Bermuda's History: Never Give Up
Hardy, tenacious Bermudians have played a key role in forging British dominance of the New World.

Each year, thousands of visitors come to Bermuda to soak up the sun and scenery. But it was not so four centuries ago.

When shipwrecked Britons first washed ashore here in 1609, they found no welcoming islanders — only forests full of wild hogs and birds whose eerie screeches sent shivers down their spines.

For the beleaguered English settlers, life was "incredibly rough," says Tim Rogers, a historian who leads Bermuda walking tours.

But the first Bermudians were a hardy bunch. Not only did they decide to make their homes in what had been considered an abominable Atlantic outpost, they also set out to explore fully their corner of this strange New World, founding and influencing many island settlements, plus the colonies that would later form the United States of America.

Could Jamestown have endured without the aid of Bermudians? It was this struggling Virginia settlement that colonists had been attempting to reach when the Sea Venture crashed against Bermuda's reefs at the dawn of the 17th century. Almost immediately, survivors set to building ships, amongst them John Rolfe, who would step into the history books after marrying the Native American princess Pocahontas.

When Rolfe and the other Bermuda castaways eventually did reach Virginia, they found a dismal scene. Only 60 of 500 settlers had managed to survive. They too would have starved had not the Bermudians brought with them ample provisions of pork. No amount of cash would Virginians have welcomed more than the meat from Bermudian hogs. That high estimation of value would mark Bermuda's first currency, which came to be known as "hogge money."

Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Bermuda seemed to bring out a sort of seafaring bravado in those who settled early on. Shipbuilding grew to become Bermuda's signature industry, and enterprising islanders took to the sea in search of commerce.

It was a group of Bermudians, in fact, who settled Eleuthera, a breathtakingly beautiful island in The Bahamas chain unoccupied until their arrival in 1648. The islands' enchanting name derives from those Bermudians, who called themselves the Eleutherian Adventurers after the Greek eleutheria for "freedom."

Farther south, Bermudian salt collectors founded the first permanent settlement on Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos chain. That foothold paved the way for British dominance of the archipelago that has lasted until today. Salt harvested on Grand Turk was sold in Bermudian merchant houses along the Canadian and American seaboards, used mostly to preserve cod. That, by the way, is how salted cod became the mainstay of a Bermudian Sunday breakfast.

"Four hundred years ago, those settlers had to make do with so little," says Rogers.

"But we've always been an extremely resourceful and opportunistic people," observes Elena Strong, acting curator at the Bermuda Maritime Museum (now the National Museum of Bermuda).

That sort of never-say-die tenacity well describes Bermuda's early settlers and the people who live in the islands today. You would have to be tough to make a life in a place once thought to belong to the devil himself.

Spirit Of Survival

The first recorded human contact with the islands was in the early 1500s, when a ship carrying Spanish sailors home from a New World expedition lost its way in the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Veering farther north than planned, Captain Juan de Bermudez steered his ship, La Garza (The Heron), near the island chain that would become Bermuda. However, its treacherous reefs — combined with the unnerving nocturnal cries of cahows, now Bermuda's national bird — led the Spaniards to christen the archipelago as the Isles of the Devils.

Bermudez, for whom the island eventually was renamed, returned in 1515, but found no gold and thus no reason to stay. For a century, no one thought of colonising Bermuda, least of all the 150 adventurers who set sail from Plymouth, England, aboard the Sea Venture in June of 1609. Besides Rolfe, the ship transported Admiral Sir George Somers and New World chronicler William Strachey.

By late July, the ship had sailed smack-dab into a hell-born hurricane. It was a catastrophe that would change the lives of the colonists and the history of the world.

"Windes and Seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them," Strachey wrote. "The Sea swelled above the Clouds and gave battell unto Heaven."

In monstrous waves, the ship foundered for nearly 36 agonising hours. Waterlogged biscuits clogged the pumps as crewmembers frantically attempted to plug holes in planks with food rations and anything else at hand.

