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Bermuda's Royal Navy base at Ireland Island began in 1815

It became a naval arsenal and fortress to defend against the USA

line drawing

Royal Navy in Bermuda

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

To refer by e-mail to this file use "bermuda-online.org/rnd" as your Subject

This is Part 1. Also see Part 2. His other files on Bermuda relating to military matters and civil aviation include Airlines serving Bermuda - American Bases in Bermuda from 1941 to 1995  - Bermuda Aviation History Pioneers Civilian and Military - Bermuda International Airport.

History

On the African Diaspora Heritage Trail because part of it was built by slaves as well as convicts shipped from Britain.

Bermuda Royal Naval Dockyard Its initial stages were in 1795. The loss of most of the American colonies in the American Revolution left Bermuda as the only British port between Halifax and the West Indies: an ideal location for a Royal Navy dockyard. Later - after 1814 - it was largely credited to Arthur Wesley - later Wellesley -  the 1st Duke of Wellington (once a colonel in the 33rd Foot in 1795). Especially after the War of 1812-14, the Royal Naval Dockyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was considered too vulnerable to attack from America. In 1818, the Royal Navy Dockyard in Halifax was moved to Bermuda.  Halifax suffered a further economic malaise for a few years, that had started when peace was declared in 1815 between the USA and Britain. Bermuda, beyond the operating range of the United States Navy, isolated but in the strategic mid Atlantic, was ideal for a surprise Royal Navy attack. 
Royal Navy buildings The British Government needed to retaliate in the event of any invasion of Bermuda or Canada by Americans or their allies. The credit goes to Rear Admiral Sir George Murray of the Royal Navy. He commanded its North American Squadron. He appointed two young Royal Navy lieutenants to the task of charting Bermuda's waters so the Royal Navy could use them. One was Thomas Hurd. The other was Andrew Evans. (Both later became captains). Murray arranged with the Admiralty in London for his flagship the 74 gun triple decked ship HMS Resolution to call at Bermuda in 1795, with sloops HMS Cleopatra and HMS Thesly. 
Royal Navy off Dockyard They tested the theory advanced by Hurd that a series of natural channels through the reefs of Bermuda could be navigated with caution. On board the flagship as a pilot was black Bermudian slave Jeremy Darrell. Murray was  pleased with Darrell and requested his freedom. Governor Crauford agreed. This was why Ireland Island in Sandys Parish, the former separate, narrow serrated island that pushes out into the Atlantic at the extreme north west of Bermuda, started to become, from 1809 when it was acquired by the British Admiralty, a Royal Navy base of one-time huge significance.

Admirals & Commanders in Chief, Bermuda

They were the first Bermuda based commanders of this Station.

North America & West Indian Station (as it then became)

North America Station (as it then became)

North America & Lakes of Canada Squadron (as it then became)

St. Lawrence River and Coast of America (as it then became) 

North America & N.F.L.D (as it then became) 

North America & West Indies Station (as it then became) 

(Included Halifax).

1907-1914. Appointment lapsed officially

Held temporarily by Admirals commanding Fourth Cruiser Squadron

America & West Indies Squadron (established 1 July, 1927, as the station HQ then became)

Western Atlantic Squadron

Station ended, but HMS Malabar continued. It shut  down officially in stages from 1953. Commanding Officers included Commander J. A. Startin, RN who served from 1986 to 1990.

Admiralty House, Pembroke Parish

Admiralty House, in Pembroke Parish, where the Admirals lived and had their offices

Commencement

Before the base was built, The Royal Navy invested heavily in a Bermuda-based program of building small, fast vessels out of Bermuda cedar. Such vessels had been used in Bermuda since 1609. 

In rapid succession in 1803, the British Admiralty issued draught no. 3275, issued by the Navy Office in July for building two sloops of war in Bermuda; draught no. 3276, for building the two sloops Bermuda and Indian (the brother of famous British writer Jane Austen, later an Admiral, commanded the latter from her commissioning in Bermuda); draught No. 3278, as an addition to No. 3276, for fitting out the Bermuda and Indian; draught No. 4540, for work on the navy schooners Dispatch and Advice; and draught no. 4541, for supplementing the building of the Dispatch and Advice.

