Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda
Encyclopedia
HMD Bermuda was the principal base of the Royal Navy
in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War
. Bermuda
had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609. French privateer
s may have used the Islands as a staging place for operations against Spanish galleons in the 16th Century. Bermudian privateers certainly played a role in many Imperial wars following settlement. Despite this, it wasn't until the loss of bases on most of the North American seaboard (following US independence) threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic, however, that the Island assumed great importance as a naval base (the attendant Bermuda Garrison
of the British Army
existed primarily to protect the naval base).
s from the French West Indies in an attempt to cripple British trade in the New World. The Royal Navy was hard-pressed in Europe, and unable to release adequate forces to counter the menace of the privateers. In any case, multi-decked ships-of-the-line were designed to battle each other in slow moving, opposing lines. However many guns they might have to bring to bear, they were not able to run down, or out-manoeuvre the small privateers.
The second threat was American. The successful English colony in the United States, Jamestown, Virginia, which Bermuda was settled as an extension of, was intended to exploit the abundance of timber on that continent. This was at a time when Britain, and much of Europe had long been stripped almost clear of trees. American timber had been one of the enablers of Britain's ascendancy to maritime supremacy, and, by 1776, a significant part of Britain's merchant fleet was made up of American ships. Despite their own, brief, naval dispute with Napoleon, the Americans took full advantage of their neutral position in the wars between Britain and France, and the British Government was enraged by what it saw as America's failure to support it in combating a common threat. The British Admiralty was also enraged by the habit of American merchant and naval vessels to poach sailors from the Royal Navy at a time when its manpower was stretched to the limit. The US also had its own interest in breaking Britain's supremacy on maritime trade, and from the first days of the Republic it has often claimed to champion free trade.
s. The first three vessels commissioned from Bermudian shipyards were 200 ton, 12-gun sloops-of-war, ordered in 1795, and commissioned as HMS Dasher, HMS Driver and HMS Bermuda. Over the next fifteen years, the Admiralty would commission a great many more vessels from Bermudian builders. Although the first were intended to counter the privateer menace, Bermudian sloops ultimately became 'advice' vessels, using their speed and handling to evade enemies, and carrying communications and vital freight around the globe. in addition to ships commissioned by the Admiralty, Bermudian merchant vessels were also bought-up and commissioned for this purpose. The most famous was undoubtedly HMS Pickle
, which carried the news of British victory back from Trafalgar.
The Royal Navy began to invest into Bermudian real-estate in 1795. Very early, it began to buy islands at the West End of the chain, and in the Great Sound, with the view to building a naval base and dockyard. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no known channel wide and deep enough to allow large naval vessels to gain access to the Great Sound. A naval hydrographer, Thomas Hurd, spent a dozen years charting the waters around the Colony, and eventually found the Channel through the reefs, which is still used, today, by vessels travelling to The Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour.
Initially, the Royal Navy bought and developed property in and around the then capital of St. George's, at the East End. These included Convict Bay, which became a Royal Canadian Naval Base, HMCS Somers Isles
, during the Second World War, and the brick building now housing the Carriage House Museum, and Restaurant. Once Hurd's Channel had been discovered, however, the Royal Navy soon relocated all of its facilities to the West End.
Admiralty House in Bermuda, at that time, was still in the East End, at Mount Wyndham, above Bailey's Bay.
, in a US port. During the War, the British blockade of American ports was orchestrated from Bermuda, and a squadron based in Bermuda was active in the Chesapeake
from February 1813 until the end of the War, British forces briefly occupying Kent Island
in 1813 and establishing a base on Tangier Island in 1814, where the Royal Navy recruited from among refugee slaves a Corps of Colonial Marines
. Other refugees were first brought to Bermuda in May 1813, where they were employed in the construction of the new Dockyard on Ireland Island
in the company of hired artisans, both free and enslaved, and finally to Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick
for resettlement. In August, 1814, British forces sailed from the Dockyard to attack Washington, D. C., and Baltimore, Maryland, in the Battle of Baltimore
.
