It is astonishing to what an extent services with no direct impact on local affairs, in particular censorship, contraband and convoys, can increase the bulk of papers passing through these modestly staffed Government offices; and the negotiations over the American Base have quite doubled the work. On the face of it, it might seem a simple affair for a United States destroyer to arrive here with three seaplanes in attendance; or sanitarians to busy themselves with their unpleasing science. Yet, possibly owing to a not

unnatural belief that Bermuda already partly belonged to them, the personnel contrived to set a number of people by the ears within a few days of their arrival, and the ensuing arguments took a week of hard work by Mr. William Beck, the genial United States Consul-General to use his own expressive phrase to iron out. "History of Second World War in Bermuda".

In the flux of war in 1939-45, Bermuda experienced many dramas and considerable "culture shock", the latter in particular through the establishment of the American bases at Morgan's Point in the west and Fort Bell in the east. In Europe, culture shock took many forms, as countries were invaded, civilians displaced and killed and all their earthly possessions destroyed or confiscated by one army or another.

The appropriation of works of arts, bank accounts and other properties of the dispossessed (and in many instances the "disappeared", in recent language) was on an epic scale, the effects of which will continue to be felt for decades to come. In the world of museums, this has become known as "the perils of provenance", for artwork does not possession DNA, which would make ownership and lineage detectable and traceable, like human remains of a crime scene.

As The Royal Gazette often reports, museums and art galleries have to return works of art and culture that were stolen from their rightful owners in the Second World War and other conflicts.

In Bermuda, excepting the spoiling of the natural environment in the construction of the American bases and earlier British forts and the Dockyard, we only have ourselves to blame for the destruction of artwork, be it in the forms of built heritage, portable heritage such as family heirlooms, or other categories of material culture. We have been invaded only once and that was by some of our cousins then living in South Carolina, who captured Wreck Hill Fort in the American Revolutionary War. They took a few guns, but as far as is known, no works of art were appropriated from nearby homes.

During the European war of the 1940s, a lot of artwork was moved from that continent to places of safe haven, such as the United States. Some was the transfer by legitimate owners and some was not. At Bermuda, ships were detained for inspection for contraband at Five Fathom Hole, off St. George's, under the cover of the only two operational guns on the island at the beginning of the war.

These were six-inch Rifled Breech Loaders that were under the command of the Bermuda Militia Artillery, the "Gunners" of the island, associated with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St. David's Battery. In late 1940, inspectors found a haul of art from Europe that was spectacular by any standards, described by a contemporary writer.

"The most important and spectacular seizure, however, was from the SS Excalibur of the American Export Line. Information was received at the beginning of October that certain valuable drawings and paintings were being carried on her and on her arrival on the 3rd, it was reported that these pictures had been stored behind steel bars of the bullion room in [this] American ship, [which] was more than the administration had bargained for, but (after some anxious consideration) orders were given for an oxyacetylene apparatus to be taken out to the ship and the bars to be cut in the presence of the ubiquitous Consul-General. The pictures were found to have been consigned to America, apparently at the instance of German authorities, by a Mr. Martin Fabiani of Paris, described as an art expert and adviser on customs questions, an unusual duality.

According to the manifest, there were in this consignment over 500 paintings and drawings, including 270 by Renoir, 30 by Cézanne, 30 by Gauguin and 4 by Degas, and others by Monet, Manet and Picasso. It was alleged that the total value of the consignment was several hundred thousands of pounds. It was at first thought possible to deal with these pictures in a Prize Court in Bermuda, but it was soon clear that the habitual delays of the law would necessitate their detention here for some considerable period, during which the damp of Bermuda would probably have reduced their value to a comparatively nominal figure.

After exchange of telegrams, therefore, it was decided to remove them to Montreal, pending the hearing of the case in London. This drew forth indignant requests from M. Fabiani. The paintings were shipped on the 11th November."

Today, "Fabiani's name appears on Nazi-era provenance red flag lists because of some of his wartime dealings" as a collaborator in Paris with the Germans. One red flag case may be a work by Renoir, yet in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, whose web site states that "the descriptions of the Renoir paintings shipped by Fabiani are too general to allow for a definite identification of any one of them with the MFA painting; therefore, it cannot be established whether the Portrait of a Young Child was among the group of objects sent to Bermuda and held in Canada".

Neither, it would appear from the lack of provenance papers, can it be proved that the painting was not in the Excalibur collection of Fabiani.

Like the filthy cash of money laundering, the washing basket of cultural heritage laundry is still full of dirty items from the Second World War, some of which may thus have passed through Bermuda. Wars notwithstanding, the greedy and possessive are constantly invented new ways of appropriating and laundering cultural heritage, especially nowadays from archaeological sites.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.