 Admiral Horatio Nelson

Bermuda sloop early 19th century

Bermuda-built sloops - similar to the one shown above - had unique advantages. Their construction from Bermuda cedar ensured they were durable and resistant to shipworm. Cedar was plentiful then and unlike oak, from which many of the larger ships were made in the United Kingdom, did not require seasoning. 

One such Bermuda-built schooner established her own special claim to fame in 1805. She was the small warship HMS Pickle of the Royal Navy. Earlier, she had been the civilian vessel Sting. She played a unique role in the Battle of Trafalgar in which the Royal Navy, with 448 dead and 1,241 wounded, soundly defeated the French. Their navy had 4,408 dead, 1,545 wounded and lost 23 of their 33 ships in the battle. HMS Pickle was the fastest and one of the hardiest ships in the Royal Navy. Thus it was chosen to cover the 1,000 mile journey from Cape Trafalgar to England with exclusive news of the battle. It was a 9-day journey, during which the ship ran into a gale. On arrival at Falmouth, the officer with the dispatch raced to Whitehall in London by horse and carriage. He arrived at 3 am. Prime Minister William Pitt, the King and Royal Family and newspapers, were awoken to hear the news of the victory and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson.

In 1808, three years after she achieved her claim to fame at the Battle of Trafalgar, the Bermuda-built cedar schooner HMS Pickle struck a shoal when entering the Spanish port of Cadiz and was lost.

The Royal Navy started moving in from 1809 when the Ireland Island was acquired. It has a separate history from the rest of Bermuda. It is named after an individual, not a country. Because there was a fear of leprosy, all on the island had to leave their jungle of cedar and swine and wooden houses thatched with palmetto. Until it became a major Royal Navy base there were no roads and only a few inhabitants. Then it was completely separate from Main and Somerset Islands. (It became connected to other islands via several bridges first built in the late 1800s). When work began here in 1809, main weapons were light.

1810. May 4. A Royal Navy Captain of H.M.S. Swiftsure jumped overboard, "in a fit of temporary derangement", and was drowned, off the Bermudas. He was Captain John Conn R.N. (August 1764 - 4 May 1810), a senior captain, whose shining career included service at the battles of the Saintes, the Glorious First of June, Copenhagen and Trafalgar ended tragically in a shipboard accident before he could reap the rewards of his long service. Conn could also claim membership of Nelson's "Band of Brothers", a clique of dashing naval officers who participated in Nelson's campaigns during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as a close friendship with the admiral himself, who once said: A better or more zealous officer than Captain Conn is not in His Majesty's service. Born to a Royal Navy warrant officer of Irish extraction in Devon, England, on 1764, Conn gained first hand experience of the sea at twelve on his father's ship HMS Weasel, before securing a place on HMS Arrogant as a midshipman on board which he saw action at the battle of the Saintes in 1782. In 1788 he was made a lieutenant but had to wait five years before being given a good position, during which married Margaret, a vicar's daughter. Serving aboard the flagship HMS Royal Sovereign at the Glorious First of June, he came to the attention of Admiral Lord Howe and further distinguished himself in 1798 in HMS Foudroyant at the battle of Donegal which resulted in the destruction of a French invasion fleet headed for Ireland. In 1801 As a commander at the first battle of Copenhagen, his expertise with bomb vessels caused terrible damage to the Danish fleet, and he participated in Nelson's disastrous attack on the French invasion force in Boulogne shortly afterwards, gaining his commanding officers attention and respect. Promoted to Post Captain in 1802, Conn commanded the veteran ship HMS Culloden accompanied by his nine year old son Henry, before transferring to the French prize ship HMS Canopus and being specially requested by Nelson in the Mediterranean. In 1805 he was given temporary command of the first rate flagship HMS Victory and his old ship HMS Royal Sovereign whilst their commanders were on leave and further contributed to his reputation as a reliable and steady officer. On 10 October he returned the Royal Sovereign to Admiral Collingwood and was given the fast new second rate HMS Dreadnought to command. Eleven days later Conn and his crew where thrown into battle as the Franco-Spanish fleet attempted to break out of Cadiz. Situated halfway down Collongwood's division, Conn struggled to reach the action, only getting there around the time Nelson was mortally wounded in the northern division. Making up for the delay, Dreadnought tangled with the San Juan Nepomuceno, rescuing the battered HMS Bellerophon, killing the Spanish captain Cosmé Damián Churruca and forcing his ship to surrender. Charging on from this victory, the Dreadnought engaged the Spanish flagship Principe de Asturias, mortally wounding the Spanish admiral, but being unable to defeat the enemy, which succeeded in escaping back to Cadiz. Conn even managed to rescue his prize, the San Juan Nepomuceno being one of only four captured enemy ships to survive the storm. Following the battle, in which Dreadnought suffered 33 casualties, Conn continued in service taking over the massive 112 gun HMS San Josef and then the 120 gun HMS Hibernia as flag captain before moving as a commodore to the West Indies in HMS Swiftsure in 1810. Admirals' rank and the honours which came with it were surely not far away when tragedy struck on the 4 May when during the chase of a small French ship near Bermuda, Conn became overeager, slipped and fell overboard. Swiftsure was halted and a search was conducted but Conn had drowned before help arrived. His passing was mourned in Britain and especially in the Navy where he was a popular and respected figure. Sir John Borlase Warren, an old commander and friend, expressed regret at the death of so deserving an officer as Captain Conn.