After the War the Corps of Colonial Marines were brought to Bermuda to man the garrison and to continue the construction of the Dockyard, but in July 1816 they were disbanded and taken, together with their families, to Trinidad
where they were granted land. The consequent depletion of the construction workforce was partially made good in 1823 by the first importation of British convicts.
Bermudian privateers also played a notable part in the war, capturing 298 American vessels. But the most notable role the Colony would play in the war was as the launching point for an amphibious operation against the American seaboard, which succeeded in driving the US Government out of Washington DC and burning the city. When forces returned to Bermuda from Washington, they brought with them portraits of King George III, and his wife, Queen Charlotte
, taken from an American public building; these portraits have hung, ever since, in the House of Assembly
of the Bermudian Parliament
.
By the time the first phase of development was complete, in the 1860s, the convict establishment was no longer seen as politically expedient. The last convicts were withdrawn in 1863, returned to Britain on the Bermudian merchant clipper, the Cedrine (which was wrecked on the Isle Of Wight, on its maiden voyage, costing Captain Thomas Melville Dill, his Master's certificate).
The primary limitation of Bermuda as a Dockyard was the porosity of its limestone sandstone, which prevented construction of a proper drydock. From 1869, this problem was remedied with a floating drydock. This, and its successors, was a large hull, with a U-shaped cross section. It could be partly submerged by filling ballast tanks with water, so that a ship might be brought in and braced into position. The tanks were then emptied to lift the ship out of the water for repairs below its waterline.
When the second phase of development began at the end of the 19th Century, there was still a shortage of Bermudians willing to work as common labourers, and the Admiralty resorted to importing labour from British West Indian islands (which were suffering economic hardship due to the loss of the sugar industry, following American victory in the Spanish-American War). This began a century of sustained immigration into Bermuda from the West Indies which has had profound social and political effects.
The Dockyard served as the base for a succession of Royal Naval organisations, including the North America and West Indies Squadron. A fleet of C-Class cruisers and smaller vessels was based there in the 1930s. In both World Wars, Bermuda served as a staging area for trans-Atlantic convoys.
After the Second World War, with the primary former threat in the region, the USA, having been an ally in both World Wars, and a continuing ally under NATO, the naval base in Bermuda diminished rapidly in importance to the Admiralty. The US Coast Guard had operated anti-submarine vessels from a base on White's Island, in Hamilton Harbour, in the Great War. During the Second World War, it had built a US Naval Air Station and a US Army airfield in the Colony under 99-year leases. With little remaining interest in policing the World's waterways, and with the American bases to guard Bermuda in any potential war with the Warsaw Pact
, the Royal Navy closed most of the Dockyard facilities in 1958 (a process which had begun several years earlier), selling the land to the local government.
It should be noted that the name HMS Malabar causes considerable confusion in relation to the Bermuda naval base. At least one vessel attached to the HM Dockyard, and three separate shore establishments have used the name. The shore establishments included one at the Commissioner's House, at the north of the Keep, and, later, the Royal Naval Air Station on Boaz Island that operated during the Second World War. Both of these were establishments within the larger active naval base, and the name HMS Malabar never applied to the entirety of the HM Dockyard Bermuda.
s regularly land at the dockyard during summer months. To serve these visitors, several former warehouse
s have been turned into artists shops and a pedestrian mall has opened in the clock tower building. The keep area is now the site of the Bermuda Maritime Museum
and the Dolphin Quest attraction. There are also several restaurants on site. Money is still being raised to repair the remaining damaged buildings and build a second dock to attract additional cruise ships. As of April 2011 the mega-cruise ship dock has been constructed.
