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This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series on the Dockyard. Also see Part 1. 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.

Bibliography

"The Andrews And The Onions", by Lt. Commander Ian Strannack, RN

World War 1, 1920s and 1930s

The Dockyard was a strategic overseas naval coaling and classified wireless telegraphy transmission station for the Royal Navy. Whole areas of land had tall wireless masts and special fittings. During this period, hundreds of local boys and some lads from the Caribbean became apprentices at the Dockyard when they turned 13 or 14 years old. 

Ships steamed in and out almost on a daily basis. Apprentices helped to service them. Aptitude papers were kept by the Royal Navy. Young electricians were the most called for. 

Then there were pattern making, engineering, machine shop or woodworking areas for trainee shipwrights, joiners or carpenters. In those days, there were many specialist buildings at the Dockyard, including a Spar theater, hospital, cinema, cooperative stores for clothing, pharmaceuticals, canteen, officers' club and quarters, books, cafeterias.

There was also a ginger beer plant and place where rum was imported in 55 gallon casks and dispensed in a British style public house. There were separate schools for boys and girls of locally based servicemen - and where the latter could go for special adult training. In the social scene, there were pantomimes, an amateur naval orchestra and sports events.

From 1933 HMS Malabar and British Military seaplanes 

The word Malabar derives from the name of a district of India stretching about 145 miles along the west coast, south of Mangalore, in the general region of present-day Kerala. Its chief towns include Cannanore, Tellicheri, Calicut (Kozhikode), and Palghat. In its older, wider, and popular significance the Malabar Coast includes the whole southwest corner of India as far back as the ghaut line. The ancient form of the name was Male - "where the pepper grows" - thus the name Malayalam for the prevailing language. 

Referred to as HMS Malabar (in honour of a series of floating ships and shore facilities). From 1933, HMS Malabar in Bermuda was manned by RAF personnel, though under Royal Naval control until 25th May, 1939 when the Fleet Air Arm, reconstituted as a branch of the Royal Navy, rather than an RAF detachment, began replacing them with naval personnel.  

Its purpose as a station was to oversee the equipment and detachments to the naval vessels operating from the colony, within the Dockyard proper (on the dock beside the Stores building, on Ireland Island. It was how 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. 

The primary duties at HMS Malabar consisted of building up crated sea-planes, servicing, repairing and, when necessary, replacing aircraft from the fleet. These were mostly  used for artillery spotting, reconnaissance and opportunistic attack roles. 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 this name. (Later, HMS Malabar became the Signal Station in front of the Commissioner's House). 

Its crest was of a flaming sun with the motto "Our Guide" underneath. 

HMS Bermuda ships

From the 1800s to 1942, eight ships of the Royal Navy were named after Bermuda, including the mammoth Floating Dock of 1869, now rotting at Spanish Point. 

HMS Bermuda 1939 to 1965. See http://www.hmsgangestoterror.org/HMSBermuda.htm. The last HMS Bermuda was a light cruiser of the Colony Class, launched in 1941, decommissioned in 1962 and scrapped in 1965. HMS Bermuda (No. 8) was built by John Brown & Company at Clydebank, laid down in November 1938 and commissioned on August 21, 1942. Originally, the ship had 12 six-inch guns, anti-aircraft pieces and six torpedo tubes. During the war, she served in the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic and Arctic and finally in the Pacific theatre. In later years, the vessel was a part of NATO, but was taken out of service in 1962. Some silver objects given to HMS Bermuda by the island are now at the Bermuda Maritime Museum. She visited Bermuda 3 times:1958, Jul 1959, and Feb 1962.

1939. New Royal Naval Air Station (RNAS) on Boaz Island

The facility referred to above was far too limited, and placed in the busiest part of the base. It was decided to relocate it to Boaz Island, one of the under-used appendages to the Ireland Island facility. Here, two slipways were built, allowing the use of the Great Sound or the open waters to the west, depending on whether the winds blew from West or East. Two hangars were also built, and a workshop, though the full plans for the facility were never realized.

The RAF handed operations over to the Royal Navy on 3rd September, 1939-co-incidental with the re-location to Boaz Island ( and the same day volunteer units were mobilized in preparation for declaration of war on 8 September). Some RAF personnel were to remain until 1940 when 718 Squadron was disbanded and the remainder of its personnel were posted elsewhere. Fleet Air Arm (FAA) members were key players.

