This is the fourth in the series covering the life of George James Dixon Jr, who arrived in Bermuda in 1937 with his mother to join his father, who was employed in the Royal Naval Dockyard.

As mentioned in the previous three articles, his wish was to share his memories with the people of Bermuda while his memory was still intact. He died in 2020.

In the previous writing, he was hopeful of employment as an apprentice in a department that would use his talents and had applied for a transfer. Here is the continuation of the life of this Dockyard family in 1937:

Finally, my application for an inter departmental transfer materialised and I was directed to work in the Ship-fitting Shop under the man in charge — Mr A Goymer, who once played cricket with my father in Sheerness.

I enjoyed the new type of work as it was more of an engineering nature both in the various ships and in the large workshop. The same shop housed a hose-making department, testing shop for diving pumps, a welding bay and a small workshop for the repair of pneumatic hand tools. All the machines were belt driven from a common overhead shaft, running the full length of the workshop on both sides. The work was varied and interesting and as time went on I became involved in all of them, in some way or another.

I joined the work party that was refitting all the compartment flooding valves of the floating dock whilst the Fleet was away “showing the flag”. The valves were all located inside the flooding tanks and it was very warm work with the hot sun shining on the exterior of the Dock’s sidewalls. An unlimited supply of lime juice was allocated for this work to compensate for the loss of body fluid arising from the excessive heat and humidity in the tanks. I had a natural flair for machine work and became a full-time shop hand eventually doing semi-skilled work.

Please allow me, the relater of this story, to digress. I must confess that although I see many references in George Dixon’s memoirs about the floating dock, my knowledge was limited. I consulted with Dr Edward Harris on the subject and he kindly sent me two photographs. For this writing I selected the image published today as it gave me the clearest idea of a floating dock. Please be clear, this is not the one George Dixon describes in 1937. That will be included in a future writing.

“The Bermuda”, Bermuda’s first floating dock, arrived here in 1869 and was located in the North Basin opposite the Clocktower building in Dockyard. It remained there until the early 1900s, when it was broken up and, as Dr Harris describes, “its bones are those at Spanish Point”.

Now, back to the memoir of George J Dixon:

My entering the “yard” also opened the way to a lot more friendships with apprentices working in various workshops. Most had British “foundations”, being the sons of parents living in Ireland Island married accommodation. The common factor being our interest in boats, fishing and sailing. By now, I owned my own little boat and their friendship paved the way to my permanent “settling down” into our new lifestyle, much to the relief of my parents.

As we advanced into the summer months, we became more versed with our surroundings. Trips on the train and the ferries became commonplace. We made frequent trips to Hamilton and were able to familiarise ourselves with our surroundings in more detail and felt fortunate to be located in one of the best areas of Somerset. There was the Mangrove Bay shopping area, railway, ferry service and numerous lovely beaches close at hand.

A typical day for me and my father saw us off to work at 7am for the leisurely ride to the Dockyard and coming home at 4.30pm. We stayed there for lunch break and this gave us plenty of time to do a little fishing on one of the several breakwaters hoping in vain that we would land a snapper.

(A breakwater is a solid barrier built in the sea to protect a harbour, marina or shoreline from the force of crashing waves and storms — Wikipedia).

It was quite a long time before I caught a snapper while fishing one evening in our little boat among the reefs off Daniel’s Head.

There were other fish in abundance but breams were a perpetual nuisance and considered by locals, for some reason, to be of little food value. Our favourite was the rockfish, and similar to the cod, it was a good boiling fish. It may be worth mentioning that the traditional Sunday breakfast consisted of salted imported codfish in many of the Bermudian homesteads, and having tried it ourselves, found it very nice.

The days were fairly full for my mother and Mrs O’Callaghan who now had bicycles, which gave them more scope to get around. Mangrove Bay was a favourite for their minor shopping requirements with a call in at the drugstore for a quiet sit down with an ice cream and a cool drink. This became a regular routine and by doing so they became well known to the various shop assistants with whom they became friends.

The bulk of the shopping, however, came from the store of Mr Roberts, who had a delivery service of two shop boys on bicycles. Our regular one was Sinclair Trott, and he admitted that he liked calling in on us as my mother always welcomed him with a cool drink and a piece of cake. His mother also became a friend of my mother, who learnt a lot from her about the local customs.

The best part of any summer’s day was the early evening when the heat of the day was diminishing. The completion of our early evening meals would see us making our way down to Skeeter’s Point for a swim before doing a bit of fishing off the rocks. We were nearly always joined by the Pitman family. The clearness of the night atmosphere made it a wonderful place for stargazing enthusiasts and I became quite interested. Eventually I was able to identify the constellations plus a few of the brightest stars and various planets. Best of all were the brilliant moonlight nights. They were usually so bright at full moon as to allow the reading of a newspaper.