1814-1868 developments

wooden Royal Navy ship 2By 1814, construction was well under way to switch the location of the Royal Navy base from Castle Harbour to Ireland Island. In July, after another declaration of war between Britain and the USA, a Royal Navy fleet with Royal Marines and soldiers assembled in Bermuda and sailed to attack and burn principal buildings, including the White House, in Washington DC in revenge for the American torching of Yorktown, now Toronto. 

Afterwards, off Baltimore as a detainee aboard a British warship, the American lawyer Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" - with its melody from a raucous British drinking song. 

Colonel (later Brigadier General) James Robertson Arnold, one of the two sons of Benedict Arnold and his Loyalist wife Margaret Peggy Shippen of Philadelphia and - like his mother, American born - went to Canada with his family and was educated at King's College School. He avenged his father's humiliation in America by joining the British Army. From Halifax, he was the first Royal Engineer to fortify, in 1816, the new Bermuda Dockyard against the USA. In 1818, he did the same thing at the Citadel in Halifax.

From 1814, the Dockyard defended the British military machine in Bermuda against any possible attack by the United States and others. Hawkish individuals wanted the USA to seize Bermuda as war reparations or in retaliation for how Bermudians supported the Confederacy and the ships from Britain that preyed on Union shipping.

For big guns to defend dockyards adequately, smooth bore cannon, developed in the 1500's, had to be more effective. One temporary British answer was the development of the carronade in about 1779. The Royal Navy brought them to Bermuda as effective weapons.

Convicts labored at Dockyard dawn to dusk from 1824 (to 1863)

hulk021824 marked the arrival in Bermuda on February 4 of the first ship of the white convicts labor force, on the Antelope, 300 of them with guards. From 1824 to 1863, the British Government shipped thousands of British convicts from London prisons or English prison hulks to Bermuda to build the Dockyard. The hulks were once ships of the line that had fought at Trafalgar and elsewhere. Masts were taken off and extra decking and roofs were erected to make places on incarceration.

British convicts who were exiled in chain gangs to Bermuda at that time included debtors, unemployed mill hands goaded into riots in Britain by starvation, Irish nationalists, Welsh debtors, Scotsmen defiantly and violently protesting the Clearances from the northern Highlands of Sutherland and Caithness in particular, defaulting bankers, sheep steelers, poachers and petty thieves.

They all wore the Broad Arrow - used to identify property of the government and probably best known on convicts' uniforms. It has its origins from when Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney, Master of Ordnance to William and Mary, was asked to mark all government property to reduce theft. He chose to use his family emblem which is a broad arrow, or Pheon, and this is still in use today by the UK government 300 years later.

The decision to send them to Bermuda had an interesting origin. 

