Dear Reader: May I be allowed to introduce myself? I am Christopher Carter, the first permanent resident of Bermuda, or Somers Islands, sometimes misspelt as an eponymous ‘Summer’ Islands, like in the heat of July and August. In my day, I was lucky, like British passport holders were up until the 1950s, as they could enter Bermuda without a visa and stay forever. Back in my time, there was neither any opposing forces of Customs officials to limit entry into paradise, nor any troublesome indigenous occupants (‘Indians’, I believe they call them in Jamestown) to object to an invasion of their “homeland”.There were occupants of a natural type, but we soon sorted them out. The turtles were finished off, the delectable Cahows had fled the place (due to gun violence) and we did in the last Spanish pigs (what Farmer Tommy Wadson has brought back, I hear) by the twentieth anniversary of the wrecking of the Sea Venture, back in the year 1629, or thereabouts: it is all a bit of a blur in my old age, which means I should perhaps start at the beginning. Since you are now on the eve of the New Year, 2012, I will tell you what was happening around New Year’s Day 1612, that is 400 years ago, minus 3 months in your Gregorian time scale. I will also give you the background as to why I, not Georgie-boy Somers, am the founding father of this island, with descendants yet in occupation: the original Bermuda tribe, if I may be so bold.First, regarding the New Year, like one of my descendants, Aloysius (Lockjaw) Fox (pity we cannot lock his jaw and that boy Wilson’s too) says: ‘I’m telling you like it is!’, as most of you don’t know your Julian from your Gregorian, so to put another phrase into polite language. You see, in my time New Year’s Day was not on the First of January, like it is for you lot on Gregory’s time, but on 25 March: dat’s right, I telling you like it was. Until 1752, when England finally got its time into gear, it agreed to the first piece of European integration by abandoning the Julian Calendar and adopting the Gregorian one, which the rest of Europe had been clocking to since 1582.The trouble with time is that the natural world does not run perfectly to any calendar, so the one invented by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar gave way to that by a religious emperor, Pope Gregory XIII (that’s 13, for those of you whose Latin has atrophied). Hence the weeks between 1 January and 25 March came to have two year-dates (and still do for historians), so my birthday on the Ides of March was written 15 March 1585/6, see, being still in 1585 in the Julian, ‘Old Style’, but also appearing in the year 1586 in the Gregorian ‘New Style’, calendar. Being Bermuda, perhaps you could declare another annual holiday on 25 March, in honour of the ‘time heritage’ of my day and thus have two New Year’s Eves to party?Back to the material world from that temporal, not to say religious, matter: in early 1609, I signed on to go to the world’s ‘only early paradise’ at Jamestown, Virginia, but ended up on the rocks at Bermuda, of which unforeseen circumstance, in retrospect, I have no regrets. The ship I was on, Sea Venture, was caught in a “hurricano” and by some miracle, when we were going to the bottom without a trace (and but an London insurer’s footnote in history), we foundered (on 28 July) on a reef off a lovely beach at Bermuda, which that old military curmudgeon, ‘Sir’ Thomas Gates, immediately claimed as fronting his ‘Gate’s Bay’.The trouble started almost immediately as the survivors split into Gate’s army camp, while others including me voted for Sir George Somers’ naval attachment. Each side started to build a boat out of the wonderful ‘cedar’ (juniper trees) we found in abundance here, and in the ensuing nine months, life got down to its usual English character. Two babies were born, the boy was ‘Bermuda’ and the girl ‘Bermudas’: both sadly we buried on high ground above Gate’s Bay. Then that London barrow-boy, Robert Waters, murdered a sailor and in punishment was tied together with the corpse, but in the night we helped him to escape and he hid out in the cedar and palmetto forests until the others, excepting me, left for Virginia on 10 May 1610. So Bob and I had the whole of paradise to ourselves, the only drawback being the absence of the fairer sex. Fish, fowl and swine abounded and we made some great liquor from palmetto and cedar berries: it was a great time, I can tell you.Then the Admiral and a gang reappeared late that year, but he promptly died, probably from some undercooked pork. His nephew, Mathew Somers, should have gone back to Jamestown with Cahows, turtles and Bermuda swine as food, but I think he scented a goodly inheritance and packed up Georgie (without entrails) in a cedar box and hightailed it to England. That second time, I was left to ‘hold the fort’ with Edward Waters (servant to the late Admiral, not the murderer Waters) and Edward Chard, becoming the ‘Three Kings of Bermuda’. So New Year’s Day 1612 (25 March) saw the three of us cooling out on Carter’s Island, the weather was bright and clear, the fishing good and the ‘bibby’ liquour outstanding: paradise it was on that happy day. Then to our amazement in early July 1612, when we were about ready to murder each other over a lump of ambergris (worth a fortune as used to make ladies’ perfume) in sailed the Plough, past Carter’s Island [Editor: now St David’] with a batch of 50 real settlers: messed up the whole deal and we kings were reduced to servants of the Bermuda Company.Now to my claim as first Bermudian and Father of the Country on the eve of New Years Day 2012, in the 400th year since the official settlement. Chard and Edward Waters left around 1616 to do a little piracy in the West Indies and the former vanished in history. Waters came back to Bermuda but went on to Virginia, where he was a successful planter for a few years, but may have been killed in the Powhatan Indian uprising in 1622. According to one of your modern authors (check this out!), “Christopher Carter went on to become one of Bermuda’s leading citizens”!That’s all very nice, but perhaps during your quadricentennial celebrations, you can put me in for a posthumous knighthood, or something, to acknowledge the fact to all, and for my descendants (one is a P. Frith), that I was the only permanent resident of the island from 28 July 1609 until those other settlers arrived on the Plough in July 1612. Thus I am the Father of Bermuda, since I was the first permanent human resident (indigenous) and I stayed on (until death parted us) to father some of the first Bermudians born here and was such a model citizen. I’m telling you like it is: give credit where credit is due, like to me in this neglected instance: Happy New Year and best wishes for your 2012.Your obedient Servant, etc, etc,Christopher CarterFirst Permanent Resident of the Bermudas, or Somers IslandsEdward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480