We were always out on the water at this time and soon realised that this was the best time to do serious fishing. The local fishermen reckoned that the fish kept in the shadows of the reefs during the heat of the day but came out at night to feed when it was cooler.

On the subject of moonlight nights, Bermuda is the only place that I have ever seen a rainbow at night. On that occasion, rain had deluged from a bank of heavy Cumulus clouds laying over the island obscuring the 3/4 full moon.

(Cumulus clouds are detached low-level clouds with flat bases and bright, puffy cotton-like tops.)

Although still raining intermittently, the moon broke through a hole in the clouds, giving rise to a near perfect rainbow but without any of the usual colours. It was rather eerie in some respects, there being a display of “sheet lightning” in the Cumulus cloud bank at the same time, but without any thunder, and not a breath of wind.

Bermuda’s bugs and beetles merit mention. The ants seemed to be everywhere at any time — millions of them. It only required one to find a food source regardless of anywhere it might be and in a matter of minutes there would be hundreds of them. It was a losing battle trying to beat them entirely but a commercially available white tape could be used to tie around the table legs etc which was impregnated with an insect repellent. They were industrious little nuisances and I have watched them march in a single file along a piece of stretched string to reach their objective, and those with their “booty” returning the same way on the same piece of string but upside down on the underside. They were so determined that little could be done about them except to take the necessary precautions — but they nearly always won in the end.

American-type cockroaches were another nuisance, but were quite harmless in spite of their repulsive appearance and reddish brown colour. They averaged about one and a half inches in length and some were of a flying variety. They were mostly active on moonlight nights. The women folk had a dread of them if they were riding in the dark as they often got in their hair.

Much more acceptable were the chameleons, a close relative of the lizard family, and they too were fascinating to watch, having the ability to change colours to match the area around them. They were quite harmless and I have seen them move with lightning speed when hunting insects.

The tree frogs were the most fascinating. They were no larger that a medium-sized coat button. Their size was unique in itself but the piercing whistle they emitted coming from such a small body was truly amazing. Their chorus would commence in the early evening at dusk when the dew started to form and there being so many of them, it could be quite noisy and even more so when there had been a shower of rain. Large toads with quite an ugly appearance were found in slightly less numbers but were only capable of a hoarse and very loud croaking.

The Dockyard Islands for some reason also had some quite large centipedes, some reaching a length of six inches or so, and were capable of giving a painful and poisonous bite. Not being found anywhere else on the islands, it suggests that they probably originated in a ship’s cargo from the West Indies in the early sailings ship days.

Rodents — mice and rats were here but only in small numbers and seldom gave rise for any serious concerns and were seldom seen. The rats seemed to be more active in the full moon periods and our experiences of this was borne out by having our small plantation of sweet corn-on-the-cob completely stripped overnight. According to a nearby Portuguese gardener, this was not a common occurrence, but when it did, a travelling colony of rats could clear a large garden in just a few hours, especially if it was sweet corn. Here again, they probably originated from ancient shipwrecks of the past, which according to history, were a fairly occurrence on the reefs to the West and North.

The birds of the island were not plentiful in numbers or variety of species, probably because of the isolated geographical position of the islands — nearly 700 miles from the nearest land. There were a few bluebirds and red cardinals, sparrows, blue tits and with the approach of spring, the longtails would arrive for their long stay throughout the summer months. These particular birds were 100 per cent maritime, and were unable to walk on dry land with their webbed feet and nested in any suitable cliff face. Their plumage was predominated by their tail feathers which in an adult bird might be as long as twelve inches — almost the same length as the bird itself. Daniel’s Head Island was a favourite nesting place for them, as it had near vertical sides rising out of the sea and a good feeding area all around.

The fish variety in the local waters were almost too numerous to mention. Sharks of any size were seldom seen close to the shoreline, but a small species, similar to the dogfish, was quite common in the summer months. They were a nuisance when fishing at night, but the local folk liked them and were considered a delicacy. They had a special way of preparing them and when ready for the table, the flesh was akin to crumbled bread in appearance and snowy white in colour.

In those days crayfish (similar to a lobster but without claws) were quite common around the offshore reefs but, as the years have passed, scuba diving with its spear fishing have made them almost non-existent. Legislation to conserve them came too late to be effective, and the same applied to the reef corals and conch shell — the latter two being great favourites of the tourists and a prime money spinner for locals who would dive them up.

• Taken from the written recollections of the late George J Dixon Jr, compliments of his son, Barry Dixon

• Cecille Snaith-Simmons is a retired nurse, historian, writer, author of The Bermuda Cookbook and Fellow of the Bermuda College. This is the fourth in a continuing series