Painting of prison hulk by Edward K. James, 1863 After the War of 1812 to 1814, there were continuing disputes between the British and Americans over the boundaries between Canada and the United States. The military authorities saw this as future trouble. They were informed that work on building the dockyard was proceeding far too slowly. Providing the convict labor force was a cheap and effective way to overcome the problem, get the base built cheaply and isolate the trouble-makers. Bermuda was selected as a convict station in preference to Sierra Leone in Africa or Canada. Without the Dockyard, Bermuda would have had none, all would have been sent to Australia instead. As it was, it received 8 for every 1 sent to Bermuda. Transported to hard labor in the colony for six to eight years in the same way British convicts had been once been condemned in Virginia and elsewhere in the USA until the American Revolution in 1776, the prisoners lived on rotting Royal Navy prison hulks - including some from the Battle of Trafalgar 20 or more years earlier - and worked from sunrise to sunset to build the naval bastion and fortress. 
Painting of burning prison hulk by Edward K. James 1963 Most were still wearing chains of bondage as convicts when Bermuda's blacks were freed from all vestiges of slavery in the 1840s. Only when the sentences of the convicts was served if they still lived - because 20% died in Bermuda or on the way there - were they allowed to remain as free colonists. The British convict cemetery is behind Albert Row on Ireland Island South, via a left turn onto one way Cochrane Road (named after Admiral Cochrane). About 2,000 of the 9,000 convicts died here from yellow fever or other diseases and were buried there, but the graves of many are no longer visible. Note the Redman headstone in the grave yard at Boaz Island which reads "Killed One Day, Died the Next." Nearby, past a tall stone chimney, is a weathered limestone formation known as Pulpit Rock, from the convicts who were denied freedom of worship. Because of the social stigma in Bermuda attached to the convicts, 98% of those who survived elected to go back home to England or Wales or Scotland or Ireland, or emigrate to Canada or USA after they had served their sentences.   
Royal Navy at Dockyard Possessions of the convicts from the 19th century found much later were of value only to the convicts who made them illegally. The Colonial Times of 1826 reported the situation then prevailing as follows: "At the termination of the assizes or sessions, the keepers of the various gaols throughout the kingdom are required to transmit to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, a list of prisoners who have received sentence of transportation, and an order is then forwarded, directing to which of the hulks they are to be conveyed. On their arrival, they are immediately stripped and washed, clothed in coarse grey jackets and breeches, and two irons placed on one of the legs, to which degradation everyone must submit, let his previous rank have been what it may. They are sent out in gangs of a certain number to work on shore, guarded by soldiers. A strict account is kept of the labour performed by each gang, there being a scale by which it is calculated, and out of each shilling earned for the Government by the prisoner, he is entitled to a penny, which is carried to his credit; but of this he receives only one third part weekly, the remainder being left to accumulate until the expiration of the term which he is doomed to serve. 

Bermuda convict hulk"Thus it sometimes happens that a man who has been six or seven years on board the hulks, on his discharge is put in possession of ten or twelve pound, and is also supplied with an addition sum of money to defray his travelling expenses home. The strictest discipline is maintained, and extreme cleanliness enforced in the vessels. The diet daily allowed is a pound and a quarter of bread; a quart of thick gruel, morning and evening; on four days of a week, a piece of meat weighing 14 ounces before it is cooked; and on the other three days in lieu of meat, a quarter of a pound of cheese, also an allowance of small beer; and on certain occasions, when work peculiarly fatiguing and laborious is required, a portion of strong beer is served out; no where [except in the Colonies] does a good behavior meet its reward more than at the hulks. A chronicle is kept of the conduct of each, and the Captain and Chaplain have the privilege of recommending annually a certain number as fit objects for a mitigation of punishment, so that it frequently occurs that a man sentenced to seven years transportation, serves only three years and a half or four years; there are also other inducements to orderly conduct, such as having the irons lightened and being promoted to little appointments which relieve from severe labour. Besides those who are retained to serve out their term of transportation in England, thousands are every year sent to these colonies, upon an average about six transports arrive annually in Van Diemen's Land; and about twelve in New South Wales. Amongst others who are actually transported to the Colonies, such are invariably selected as are known to be old offenders, and those who appear to be incorrigible. One ship, the Bellerophon, at Sheerness, is appropriated exclusively to a reception of boys, not exceeding 16 years of age, most of whom are not expatriated, but are taught various trades, such as shoemaking, tailors work, bookbinding and etc. The morals of these youthful delinquents, some of whom are not more than ten years old, are very carefully attended to; it is, however, a lamentable fact, that not withstanding the severe lessons taught by the discipline of the hulks, very many instances occur of prisoners who have been discharged, again returning to habits of dishonesty, and, again incurring the penalty of transportation, eventually banished to these Colonies. The Penitentiary, at Millbank, was erected in order to serve some measure as a substitute for the hulks or exportation, but it is sufficiently notorious that this gigantic establishment which has cost the Mother County near a million of money, has hitherto most lamentably disappointed the expectation of its projectors, both in a moral and political point of view. About two years back, when much sickness prevailed in the penitentiary, an Act of Parliament was passed, to enable His Majesty to remove the prisoners from thence to the Hulks, and a certain number were draughted to each ship. These are said to have exhibited little symptoms of reformation, but, on the contrary, were generally found to be the most refactory. We have drawn this statement ,and we place it before the Public to convince them of the difference between the usage of American prisoners, and those subjected to a penal bond in the Colonies we inhabit; and we are the more eager to do so at the present period, from the influx of prisoners from England and the penal settlements, otherwise we should not have been induced to have entered thus fully into this subject." Source - CT Sept 1 1826.

