A statue in an English home town of the man who claimed Bermuda for Britain was targeted as antiracism protests were held across the UK over the weekend.An information plaque next to the likeness of Admiral Sir George Somers in Lyme Regis, Dorset, had “murderer” scrawled on it and a cardboard sign with “opportunist” written on it was placed nearby.Brian Larcombe, the Mayor of Lyme Regis, which is twinned with St George, condemned the vandalism and was expected to release a further statement.The incident happened as British people took to the streets to back the Black Lives Matter campaign in the wake of the death of 46-year-old black man George Floyd in Minneapolis last month after he was arrested by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.The Lyme Online news website, which reported the vandalism, said the cardboard placard had been removed.The site added that suggestions that Sir George, a former Mayor of Lyme Regis and area Member of Parliament, had been involved in the slave trade had been dismissed.Lyme Regis historian and author Peter Lacey, whose book, Elizabethan Lyme, includes a section on Sir George’s life, said he died in 1610 and the slave trade “did not get under way until the 1640s”.But British involvement in the slave trade is recognised as having started when Captain John Hawkins made the first known English slaving voyage to Africa in 1562, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1.Hawkins made three journeys over a period of six years, captured more than 1,200 Africans and sold them in Spanish colonies in the Americas. Sir George claimed Bermuda as a British territory in 1609 after he was shipwrecked on the island on his way to the English colony of Jamestown in Virginia.The Lyme Regis/St George’s Twinning Association erected the statue in 2016.A bronze statue of Edward Colston, from Bristol, whose involvement in the slave trade in the 17th century netted him a fortune, was torn down by protesters and dumped in the city’s harbour last Sunday.The Colston statue was put up in 1895 to mark his philanthropic contributions to Bristol, including two schools and a concert hall, which were named after him.The schools and the concert hall have said that they will consider a change of name.Rick Spurling, a historian from the St David’s Island Historical Society, said he was “surprised” at the news.But he added: “It only takes one person.”Mr Spurling said: “I don’t know what they mean by ‘murderer’.”He added that Sir George had been involved in the sack and looting of Caracas, Venezuela, in 1595.But Mr Spurling said: “They were at war with Spain. It was rough living in those days.”Christopher Famous, a Progressive Labour Party backbencher who has criticised Sir George’s prominence in Bermuda’s history, said: “We must always remember that colonialism was the precursor to slavery.“In order to colonise a place, you had to go there and steal land from the indigenous people.”He added: “In 1609, Sir George Somers was admiral of a fleet heading to Jamestown, Virginia. That land didn’t belong to the English. It belonged to Native Americans.“They were going to someone else’s land, got shipwrecked here, and colonised Bermuda. He then went to Jamestown and died after coming back.”Mr Famous said fresh scrutiny of statues and monuments from the colonial era was “a long overdue awakening”.He added: “This is not just about police brutality against blacks. It’s about the historical legacy of colonialism and slavery, which has put black people in the position they are in now.“I don’t want anyone to say that Famous said ‘let’s deface statues’. But the reality is, these are monuments to colonialism’s legacy and to mass slavery.”Mr Famous added: “If we’re going to be honest about Black Lives Matter we have to be fully honest about history.“Sir George Somers didn’t just simply find Bermuda. He was a privateer who got shipwrecked on the way to colonise somebody else’s land.”