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609. French privateer
Privateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
s may have used the Islands as a staging place for operations against Spanish galleons in the 16th Century. Bermudian privateers certainly played a role in many Imperial wars following settlement. Despite this, it wasn't until the loss of bases on most of the North American seaboard (following US independence) threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic, however, that the Island assumed great importance as a naval base (the attendant Bermuda Garrison
Bermuda Garrison
The Bermuda Garrison was the military establishment maintained on the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda by the regular British Army, and its local militia and voluntary reserves from 1701 to 1957. The Garrison existed primarily to defend the Royal Naval Dockyard and other facilities in Bermuda...
of the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
existed primarily to protect the naval base).
Post 1783
In the decades following American independence, Britain was faced with two threats to its maritime supremacy. The first was French, as Napoleon battled Britain for military, political, and economic supremacy in Europe, closing continental ports to British trade. He also unleashed a storm of privateerPrivateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
s from the French West Indies in an attempt to cripple British trade in the New World. The Royal Navy was hard-pressed in Europe, and unable to release adequate forces to counter the menace of the privateers. In any case, multi-decked ships-of-the-line were designed to battle each other in slow moving, opposing lines. However many guns they might have to bring to bear, they were not able to run down, or out-manoeuvre the small privateers.
The second threat was American. The successful English colony in the United States, Jamestown, Virginia, which Bermuda was settled as an extension of, was intended to exploit the abundance of timber on that continent. This was at a time when Britain, and much of Europe had long been stripped almost clear of trees. American timber had been one of the enablers of Britain's ascendancy to maritime supremacy, and, by 1776, a significant part of Britain's merchant fleet was made up of American ships. Despite their own, brief, naval dispute with Napoleon, the Americans took full advantage of their neutral position in the wars between Britain and France, and the British Government was enraged by what it saw as America's failure to support it in combating a common threat. The British Admiralty was also enraged by the habit of American merchant and naval vessels to poach sailors from the Royal Navy at a time when its manpower was stretched to the limit. The US also had its own interest in breaking Britain's supremacy on maritime trade, and from the first days of the Republic it has often claimed to champion free trade.
First Naval Establishment in East End
The Royal Navy sought to counter the threat of French privateers in the New World by commissioning its own light vessels, built along the lines of traditional Bermuda sloopBermuda sloop
The Bermuda sloop is a type of fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. In its purest form, it is single-masted, although ships with such rigging were built with as many as three masts, which are then referred to as schooners...
s. The first three vessels commissioned from Bermudian shipyards were 200 ton, 12-gun sloops-of-war, ordered in 1795, and commissioned as HMS Dasher, HMS Driver and HMS Bermuda. Over the next fifteen years, the Admiralty would commission a great many more vessels from Bermudian builders. Although the first were intended to counter the privateer menace, Bermudian sloops ultimately became 'advice' vessels, using their speed and handling to evade enemies, and carrying communications and vital freight around the globe. in addition to ships commissioned by the Admiralty, Bermudian merchant vessels were also bought-up and commissioned for this purpose. The most famous was undoubtedly HMS Pickle
HMS Pickle (1800)
HMS Pickle was a topsail schooner of the Royal Navy. She was originally a civilian vessel named Sting. of six guns, that Lord Hugh Seymour purchased to use as an armed tender on the Jamaica Station...
, which carried the news of British victory back from Trafalgar.
The Royal Navy began to invest into Bermudian real-estate in 1795. Very early, it began to buy islands at the West End of the chain, and in the Great Sound, with the view to building a naval base and dockyard. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no known channel wide and deep enough to allow large naval vessels to gain access to the Great Sound. A naval hydrographer, Thomas Hurd, spent a dozen years charting the waters around the Colony, and eventually found the Channel through the reefs, which is still used, today, by vessels travelling to The Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour.
Initially, the Royal Navy bought and developed property in and around the then capital of St. George's, at the East End. These included Convict Bay, which became a Royal Canadian Naval Base, HMCS Somers Isles
HMCS Somers Isles
HMCS Somers Isles was a temporary training facility for the Royal Canadian Navy in Bermuda from 1944 to 1945.The base was located at Convict's Bay, St. George's Parish...