See the book "The Flying Boats Of Bermuda" by Colin A. Pomeroy

From 1939 to 1945

	Although primarily intended as a maintenance facility, on the advent of war, the FAA at Boaz Island found themselves tasked with more active roles. Bermuda quickly became a major form-up point for trans-Atlantic convoys and U-Boats were a constant menace. Establishing regular patrols proved to be very difficult as RNAS Boaz Island lacked its own aircrew. Patrols were flown with whatever pilots were on hand, including aircrew from the two RAF Commands at Darrell's Island, and pilots from the Bermuda Flying School (BFS). The Chief Flying Instructor of the BFS, Captain Edward Stafford, a US citizen, flew a number of such patrols in the navy's Walrus amphibians, as did other local pilots. In May 1942, the last FAA assets on Ireland Island moved to Boaz Island, now, technically, RNAS, Bermuda (HMS Malabar II--though it had been preceded by at least four or five others of that name). The FAA would lose a number of aircraft in the colony over the years, though primarily from visiting vessels. There is still an FAA Swordfish floatplane sitting at the bottom of the Great Sound. A Skua dive bomber crashed on the Port Royal golf course after a sudden drop in wind speed prevented her returning to HMS Illustrious, anchored in the Sound, and a Walrus met her end in the Great Sound). When the BFS was closed down in 1942 due to a surplus of aircrew, Captain Ed Stafford joined the RAF Ferry Command. Shot down, he was captured by the Germans and not liberated until 1945). Although RAF Transport Command was soon flying many Catalina maritime patrol aircraft through the colony at RAF Darrell's Island, the FAA provided the only aerial patrols of the surrounding Atlantic until establishment of a US Naval Kingfisher unit on the colony in 1941.
	They flew target towing sorties for ship and shore based AA guns, maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols. Personnel of all occupations and ranks often worked 24 hours a day, This Royal Navy base was one of the two most strategic British and Allied facilities in the North Atlantic. Its floating dry docks, towed across the Atlantic from Britain, provided the repairs most in demand by ships of all sizes. The cruisers HMS Ajax and Exeter which took part in the Battle of the River Plate, did so with aircraft serviced at RNAS Bermuda, having sailed from Bermuda before meeting the Graf Spee in December of that year. In six years of the conflict, artificers and engineers worked on merchant, Royal Navy and Allied ships damaged by German cruisers, pocket battleships and U-boats prowling Atlantic shipping sea lanes between Bermuda and New York. Nearly 600 vessels from all navies and merchant marines were repaired here and put back to sea.
	Dockyard based Royal Navy sea patrols rescued, processed and transported to Britain and Canada thousands of men, women and children from torpedoed Allied ships, many after days or nights at sea in open lifeboats. German prisoners of war were sent via Bermuda under naval guard to POW camps in Canada. The Royal Canadian Navy was also prominent in Bermuda then. There was an anti-submarine warfare training base under Royal Navy auspices. Part of it was at Casemates Barracks.  It spread east to Convict Bay in St. George's Parish, with the establishment in 1944 of HMCS Somers Isle.  Royal Canadian Navy ships also played a major role in the War of the Atlantic. When Britain signed its "50 Destroyers for Bases" deal with the USA, once again the dockyard was twinned with Halifax for strategic military purposes.
	Thousands of Royal Navy officers and men were conveyed from Bermuda to Halifax to take over 50 previously mothballed American naval ships. Many Swordfish aircraft were based here or at nearby Boaz Island and one crashed into the sea. There were also several Walrus torpedo bombers based in Bermuda to help the war effort. One crashed at Daniel's Head. A ditty was sung to the tune of "Meet Me in Dreamland" every time a ship steamed from the Dockyard. It went:  "Good bye, Ireland Island. Farewell the floating dock. Good-bye to spuds and onions. Chin chin the Dockyard Clock. And when the boat you go home in steams out of Grassy Bay, you'll love this place dearer when you're no nearer than three thousand miles away. "No defensive air or sea action was seen from either RNAS Bermuda or the Royal Navy based here, however (though the presence of locally-based aircraft overhead and the Royal Navy's Bermuda-based heavy guns may well have thwarted German attacks on vessels in local waters), When the worst of the Battle of the Atlantic was over - especially with the entrance of the United States into the war from December 1941 and with the build up of the US Navy and USAAF air bases on the island from 1941, the FAA facility became somewhat superfluous and was placed on a 'care and maintenance' footing in  April, 1944. It was never re-opened, but was used for a time, after the war, by civil float plane operators. Some remnants still survive.

