This is the latest in a series of occasional articles on the shared histories of Bermuda and the United States, which celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence this year. The articles, by Heritage Matters author Edward Cecil Harris, will run throughout the year.

We are now in the last third of the 12 months of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States of America, our great neighbour, friend, and indeed potential protector in the years to come.

With the crash of the vast communist Russian Empire in 1991, the three military overseas forces left Bermuda bereft of protection in 1995 (and the island without the fattening presence of a McDonald’s hamburger joint).

Not only that, we were left with a multibillion dollar bill for the airport, the vital link to the outside world (and they us), a facility built and paid for by the US taxpayer for half a century. Did anyone say “thank you”?

Those — even including a reporter or two — who like to denigrate the United States, should make their own calculations of the munificent amounts of money lavished on the island by that country, after of course they might be said to have broken the Bank of England over war debts.

Nonetheless, with not a few ups and downs, we have been blessed with Four Centuries of Friendship (title of a 2009 book by our National Museum) with our westerly neighbours, in which circle we might include Canada to the north, the third of the forces to depart (after the PX and Commissary at Kindley Field closed?).

The British Army had left in 1957 and the Royal Navy, Britain’s controller of the highways and byways of the ocean seas, also departed in 1995, after 200 years of preserving and protecting us, latterly from the Americans!

In leading up to the 1860s and the riches to rags saga of Bermuda during the Civil War in our neighbours’ backyards, a little review of some of the highlights and brownouts might be of interest.

Harking back before all of us, it took some 30 million years for the volcano, Mount Bermuda, to rear its basalt dome above sea level, or near thereto, only to be buried under millions of tons of sand dunes in the last million or so years. Those sandhills consolidated into limestone rock of which most of our historic buildings are constructed.

A variation of the Virginia Cedar gave us the timber needed for our homes, but otherwise, the island was for the birds, including a couple of flyless (not to say legless of late centuries) species, now extinct, and the emblematic “Cahow”, the screeching night-terror of early human contact.

That is to say that Bermuda was one of the last places left to nature before the advent of humans, until Juan Bermudez discovered it, most likely in 1505.

Aside from some shipwreck episodes, final settlement of the island commenced in 1612 by the Virginia Company which had founded Jamestown five years earlier on the mainland. One of the original ideas was that the island would be a breadbasket for the western town which, incidentally, we may have saved with the grub and salted Cahows from here in May 1610.

Thereafter, we shared commerce and culture and concepts such as slavery, the last abolished here in 1807 and 1834, but not there until 1865 at the end of their Civil War.

We took part in their revolt against British rule, but stayed in the Empire with some positive economic results, such as the building of the great Royal Naval Dockyard and associated fortifications, some now Unesco World Heritage sites (if somewhat treated as very less so).

The War of 1812 followed which was a business boom for our privateers in their world-class and superfast Bermuda sloops, powered by our invention for sails, the Bermuda Rig.

In the first half of the 1860s, we were again engaged in economic benefits from our neighbours, as the island, with the Bahamas, became a major entrepôt for the transshipment of goods through the northern states’ blockade into the ports of the Confederate states.

Enter centre stage St George’s, during the Civil War, the oft-maligned “tippler” but superb artist, Edward K James, who was on his way from London to New York in 1861. When his vessel put into Bermuda for repairs, James jumped ship, as it were, and remained island-bound until his death in 1877.

St George’s Harbour formed a perfect amphitheatre for his painting talents and dozens of his works have survived from his 16 years in Bermuda between the bottle and the brush.

Two of these are presented here, as examples of his fine eye for details of shipping during the Civil War, as vessels from both sides of the conflict came to anchor in our calm waters: see their flags.

If I may quote from a Bermuda National Trust publication: “The US Consul, Charles M Allen, commissioned the artist [James] to paint each blockade runner that visited St George’s, forwarding these sketches to Union naval commanders to help them identify and capture the vessels. Meanwhile, James sold copies of these very same paintings to the commanders and crews of the blockade runners themselves.”

In the last week, three such copies of the same scene in the harbour by James have come to light, or rather unexpectedly together; these will be presented to you soon.

PS: I should like to thank Dr Gordon Watts, marine archaeologist, and my colleague in research, Linda Abend, for their assistance with this presentation.

• Dr Edward Harris is the founding executive director emeritus of the National Museum of Bermuda