, during the Second World War, and the brick building now housing the Carriage House Museum, and Restaurant. Once Hurd's Channel had been discovered, however, the Royal Navy soon relocated all of its facilities to the West End.
Relocation To West End
Numerous islands at the West End, and in the Great Sound were used for various purposes, but the core of the base, the Dockyard, began to take shape on Ireland Island, at the North West extremity of the archipelago. Initially, local labourers, free or enslaved, were sought to carry out the construction. Bermudian labour proved scarce, and Bermudian attitudes to manual labour were such that the Admiralty soon resorted to using convicts, shipped from Britain and Ireland, to carry out most of the original phase of building at the base.Admiralty House in Bermuda, at that time, was still in the East End, at Mount Wyndham, above Bailey's Bay.
American War Of 1812
One of the first Naval actions of the War was the capture of the Bermuda sloop, HMS WhitingHMS Whiting (1805)
HMS Whiting was a Royal Navy Ballahoo-class schooner of four 12-pounder carronades and a crew of 20. The prime contractor for the vessel was Goodrich & Co., in Bermuda, and she was launched in 1805...
, in a US port. During the War, the British blockade of American ports was orchestrated from Bermuda, and a squadron based in Bermuda was active in the Chesapeake
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
from February 1813 until the end of the War, British forces briefly occupying Kent Island
Kent Island, Maryland
Kent Island is the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay, and a historic place in Maryland. To the east, a narrow channel known as the Kent Narrows barely separates the island from the Delmarva Peninsula, and on the other side, the island is separated from Sandy Point, an area near Annapolis, by...
in 1813 and establishing a base on Tangier Island in 1814, where the Royal Navy recruited from among refugee slaves a Corps of Colonial Marines
Corps of Colonial Marines
Corps of Colonial Marines were raised from former slaves as auxiliary units of the Royal Marines for service in the Americas: Two of these units were raised and subsequently disbanded...
. Other refugees were first brought to Bermuda in May 1813, where they were employed in the construction of the new Dockyard on Ireland Island
Ireland Island, Bermuda
Ireland Island is the northwesternmost island in the chain which comprises Bermuda. It forms a long finger of land pointing northeastwards from the main island, the last link in a chain which also includes Boaz Island and Somerset Island. It lies within Sandys Parish, and forms the northwestern...
in the company of hired artisans, both free and enslaved, and finally to Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
and New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
for resettlement. In August, 1814, British forces sailed from the Dockyard to attack Washington, D. C., and Baltimore, Maryland, in the Battle of Baltimore
Battle of Baltimore
The Battle of Baltimore was a combined sea/land battle fought between British and American forces in the War of 1812. It was one of the turning points of the war as American forces repulsed sea and land invasions of the busy port city of Baltimore, Maryland, and killed the commander of the invading...
.
After the War the Corps of Colonial Marines were brought to Bermuda to man the garrison and to continue the construction of the Dockyard, but in July 1816 they were disbanded and taken, together with their families, to Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
where they were granted land. The consequent depletion of the construction workforce was partially made good in 1823 by the first importation of British convicts.
Bermudian privateers also played a notable part in the war, capturing 298 American vessels. But the most notable role the Colony would play in the war was as the launching point for an amphibious operation against the American seaboard, which succeeded in driving the US Government out of Washington DC and burning the city. When forces returned to Bermuda from Washington, they brought with them portraits of King George III, and his wife, Queen Charlotte
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the Queen consort of the United Kingdom as the wife of King George III...
, taken from an American public building; these portraits have hung, ever since, in the House of Assembly
House of Assembly of Bermuda
The House of Assembly is the lower house of the Parliament of Bermuda. The house has 36 members, each elected for a five year term in a single seat constituencies....
of the Bermudian Parliament
Parliament of Bermuda
Parliament has two chambers. Originally, there was only one, the House of Assembly, which held its first session in 1620, making Bermuda's Parliament amongst the World's oldest legislatures. An appointed Privy Council originally performed roles similar to that of an upper house, and of a cabinet...
