Just over 250 years after Bermuda was permanently settled with the arrival of a small ship, the Plough, on July 11, 1612, the largest boat afloat arrived at the eastern end of the Island.

Many times the size of the settlers’ ship, the elephantine Floating Dock Bermuda was a major technological wonder of the mid-Victorian Age, coming some 20 years after an earlier one in the cast-iron Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, yet standing.

While all that greeted the first settlers were the “Three Kings” and cohorts of Spanish swine, in late July 1869 it was said that most of Bermuda turned out, by land and sea, to welcome the great Dock, which had completed the longest long-distant tow in history from the southern English coast to the “Gibraltar of the West”. The Floating Dock and Bermuda achieved almost instant fame as both appeared in several issues of the pictorial internet of its day, the Illustrated London News.

The Dock was also illuminated by another tech wonder of the day, the camera, and Bermudian historian, Seán Pòl Ó Creachmhaoil, has found a panoramic photo taken from Fort George of the arrival of the behemoth at the Narrows Channel.

In an older recording tradition, a recent finding led to the discovery that the fabled St George’s artist, Edward James, had also recorded the arrival of the Dock. His four images of the event are presented here, perhaps for the first time since early 1870, thanks to the discovery.

Researcher Linda Abend found that James had advertised a “Water Colour” and three sepia drawings in The Royal Gazette, later making a raffle to sell them. Historian John Cox has identified the watercolour, while the scene in it reminded this writer of a similar view.

Upon recollection, that view and two other scenes of the Floating Dock were located in the Arthur Green album in the Royal Collection Trust. Green had dedicated the book to the then Governor of Bermuda, General Sir FE Chapman, but presented it to Queen Victoria’s son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1869. Included in the album were three photographs, now seen to be copies of James’ three sepias (now missing).

On closer examination, the scene in the “Water Colour” was found to partly replicated in Sepia No 1, which was signed Edward James. Taken together, the four images represent a chronology of the arrival of the Dock. The Water Colour, it is suggested, shows people looking southwest (one, possibly James himself, with a telescope) espying the Floating Dock on the horizon on Wednesday, July 28, 1869.

Sepia No. 1 is described by James as the Dock “as it was seen on the morning following its arrival at the East End of Bermuda”, that is the morning of Thursday, July 29, 1869. It was then that the tow of the Dock was picked up by a tug and warships from the Royal Naval Dockyard at Ireland Island and the parade of vessels entered the Narrows Channel.

Sepia No. 2 shows the cavalcade rounding Fort St Catherine, bound for Murray’s Anchorage and the channel along the coasts of Devonshire and Pembroke, heading for the Royal Naval Dockyard at Grassy Bay. The watercolour and the first two sepias were views from the seafront of Fort Albert, seen on the left in the images.

Sepia No 3 is a classic harbour scene, often made by James of St George’s during the American Civil War era, with a number of small Bermuda sloops and gigs of many oars plying the waters around the new Bermuda attraction, the world’s largest Floating Dock, bar none.

Edward James placed advertisements in The Royal Gazette to announce the raffle of his “Water Colour and Sepia Drawings” of the Floating Dock. The last states that the raffle would take place on Thursday, January 27, 1870. It would appear that at that time, the watercolour was separated from the sepias. That vibrant, colourful image has been found, but do you know who has the sepias? The only known record of them, at present, appears to be the Green album in the Royal Collection Trust.

This discovery unfolded with the help of Linda Abend, Keith Adams, Brendan W. Clarke, Sarah Coates and John Cox, to whom my thanks.

· Edward Harris,PhD is the founding executive director emeritus of the National Museum of Bermuda