Few in Bermuda or the United Kingdom will admit they are descended from convicts, unlike in Australia where it has become a source of pride that many there are descended from men sent there as convicts for offences that today are so minor no-one is imprisoned at all.  But it is known that some - not many - of the wives and children were voluntarily transported to Bermuda so as not to completely break the family ties.

In addition to building the Dockyard, they also constructed parts of Pembroke Parish, for example, the caves and secret hideout at Admiralty House. 

Trial records for convicts tried in England can be found primarily, not in Bermuda but at the London Public Record Office (PRO) in Kew or at the County Record Office responsible for the place where the trial occurred. Generally in the UK, for British convicts sent to Bermuda, Assizes Court records are held at the PRO while Quarter Sessions records are held in local County Record Offices.

For more information in Bermuda on the convicts, see the books:

One of the books that circulated at the time in Bermuda was the 1834 publication "An historical view of the progress of the physical and mathematical sciences."  The author was Baden Powell, the father of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. Handwritten in the margins of the book, on two different pages, is "The Ireland Island Library Association" and the "Bermuda Convict Establishment". The author's brother-in-law, Sir  Henry Augustus Smyth, was an army officer who served in Bermuda between 1847 and 1851. He was in the Royal Artillery which then helped to guard the Dockyard as well as other places. He may well have brought this book with him, but possibly donated it to the library there when he left.

Hulks sent to Bermuda as convict prison ships included

1848 woodcut of HM Dockyard at Ireland Island, Bermuda

1848 woodcut showing prison hulks moored off Ireland Island, Bermuda. Sent in 1989 by a Royal Navy contact who believed it was commissioned by and for the Royal Navy and crafted aboard a Royal Navy pinnace based in Bermuda

Other events at Dockyard 1820s/1830s

In 1829, the 118-ton Bermuda-built cedar privateer, completed in 1825, also with the name Pickle in honor of the vessel of 1803, took part in a severe Royal Navy action of the northeast coast of Cuba that resulted in the capture of a Spanish slave-trading ship, the Boladora and the release of 330 slaves aboard.

By the 1830s the Dockyard and forts elsewhere in Bermuda were fully armed. The Old Cooperage building was built by the Royal Navy in 1831 for navy storage (now the Bermuda Arts Center, the creative workshop of local artisans and artists, open 7 days a week).

Mid 1800s

Bermuda Marime Museum 2One of the buildings usually completely overlooked by visitors is Lefroy House, named in the 1960s (after the Royal Navy left in the 1950s) after the famous Bermuda Governor and historian in later life. See "Friends of Lefroy House." Ireland Island, Sandys. Phone 234-0525. Fax 234-2152. Adult day care center for seniors. Registered charity 393. But its significance here is that it was built by the Royal Navy in its Dockyard days and was its shore-based hospital. (It served heroically during World War 2). It is before you get to the Dockyard proper.

