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 (HM Dockyard Bermuda) and other facilities in Bermuda that were important to Imperial security until the HM Dockyard was closed (a process that was carried out between 1951 and 1957).

Although the last professional soldiers (a detachment of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry) were withdrawn in 1957, and the Garrison ceased to exist, two part-time components - the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (retitled Bermuda Rifles) - continued to exist until 1965, when they amalgamated to create the current Bermuda Regiment.

1609 to 1701
The English colony of Bermuda was settled accidentally in 1609 by the Virginia Company, when its flagship, the Sea Venture was wrecked off the archipelago. Although most of the settlers eventually completed their journey to Jamestown, Virginia, the company remained in possession of Bermuda, with Virginia's borders officially extended far enough out to sea to include Bermuda in 1612. In the same year, a Governor and more settlers arrived to join the three men left behind from the Sea Venture. From then until 1701, Bermuda's defence was left entirely in the hands of her own militias.

Bermuda's militia included a standing body of artillery men to garrison the forts built by the local government. The earliest of these forts built were the first stone fortifications (and buildings) in the English New World, the first coastal artillery, and are today the oldest English New World fortifications still standing. Together with St. George's town, the forts near the town (including the Castle Islands Fortifications) are today a UNESCO World Heritage Site)

In addition to the full-time artillerymen, all of the colony's men of military age were obliged to turn out for militia training and in case of war. They were organised as infantry and mounted units.

1701 to 1768
In 1701, the threat of war led the English government to post an Independent Company of regular soldiers to Bermuda, where the militia continued to function as a standby in case of war or insurrection. Despite the small regular detachment, the militia remained Bermuda's primary defence force. Following the conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the Independent Company was removed. A company of the 9th Foot was detached from Florida, reinforced with a detachment from the Bahamas Independent Company, but this force was withdrawn in 1768, leaving only the militia.

1793 to 1815
Regular troops had been stationed in Bermuda during the American War of Independence, but were withdrawn afterwards. US independence cost the Royal Navy all of her continental bases between the Canadian Maritimes and the West Indies. As a result, the Admiralty began purchasing land around Bermuda, especially at the under-developed West End, with a view to establishing a dockyard and naval base there. The Royal Naval establishment began with facilities in the town of St. George's in 1795, and by 1812 the island hosted an Admiralty and a dockyard, as well as a naval squadron during the winter. These facilities were to play a major role in the American War of 1812, and Bermuda would develop into the Royal Navy's largest and most important base in the Western Hemisphere.

Following the French Revolution, a detachment of the 47th Foot was detached to Bermuda in 1793. Regular troops would continue to be stationed in Bermuda from then 'til 1957. With a regular garrison, Bermudians lost interest in maintaining militias. The Militia Acts were allowed to lapse and, other than a brief resurgence during the American War of 1812, the Bermuda Government would not raise local forces until pressed by the Secretary of State for War to create the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps eight decades later (although there were a number of short-lived attempts to maintain militia without the contribution of the Parliament of Bermuda).

19th Century
With the build up of the Dockyard, there was a corresponding increase in the size of the Army garrison that was to protect it. This included the construction of numerous fortifications and coastal artillery batteries (the forts, by and large, were also built to house coastal artillery), manned by the Royal Artillery (Royal Garrison Artillery, or RGA), and camps where infantry troops were stationed.

From the beginning, the Royal Engineers were an important part of the Garrison, improving pre-existing fortifications and batteries, like Fort St. Catherine's, building new ones, surveying the island, building a causeway to link St. George's Island to the Main Island, a lighthouse at Gibb's Hill, and various other facilities. A system of military roads was built, also, as the rudimentary roads that had existed before had been used by islanders primarily to take the shortest route to the shore, with most passengers and wares moved around the archipelago by boats.

The Royal Army Ordnance Corps would operate two depots to supply munitions to the defensive artillery, one at Ordnance Island, in St. George's, the other on a wharf on East Broadway, at the outskirts of the City of Hamilton. A secret gunpowder store was also built underground at Agar's Island in 1870.

The St. George's Garrison was a large base including barracks and a hospital to the East and North of St. George's town. Used primarily by the RGA, this large base served the surrounding forts and batteries. As with the fortifications built previously by the colony's militia, the fortifications clustered most thickly at the East End of Bermuda, near St. George's. This was because the primary passage through the surrounding reefline brought vessels close to the Eastern shores of St. David's Island and St. George's Island. There were forts and batteries at other strategic locations throughout Bermuda, however.

