; Mrs Winifred Rogers, Hon Vice President; Rev. Keith Harmon, Director; Mrs. Thomas Hall, Secretary; Roderick A. Ferguson, Treasurer; Dr. W. E. Talbot, Medical Officer; Mrs. Betty Frith, Jr. Red Cross.
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