From the mid 1800s on, the exploding shell and use of rifling inside a gun barrel improved range and accuracy. Rifled muzzle loading and rifled breech loading guns were also much easier, safer and quicker to load and fire. The Royal Navy brought them to Bermuda in quantity to fight off an enemy.

Commissioner's House in Bermuda was restored in 2000 after long years of neglect.  The Bermuda Government contributed US$ 500,000 in a new partnership with the Maritime Museum. It has now been reopened as a second museum. 

It is identical in name to properties at other Royal Navy bases. It is so-called because it was the home and office of the Royal Naval Dockyard Commissioner. It has the distinction of being the oldest cast iron building in British military history (it is exceeded in age only by a few buildings in the USA where cast iron buildings were pioneered). 

It was an iron and steel framework shipped from the United Kingdom. It caused a monumental scandal because of its huge cost to British taxpayers. It became HMS Malabar VI and remained so until paid off. In front of and below it - see picture above - is the replica of the original bowsprit of a one famous Royal Navy vessel (with the author next to it).

Clocktower MallThe Great Eastern Storehouse, huge - pictured - with 3 foot walls and 100 foot towers, was built in 1856. 

The clock on the south tower was cast in England in 1857 by John Moore and Sons. 

What seems to be a single hand clock on the eastern side of the north tower is a rare "tide clock." 

In Royal Navy days, the hand was set daily to indicate the time of high tide. Grassy areas lead to deep water berths. Today, it is a shopping mall - the Clocktower Mall. 

By 1857, the Keep at the Dockyard surrounded on three sides by sea water - had 68 guns, mostly of 24 and 32 pounds in ammunition size and range. In those days of Imperial sea power, one gun in the latter weight could fire a 32 pound ball for a distance of 1,000 yards. From these, shells were carried to the guns on special systems. 

The grim building of Casemates (below - described by name in Somerset Parish  - was once solid rock. It is one of the most important - and second-oldest of the Dockyard buildings. It was built from convict labor in the 1830s as a barracks for Royal Marines. 

Casemate Barracks - as it was then called - was so named after an English military facility and was a barracks for the men of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, then responsible for the defence of the Dockyard.  The "casemate" refers to the fact that  its roof, vaulted in brick and concrete some eight feet thick, was built to make it bomb-proof against the incoming cannon balls and mortar shot of the day. At one time (1848), Casemates was the barracks of the 42nd Highlanders (Black Watch). They were then guarding the convicts building the Dockyard.

  Its yard is a flat, white wasteland created by the blasting away of its hard limestone, to give slaves (until 1834), free men and jailbirds from England (until 1863) the raw material from which they laboriously shaped each and every rock that made up the fortifications. The walls are several feet thick and made of specially-treated local limestone needed no plastering to make them waterproof.

It had two floors with accommodation for 120 officers and men, along with canteens, messes and offices. There was a veranda - needing restoration - on three sides of the building on the ground floor. The well that forms the roof has unparalleled views of the Dockyard to the northeast and the building, given its construction,  was capable of being used as a fort. On either side of the Barracks was an ordnance yard, still with gunpowder storage buildings, or magazines. 

Casemates
(In World War II from 1939 for Britain and its Commonwealth, the Royal Canadian Navy had an Anti-Submarine warfare training base here). It was under Royal Navy auspices. 

When the Royal Navy left, it became the main Bermuda corrections center (prison) for convicted criminals until 1995. There was even an execution or two here in the 1970's. 

It was such a damp, forbidding, gloomy place that the Bermuda Government built a brand new prison nearby, to make it more humane. The old building is still there, not used at this time. 

In recent years, but without success to date, there have been proposals to create a hotel from the prison. It has also been suggested that the Bermuda Archives be relocated here.

Hulks sent to Bermuda for non-convict purposes included

How used initially and subsequently. 

1847

by Captain Sir Michael Seymour, RN, May 1847

Captain Sir Michael Seymour painted this scene from Commissioner's House in May, 1847. 

He commanded HMS Vindictive on the North America and West Indies Station from 1845 to 1848. Note the prison hulks on the left side. The Victualling Yard had not yet been built.