Originally, most of the regular soldiers were deployed around St. George's, but with the development of the City of Hamilton in the central parishes, which had become the capital in 1815, and of the HM Dockyard at the West End, it became necessary to redeploy the army westwards as well. The heaviest cluster of forts and batteries remained at the East End, where shipping passed in through the reefline from the open Atlantic, and this meant that the artillery soldiers continued to concentrate most heavily at the East End. The infantry, however, established a large camp at the centre of Bermuda circa 1855. Located in Devonshire, on the outskirts of Hamilton, it was called Prospect Camp. The camp housed other units, as well, including Royal Garrison Artillery detachments at a fort built within the camp, Prospect Fort. Although Prospect Camp had extensive areas for training, it was surrounded by public roads and residential areas, and had no safe area for a rifle range. Consequently, a second camp, Warwick Camp, was added primarily to provide rifle ranges to the soldiers of the Garrison, and the Dockyard's own Royal Marine detachment (and those of the ships stationed there).

Various other smaller sites were used by the Army over the history of the garrison. These included Watford Island and the southern half of Boaz Island, both part of the Admiralty land holdings attached to the HM Dockyard, where Clarence Barracks housed a considerable number of soldiers, and Agar's Island, where substantial underground munitions bunkers were built.

In 1885, with the UK Government having tried for years in vain to encourage the Bermudian Government to raise part-time units to allow the reduction of the regular component of the garrison, the local parliament authorised the creation of the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps as reserves for the RGA and the regular infantry.

The Bermudian parliament's prior reluctance to the creation of such units was partly due to the concern that social unrest might result from creating either racially segregated or integrated units, and partly due to fears that it would be saddled with the entire cost of the military defences. The Secretary of State for War finally achieved their support by ransoming Bermuda's nascent tourism industry.

Bermuda's tourism had arisen without conscious planning, and the hotels at first available to the wealthy visitors who pioneered holidaying on the island were generally small and uninspiring. Bermudian business and political leaders realised that a large, first-rate hotel was required. The development of the hotel hinged on American investment, however. Foreigners were not, at that time, permitted to buy land or businesses in Bermuda, lest their governments use protecting those interests as a pretext for invasion. The USA was seen, throughout the 19th Century, as the primary threat to Bermuda.

As the Secretary of State for War put it, Bermuda was, at the time, considered by the UK government more as a naval and military base than as a colony. Allowing American investment in the new hotel, as well as plans to widen the channel into St. George's Harbour (necessary in an age where ships had grown too large to safely use the existing channel, but which it was argued would make an invader's task easier), were seen as weakening Bermuda's defence. The Secretary of State for War insisted that he could not approve either project while Bermuda contributed nothing to her own defence. As a result, two Acts of the Bermudian Parliament were passed in 1885 authorising the creation of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps and the Bermuda Militia Artillery, and the project to build the Princess Hotel was allowed to move forward (a third act had authorised the creation of a voluntary reserve for the Royal Engineers, but this was not raised). The part-time units were funded by the UK Government.

The trend from then on was to reduce the regular soldiers, and to shift an increasing part of the burden of the garrison on the part-time units. This process took many decades, however. The number of soldiers began to decline, and then quickly rose again. For the remainder of the 19th Century, military personnel made up a quarter of Bermuda's population, and defence spending, not agriculture or tourism, was the central leg of the Bermudian economy. Many wealthy American visitors actually brought their daughters to holiday on the island specifically in hopes of marrying them to the young, aristocratic military and naval officers who were posted to Bermuda (this put them in competition with local women, as Bermuda had a disproportionate number of spinsters). The new Princess Hotel made the most of this market, sponsoring dances and other social gatherings to which the officers of the garrison were invited to mingle with guests.

In addition to components of the army garrison, the Royal Marines, part of the Royal Navy, maintained detachments at the Royal Naval Dockyard which included both infantry elements and gunners of the Royal Marine Artillery.

First World War
On the declaration of the First World War, the BVRC was embodied. The BMA was already embodied for annual training and moved onto a war footing, both units taking up their war time roles. The Commanding Officer of the 2 Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment was acting Governor of Bermuda as the actual Governor and Commander-in-Chief (Bermuda's Governors, from the time the bases were built up, were normally military officers, especially from the Royal Engineers or the Royal Artillery), Lt. Gen. Sir George Bullock was off the island, and oversaw Bermuda's being placed on a war footing.