"Try to imagine what that must have been like," suggests Kay Latter, whose Byways Bermuda company offers historical and nature tours. "Everyone was on their knees praying. They must have been terrified."

Then there was a miracle. The battered ship lodged between two reefs, and Somers spotted land just three-quarters of a mile away. The colonists may have been castaways in the Isles of the Devils, but even that forbidding destination now looked like heaven.

The wreck of the Sea Venture made headlines back home. It is said to have inspired William Shakespeare to pen The Tempest. But the men and women stranded in Bermuda knew nothing of this. They were too busy salvaging wood to build ships.

Shipwreck survivors founded the town of St. George, where they lived until they could build the Deliverance and Patience, which sailed to the aid of Jamestown. But now the British had a new colony to settle. By the end of the 17th century, English immigrants to Bermuda had established small communities around Flatts, Crow Lane, Riddell's Bay and Mangrove Bay.

In 1612, democracy arrived officially in Bermuda with the first group of proper English settlers aboard the Plough. Richard Moore, a carpenter, won the honour of serving as the islands' inaugural governor, and in 1620 Bermuda convened its first legislative assembly, the world's third-oldest parliament, after those of Iceland and Great Britain. Sixty-four years later, Bermuda became an official crown colony.

After failing miserably as tillers of Bermuda's poor soil, many families adopted maritime trades such as shipbuilding and whaling. Eventually, crews operating Bermuda's famously speedy sloops developed more profitable sidelines as privateers, pirates operating under government approval to plunder foreign vessels. During the War of 1812, for example, Bermudian privateers seized almost 300 ships operating near their shores.

Because many privateers hid their treasures in coves and caves or in the basements of homes surrounding Hamilton Harbour, officials moved Bermuda's capital from St. George's to Hamilton in 1815 in an effort to catch tax evaders — an ironic twist, given Hamilton's reputation today as an attractive headquarters for multinational companies eager to reduce their tax burdens.

Many Bermudians also engaged in smuggling. In 1775, thieves broke into a military supply building near St. George's and spirited away more than 100 barrels of gunpowder desperately sought by revolutionaries in the American colonies. During the U.S. Civil War, Bermuda's sloops earned a great deal of money by evading the Union blockade and sneaking goods into the Confederacy. In exchange, they received gold and cotton, which the Bermudians sold in London markets for 10 times the price that colonists had paid.

Because the island did not operate a lighthouse until 1846, many vessels sailing too close found themselves caught on Bermuda's treacherous reefs. They became the targets of scavengers who would sometimes strip a sinking ship of its valuables before providing rescue efforts. Today Bermuda claims more sunken vessels than almost any other location in the world. It is a prime destination for adventurous divers.

During World War II, Bermuda was a hotbed of espionage and played a critical role in the Allies' intelligence efforts. Teams of "trappers," young women code breakers, worked in the basement of the Hamilton Princess Hotel, now a Fairmont property, to decipher transmissions from German warships and submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. The Germans did not realise that British experts had discovered methods for decoding their secret messages, and Bermuda's location made it the perfect base for intercepting German war plans.

When aeroplanes carrying mail between Europe and North America landed in Bermuda for refuelling, other Allied agents innocently sorted through their mailbags for coded German messages whilst the pilots enjoyed their coffee breaks.

After the war, Bermuda's business sector grew steadily. Because of low taxation rates and favourable business policies, many British, American and Canadian firms established headquarters in Bermuda. Today insurance and reinsurance industries in particular are heavily represented in the islands. But tourism is just as important to Bermuda's economy, and much of that tourism focuses on history.

"Bermuda's history is so amazing for such a tiny place," says tour guide Latter, and it is amazing that such a tiny place has had such a strong impact on so many other places. Today Bermuda continues to reach out to the world, not only as a centre of world finance but also as an internationally renowned holiday destination.

Get out and explore. Bermuda is unlike any place you have ever visited.

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