The South Side of these Islands from Elies Harbour to Tucker’s Town Point, near the King’s Castle, is nearly a Strait Line, without any Harbours or Great Bays, full of Rocks, and generally a great Swell, and at all times very difficult for an enemy to land upon. There are, however, some Small Bays, with Openings between the Rocks, where Boats might occasionally land. To Prevent which, several Small Batteries have at different times been built, at the Expense of the Island.

— Capt. Andrew Durnford, RE, 1783>ROM the title, you might immediately think that this is an article about the forts of the Wild West, that is west of the Mississippi River in the “Indian country” of the 19th century. This, however, is a story about Bermuda’s western countryside that borders the Atlantic Ocean, a wild country in the 1700s, due to the entanglements of nature. Self-defence was never far from the minds of Bermudians far removed from the capital in the east at St. George’s.

The East End contained the two principal harbours for ocean shipping from 1612 until the 1790s, when the Royal Navy hydrographers, working with local seamen such as King’s Pilot James (Jemmy) Darrell, found “The Narrows” channel leading to the Great Sound and other inland anchorages.

The discovery of that channel ultimately set the course for moving the capital to the city of Hamilton, in the central Pembroke Parish, early in the 1800s.

Except for brief flurries of economic activity in the War of 1812 and the American Civil War of the 1860s, St. George’s sank in value, but its undeveloped state, resulting from its loss in business stature, has allowed the area to become Bermuda’s World Heritage Site. What St. George’s has in spades is now being shovelled out of Hamilton as fast as the rubble-filled trucks can get to the dump, suggesting that too much money is bad for heritage.

St. George’s has always had the lion’s share of fortifications, as it was the first settlement, but also because its eastern coast is the most accessible in Bermuda, being unencumbered by reefs at the entrance of its two harbours. It was no happenstance that the first forts in the island were built to defend the channels into St. George’s and Castle Harbours and that in the last days of coastal defence, the Bermuda Militia Artillery were manning the only operational guns on the island at St. David’s Battery, overlooking the entrances to The Narrows.

Until the British military moved in after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which marked the end of the war in the continental American colonies, Bermudians defended themselves, albeit at the western end, somewhat inadequately. As Captain Durnford, RE and later the first Mayor of St. George’s, noted in his report that year: “Having given an account of the Present Works on the South Side of this Island, I must observe in general upon them, that they are very injudiciously placed, so very low as to be washed many of them by the Sea, and very much out of Repair”.

At their own time and expense, the local population was obliged to build little forts along the south and west coasts, wherever deemed necessary.

The bigger ones were in St. George’s Parish, such as Southampton Fort and the King’s Castle, which yet stand guard over the channel into Castle Harbour. Along the south coast, trending west from Castle Island and Tucker’s Town, the fortifications were minute structures, most being smaller than one of the bastions at the Keep in Dockyard, where the Maritime Museum is located.B>hose<$> in the western reaches of Bermuda start on the beaches of Warwick Parish, now boringly called Long and Horseshoe Bays. The latter was originally called “Great Turtle Bay”, perhaps an acknowledgement of a nesting place for such animals, but now the sand box of surfers and sun-lovers. No horseshoes have been observed there, but other droppings indicate the occasional passage of such creatures.The forts along the Warwick, Southampton and Sandys coasts were seldom in a state of “preparedness” and often difficult to get to through the jungle of the countryside, for roads were few until the mid-1800s, by which time the redoubts were obsolete.

A confusion of names would have befuddled the enemy and no doubt some Bermudians, as well historians. Very little record survives of these forts until the 1790s, of which 1798 was a particularly good time.

Two reports were commissioned that year by the local government and the Royal Engineers submitted one to officials in London. A number of the forts were named after the commander of the parish militia, so that Lightbourne, Jobson, Seymour, Hunt, Newbold, Darrell and Ingham are attached to some of the sites. <9.3>Others were named for geography or activities, as in Church, or Port Royal Bay, West-side and Maria Hill and Whale and “Rack” forts. Up in Sandys, namesakes of the parish, such as Captains Burrows and Gilbert, were commanders of the forts. Jobson’s Fort in Warwick was “commanded by Captain Thomas Tucker, an infirm old man incapable of leaving his room”. At West-side Fort, the commander was “Captain Leycraft, an old infirm man, entirely worn out”.

The forts were of various shapes, a number being half-moons, and built of soft Bermuda stone, with parapets usually no higher than three feet. Most had only two or three cannon.

Some of these tiny works have survived and Mr. Mark Fox discovered one at Long Bay, Warwick, after a recent hurricane, buried in an entanglement of bay grape trees. The Bermudians obtained guns from any possible source. Those at the “fort on the high hill of Ireland” were raised in the summer of 1795, from the Wreck of the d Amhurst, <$>Ordnanceansport, <$>lost here in February 1777 returning from Jamaica, and all attempts to clear their Cylinders have proved unsuccessful. Nonetheless, these mini-forts did their defence work, for we do not speak Spanish, nor carry American passports.

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be t to drharris<$>@logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.