In the Cold War years

Then, the Dockyard played a strategic NATO role as a naval base for Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy and other NATO navies' ships. Many clandestine operations in submarine surveillance were conducted to keep the Soviets from regarding the Atlantic as "their ocean" for any warlike designs against the US East coast. By then the whole original purpose of the Dockyard had been reversed. Instead of being used as earlier to attack the USA and defend Bermuda, it became - with the former US Naval Annex in Southampton Parish - a principal naval base to defend the USA from Soviet attack.

Naval Crest Walls

From November 29/30, 2008 - our special and unique Bermuda Online web site solely on these crests - photographed personally by this author

Royal Naval Cemetery (The Glade)

Near Lagoon Park is this hallowed ground for men of the British Army and Royal Navy in Bermuda from the 18th to 20th centuries. It was first consecrated in 1812, when the Royal Navy Dockyard was still being built. Many men died later from yellow fever. Maintained by the British War Graves Commission, it has old headstones include those of four Admirals. Close to the road are final resting places of Royal Navy seamen who died on their ships in mid Atlantic actions near Bermuda during World War II against German pocket battleships and U-boats. Photo: Keith A. Forbes

Epitaph

After World War 2, when the Royal Navy Dockyard in Bermuda played such a vital role in the Atlantic, it was clear that the Royal Navy was unlikely ever again to require the immense repair facility embodied in the Dockyard.

While many anticipated it would be reduced to a care and maintenance level, few were prepared for the Admiralty announcement in 1950 that the Dockyard would close within 12 months. 

It closed officially on 31 March 1951 after being in operation since 1809. It took a while for this to take effect. The dismantling was virtually completed when the large floating dock left Bermuda on July 11, bound for England. It was towed by the Royal Navy tugs Wanden and Reward, with the tug Prosperous in reserve. All reached Falmouth, England, on August 11.

Most buildings were offered to the Bermuda Government and in 1953, when the great majority of the Royal Navy left, title of the Dockyard buildings was officially transferred to the Bermuda Government for 750,000 pounds sterling. A limited number of buildings and other facilities, mainly in the South Basin area, were retained by the Royal Navy (until 1995) for the support of visiting British, Commonwealth, NATO and foreign naval vessels calling in from time to time.

They were administered by a small permanent Royal Navy staff under the Resident Naval Officer with the rank of Commander. The post of SNOWI (Senior Naval Officer West Indies) was established on 29 October 1956. In June 1965, HMS Malabar was re-commissioned as Malabar VII.

Moresby House, close alongside, and the Magazine House on Boaz Island, became a sort of Supplies and Signals center but without official accreditation. Things were again cut back in December 1967 to a single Lieutenant Commander, RNO (Supplies). He left, with his SNOWI post, when Bermuda as a base for the Royal Navy was officially abolished on 1 April 1976.

In 1980, the Bermuda Government underwrote an ambitious rehabilitation scheme covering the 214 acre site. Massive rehabilitation for civilian occupation and use began in 1982, after nearly three decades of Bermuda Government inactivity and crimes galore against property. In March, 1995 all remaining buildings were turned over to Bermuda as well. To date, the restoration and conversion to public use has cost more than $21 million in public funds and $42 million in private investment.

The Royal Canadian Navy and United States Navy continued to have a base in Bermuda until 1993 and 1995 respectively, at separate naval bases. Now, they too have gone.

One of the last RN Officers at HMS Malabar was Lieutenant Commander Robert Simmons, RN. He was photographed there on November 1990.

Today, longer a dockyard, it still uses the name. The berths and all buildings are civilian. It still handles the occasional hydrographic survey and cable laying ships. The facilities include locally owned shops and restaurants. Access is free, except to the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Go by bus, ferry, moped or taxi. 

West End Development Corporation (Wedco)

Dockyard. P. O. Box MA 415, Mangrove Bay, MA BX. Set up in 1982 to manage and develop 214 acres of Government-owned land in the West End, including Watford Island, Boaz Island, Ireland Island South and North, the small islands forming the Crawl off Ireland South and the North and South basins and breakwaters. Some directors are political appointees. Revenue is generated from residential and commercial tenants plus berthing fees from the commercial and cruise ship docks. Mega cruise ships now dock there.

For the beginning of this file, see

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