.
Post-War
After the War, the Navy concentrated on the building of the Dockyard, while the Army began its own buildup of fortifications, coastal artillery, and infantry garrisons to defend the Naval Base, as the British Government began to view Bermuda more as a base than as a colony.By the time the first phase of development was complete, in the 1860s, the convict establishment was no longer seen as politically expedient. The last convicts were withdrawn in 1863, returned to Britain on the Bermudian merchant clipper, the Cedrine (which was wrecked on the Isle Of Wight, on its maiden voyage, costing Captain Thomas Melville Dill, his Master's certificate).
The primary limitation of Bermuda as a Dockyard was the porosity of its limestone sandstone, which prevented construction of a proper drydock. From 1869, this problem was remedied with a floating drydock. This, and its successors, was a large hull, with a U-shaped cross section. It could be partly submerged by filling ballast tanks with water, so that a ship might be brought in and braced into position. The tanks were then emptied to lift the ship out of the water for repairs below its waterline.
When the second phase of development began at the end of the 19th Century, there was still a shortage of Bermudians willing to work as common labourers, and the Admiralty resorted to importing labour from British West Indian islands (which were suffering economic hardship due to the loss of the sugar industry, following American victory in the Spanish-American War). This began a century of sustained immigration into Bermuda from the West Indies which has had profound social and political effects.
The Dockyard served as the base for a succession of Royal Naval organisations, including the North America and West Indies Squadron. A fleet of C-Class cruisers and smaller vessels was based there in the 1930s. In both World Wars, Bermuda served as a staging area for trans-Atlantic convoys.
Closure Of The Dockyard
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
, the Royal Navy closed most of the Dockyard facilities in 1958 (a process which had begun several years earlier), selling the land to the local government.
HMS Malabar
After the closure of the dockyard, and the disposal of most Admiralty land holdings in Bermuda, a small part of the base, which included the wharf of the South Yard, was maintained as a supply base, named HMS Malabar, until it, too, closed in 1995, following the end of the Cold War. The closure of HMS Malabar marked the end of 200 years of permanent Royal Naval presence in Bermuda.It should be noted that the name HMS Malabar causes considerable confusion in relation to the Bermuda naval base. At least one vessel attached to the HM Dockyard, and three separate shore establishments have used the name. The shore establishments included one at the Commissioner's House, at the north of the Keep, and, later, the Royal Naval Air Station on Boaz Island that operated during the Second World War. Both of these were establishments within the larger active naval base, and the name HMS Malabar never applied to the entirety of the HM Dockyard Bermuda.
Current status
After the closure of most of the base as an active naval dockyard in 1957 (excluding HMS Malabar, the shore establishment which operated 'til 1995), the base fell into a state of disrepair. Storms and lack of maintenance caused damage to many buildings. Beginning in the 1980s increased tourism to Bermuda stimulated interest in fixing up the dockyard and turning it into a tourist attraction. Currently, cruise shipCruise ship
A cruise ship or cruise liner is a passenger ship used for pleasure voyages, where the voyage itself and the ship's amenities are part of the experience, as well as the different destinations along the way...
s regularly land at the dockyard during summer months. To serve these visitors, several former warehouse
Warehouse
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...
s have been turned into artists shops and a pedestrian mall has opened in the clock tower building. The keep area is now the site of the Bermuda Maritime Museum
Bermuda Maritime Museum
The Bermuda Maritime Museum is the largest museum in Bermuda and explores Bermuda's history. The maritime museum is located within the grounds of the fortress Keep of the former Royal Naval Dockyard in Sandys Parish on the Ireland Island at the western end of Bermuda...
and the Dolphin Quest attraction. There are also several restaurants on site. Money is still being raised to repair the remaining damaged buildings and build a second dock to attract additional cruise ships. As of April 2011 the mega-cruise ship dock has been constructed.