And so in this solitary place and in these miserable conditions the three unhappy men lived for two full years without hearing any news from England. By this time their clothes were all worn and fallen away from their backs, and their hopes of relief from elsewhere were as bare as their bodies. At last they began to recover their senses a little, and the three of them agreed to keep the peace from their foolish disagreements. They decided to construct as large and suitable boat as they possibly could, and try to make a desperate attempt to reach Newfoundland, and to join the fishing fleet there and get to England.

But no sooner had they agreed on this plan, than they caught sight of a sail heading for the islands. They were overjoyed at this sight; and even though they were uncertain as to what the ship was or what its purpose was in coming this way, they still felt very happy. Hurrying along to meet the ship, they found that their wishes had come true; she turned out to be an English ship named the Plough, manned by Mr. Moore and his company.

The Plough was cutting a lively path towards the island, and soon after entered the harbour of St. George's, and anchored there, to the mutual joy of the three men on shore as well as that of the ship's company. And so at last the reader has been brought to the point of the establishment of a plantation, and from now on this account contains a description of the beginnings of a settled government and formal constitution.

– C.F.E. Hollis Hallett, Butler's History of the Bermudas

As most of you in modern times have celebrated the coming of the New Year, I am writing to you to tell you about some of the first events up to the first New Year's Day in the settlement of Bermuda.

There is a problem, as there often is with time, because, being British and not wanting to mix in with the Europeans (until recently one understands and even then we would not give up our pound for the euro), at the time of the "establishment of the plantation" in July 1612, we were running on the Old Style system of dating.

Europe was on the New Style and the two orders of chronology were otherwise named after Julius Caesar (O.S.) and the N.S. for its inventor, Pope Gregory XIII. Not only were the two systems three months out of balance, but also one was ten days shorter than the other. Thus William of Orange, when he came to England to become King, left his native Holland on November 11, 1688 and arrived in Britain on the fifth of November!

In the Old Style, which Britain and Bermuda held onto until 1752, the first day of the new year was actually March 25. So for three months between the New Style first day of the year on January 1 and March 24, dates were often written as, for example, February 14, 1612/13; a "datemare" for historians to this day, when trying to figure out what day it really was then, in terms of modern, New Style dates.

While New Year's Day was March 25, Old Style and January 1, New Style, it had actually become tradition in England to celebrate that day according to the New Style. Having become very Bermudian in my first three years as the first permanent occupant of the island, I suggested to Governor Richard Moore that we celebrate both New Year's Days, but that suggestion was not received in the festive spirit with which it was presented.

So we had a party on New Year's Day on January 1, 1612/13 in the newly established town of St. George's, the first urban centre made by the English in the Americas and now rightly a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the fortifications of St. George's Parish. I hear you continue that party tradition on the eve of the first.

I actually wanted to bring you up to date on developments since the arrival of the Plough on July 11,1612, so you can see what we had to celebrate, which was not much personally, as the old gov had us working to the bone on public, rather than private works.

When the settlers in command of Governor Moore got in from the sea, they camped out for a couple of weeks with me and my two mates on our island, later called Smith's. Everyone then moved over to St. George's Island and set about making the rudiments of the town.

Moore immediately put all of us to work on the church, a house for him and a signal tower up on Mount Hill, where Fort George now stands. That was not too bad, as these were all wooden buildings, made from the wonderfully odiferous local juniper, or cedar, with roofs thatched with palmetto fronds.

Then the hard work began, for the old boy insisted on constructing fortifications, in stone no less, and but a half dozen cannon to distribute between the lot of them. Not only did we have to quarry the stone, but also we had to burn some of it for lime, as well as take water and sand to make mortar at the remote sites of the forts. Meantime, we were not able to do much work on our own houses and cultivation plots.

By the second New Year's Day in 1613 (March 25), we had erected Bermuda's first fort, called Paget, on the island so named at the mouth of the ships' channel into St. George's Harbour. We also put up a beautiful little castle, called Smith's Fort, on the opposite side of the channel on Governor's Island off the tip of St. David's Island, where archaeologists found the body of a later workman.

Late in the year (New Style), the Governor started work at "Gurnett's Head" at what became known as the "King's Castle", a fort that stands yet at the mouth of Southampton, or Castle Harbour, due to our fine workmanship, if we say so ourselves!

On Castle Island (Gurnett's Head), we "volunteers" also erected a fine fort entirely of Bermuda cedar. I later watched on October 21, 1619 when "Moore's Fort" (as later so named by that eminent Bermudian archaeologist, Doc Harris) went up in smoke the day the new and third Governor, Captain Nathaniel Butler, arrived in the Company's ship, the Warwick (which later sank in the harbour in a hurricane).

The "soldiers" at the fort fired a salute to His Excellency and forgot to put out the match, being anxious to get back to the Warwick for the celebratory cocktails. The exploding gunpowder and burning cedar made for a great introductory show for the new Governor.

Happy New Year 2009! . . . Your Obedient Servant and the first Bermudian, Christopher Carter, Esq.

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharris@logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.