The 2 Lincolns were soon sent to France, being replaced by a succession of West Indian and Canadian battalions. The BVRC raised a contingent of 88 men for the Western Front in 1914, which joined the 1 Lincolns the following June. A second contingent of 37 men joined them in 1916. The BMA also sent a contingent of 201 men to the Front in 1916, serving as part of the Royal Garrison Artillery draft to the front, and a second contingent also followed this. Following the war, both units were demobilized (twice, in the case of the BMA), but both built up again.

Second World War
By the Second World War, the BMA was the only artillery unit left in Bermuda, though a regular infantry unit remained at Prospect Camp. Both part-time units were again mobilized, along with two more-recently formed units, the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers and the Bermuda Militia Infantry. Home Guard units were also raised for the duration. The regular army detachment (a series of units rotated through the island) operated the headquarters of the Garrison at Prospect Camp.

The BVRC, BMI, and the regular army infantry detachment split Bermuda between them, each taking responsibility for guarding and patrolling its own section. In addition to maintaining guards at the Dockyard and Darrell's Island, the infantry soldiers guarded the trans-Atlantic cable facilities, beaches and inlets, patrolled the island, and operated motor boat patrols.

The BMA manned the Examination Battery in St. David's, which guarded the primary entrance through the reefs to Bermuda's harbours from the open Atlantic. By 1939, this was the only fixed battery left in use in Bermuda, though others were theoretically able to be returned to use. Similar 6" guns were fixed at the Dockyard, but it was felt that a capital ship could potentially bombard the Dockyard from off the South Shore, out of range of both batteries. As a result, a new battery was built on a hilltop within Warwick Camp, with two 6" guns mounted there. These too were manned by the BMA.

The Bermuda Volunteer Engineers filled two roles, operating spot lamps at the batteries which were meant to light targets for the BMA gun crews, and providing signals detachments for all branches of the garrison.

The BVRC sent a draft to the Lincolns (with volunteers from the other local units attached for the transit) in 1940, following which concern of denuding the garrison meant a moratorium was placed on any further drafts overseas by the local units (although many soldiers were released from their units to train as pilots at the Bermuda Flying School on Darrell's Island. The school only accepted volunteers from amongst those already serving in one of the local army units. Eighty-eight men were sent to the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm before the school closed in 1942, following which it was reorganised as a recruiting arm for the Royal Canadian Air Force, sending 200 aircrew trainees to that unit. The Bermuda Flying School was headed by Major Montgomery-Moore, DFC, who was also the Commanding Officer of the BVE.

In addition to the British Army and Royal Naval units in Bermuda during the War, a Royal Canadian Navy base, HMCS Somers Isles, operated at the former Royal Naval site at Convict Bay, and four airbases were operated in Bermuda - one by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, the Royal Air Force used RAF Darrell's Island, the US Navy operated flying boats from the US Naval Operating Base, and the US Army Air Force and the RAF shared an airfield built by the US Army, Kindley Field.

Although air and naval units based in Bermuda played an active part in the War, the Axis Powers never dared to launch a direct attack on the colony. With the US entry into the war in 1942, and the considerable build up of US Army artillery and infantry forces in Bermuda, as well as the decreased danger posed by German surface ships and submarines, the moratorium preventing local units sending drafts overseas was lifted.

The BVRC sent a second detachment to the Lincolnshire Regiment, and the Bemuda Militia (Artillery and Infantry together) sent a draft which formed the training cadre and the core of the new Caribbean Regiment.

1945 to 1957
Following the war, the BVE and BMI, as well as the Home Guard, ceased to existed. The BMA and BVRC were both demobilised, reduced to skeleton staffs. Both were quickly built back up to strength, and conscription, which had been used during the war, was re-introduced for both units (the BVRC suitably being retitled simply Bermuda Rifles). In 1951, it was announced the Dockyard would be closed (though part of it, HMS Malabar, would function til 1995). The Army garrison was to be closed, too, but regular troops remained in Bermuda 'til a detachment of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry was withdrawn in 1957. The last coastal artillery, the Examination Battery on St. David's Head, was removed from use in 1953, and the BMA converted to the infantry role (but remained nominally part of the Royal Regiment of Artillery). The last Imperial Defence Plan was issued the same year. After that, the local units no longer had a role under Imperial defence planning. The Bermuda Government maintained both units (the BMA being predominantly Black, the BVRC restricted to Whites) until 1965, at which time they were amalgamated into the Bermuda Regiment.