Fleet movements 1862

Fleet of Dockyard 1862

English engraving of Royal Navy ships at anchor off Dockyard, 1962

Floating Dock 1869

The earliest dock proposal was made in 1823 but in 1827 the Clerk of the Works argued that the local rock was too heterogeneous and porous for an efficient coffer dam. But a slip was started to careen the hulls of ships and is still there. The idea of a floating dock was discarded for a generation. It was stated that the new slip had to be capable of accommodating two 46-gun frigates. Correspondence was renewed in 1852 on the relative merits of a dry-dock, a slip and a floating dock. At that time, it was specified that the largest vessel to be considered would have the bean of the Terrible and the length of the Simoom, or the size of an 80-gun ship as these were the largest that could come through the Narrows in the channel widened for ships.

In 1854, a 600-foot slip was proposed at a cost of 35,000 pounds sterling but considered too costly. Three years later there was a plan for a dry-dock and yet another slip in 1862. Then it was decided Bermuda should have a floating dock. It was built by English floating dock engineers Campbell & Johnstone at Blackwall on the River Thames and completed on June 23, 1869.

Floating Dock 1

Floating Dock 2

Floating Dock arrives in Bermuda 1869

Royal Navy floating dock in Bermuda (37252 bytes)

She was towed out by the HMS Agincourt and HMS Northumberland as far as Porto Santo, Madeira, where HMS Warrior (Britain's first iron-hulled battleship, built in Blackwall on the River Thames in 1860 as a counter to the naval ambitions of Emperor Napoleon III of France, the fastest, largest, strongest and best-armed warship in the world but by 1869 she was obsolete) and HMS Black Prince took over. With HMS Terrible and a small gunboat fast astern, the voyage took 35 days. The ships and the floating dock arrived off Ireland Island on July 28. The floating dock lay in Grassy Bay until the following April when it was brought to the North Basin and moored against the Great Wharf.

As a functioning Dockyard, this facility had ammunition depots, deep water berths, barracks, chapels, soldiers and sailors to guard it. The soldiers were based at the fort here, the largest in Bermuda (now the Bermuda Maritime Museum).

From the 1870s

Royal Navy in BermudaThe Keep was freshly equipped in the 1870's until 1905. Concrete emplacements for 10 inch rifled muzzle loading guns were built on five of the bastions. One could fire a 400 pound exploding shell for a distance of 4,800 yards. Two new magazines for ammunition were also built. In the 1880s, the Royal Navy brought modern breech loading guns with steel barrels to Bermuda, in accordance with the rearmament at British dockyards in Britain, Canada and Malta.

What is now the Queen's Exhibition Hall was a magazine built in the late 1800s for 4,860 kegs of gunpowder. The Shifting House once handled ordnance for naval vessels.

Not until after 1900 did the USA and Britain become allies, which is why so many land based forts were built in Bermuda in the 19th century. They and their powerful, long range, hill-top coastline cannons discouraged an enemy from seizing Bermuda. All the forts in the Western Parishes were designed to help protect the Dockyard. It was Britain's Atlantic naval base headquarters from Canada's Great Lakes to the Caribbean and remote islands of the South Atlantic. It was the Citadel of the Western Atlantic and Gibraltar of the West.

In the early 1900's, three 4.7 inch quick firing modern breech loading guns - mostly to guard against torpedo boats -and four new six inch breech loading guns were mounted on the bastions. Each was supplied by an underground magazine. Under this further improved system, a six inch gun could fire a 100 pound exploding shell for 12,000 yards.

Also in the 1870s, Cockburn's Cut - named after a former Admiral - was excavated. It is between Ireland Island north and south. The year of construction of the bridge was 1896.

1880 - 1885

Drawing by Royal Navy Dockyard Bermuda parson Dr. Penny

From 1880 to 1885, Dr. Edward Lewton Penny was the Dockyard parson, schoolmaster and librarian. A scholar, he described himself in Latin as "unhappily submerged and badly treated in the Bermuda Islands. " In this sketch by him he notes in Greek that the man who borrows a volume and does not return it is committing a sin. He hoped for the best but expected the worst.

Continued in

Bermuda's Royal Navy base to 1953 (Part 2)

Bermuda's Royal Navy Ships Crests Walls

Other military files

American military quit Bermuda in 1995 Bermuda Forts built by the British Army British Army in Bermuda

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