IT is said that cats have nine lives, a longevity that almost matches the development of Fort St. Catherine on the northeast tip of St. George's Island. Cats, however, are very agile and fleet of foot; the same cannot be said of the sitting duck that is an historic monument.

Fort St. Catherine has weathered almost four centuries of vicissitudes since it was born in late 1612. Whether it can survive into a ninth life as one of Bermuda's World Heritage Sites is a matter of worry.

The same concern applies to other historic fortifications that we have been given as a heritage and tourism legacy, so some attention will be paid from time to time in this column to these outstanding but decaying monuments.

In the summer of 1609, the Virginia Company organised a second fleet to sail to its new colony on the James River in the land it named after Elizabeth, the virgin Queen of England, although the Company was strictly private enterprise.

The fleet of nine contained the first English vessel built in the Americas two years previously, the Virginia, in the Northern Colony of Virginia in what is now Maine. It also included the Sea Venture, which ended up on rocks at Bermuda after a hurricane blew the fleet apart.

While the ship was held firmly on the reefs near the present Narrows Channel, everyone made it to the pink sands of "Gates Bay", the original name of St. Catherine's Bay.

After which patron saint the fort was named is not known. There are some 30 St. Catherines, two being of Sienna and Alexandria. Take your pick: the patronage for the Egyptian city included attorneys and barristers (heaven help us!), knife sharpeners, wheelwrights and archivists. The lady of Sienna in Italy guarded against fires, sexual temptations and gave patronage to people ridiculed for their piety, the last probably not much invoked in modern times, especially here.

Whomever the fort was named after, within a decade there was no memory of Sir Thomas Gates, for Nathaniel Butler (Governor 1619-1622) wrote in his memoirs that on the north side of St. George's island is erected upon a rock the small fort of St. Katherine, in guard of a certain sandy bay, being the same whereon the first that ever landed in those parts first set their feet.

The only St. Katherine with a "K" died of natural cause at 97 years of age in 1955, having devoted her life and family fortune to the underprivileged, including establishing Xavier University in New Orleans, the first such institution for black Americans.

The second life for Fort St. Catherine began at an unknown date, the only evidence surviving in a survey in the Public Archives Canada and in the 1783 report by Simon Fraser, RA. It appears to have been built to the rear of the original fort, which may have been left as a watchtower.

In the later 1790s, Captain Andrew Durnford, RE, erected an entirely new fort of two redoubts. Durnford was a very busy man having made a second family of six in Bermuda while his wife was at home in Britain with the earlier brood, built a number of forts and become the first mayor of St. George's.

In the 1840s, Governor Reid was distressed to hear that "a mulatto woman, the former cook" of Major Durnford had sold 40 of his Bermuda fort plans to the Americans. We should be distressed that that evidence of the third life of Fort St. Catherine and the other forts of the period is nowhere to be found.

ONCE the Dockyard was started, a number of the forts took on new lives and Catherine was entirely rebuilt on a design by Capt. Thomas Cunningham. It was at this time that the great ditch and the Keep, made of the hard Dockyard limestone, were brought into existence. A battery for five guns to the seaward of the Keep was positioned in that fourth life of the fort.

In the 1840s, Fort St. Catherine was remodelled with the enclosing of the shoreline with a huge rampart that joined the ends of the ditch. This fifth incarnation is seen in the lovely watercolour of 1857 from the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection at the Bermuda Archives.

A similar view was captured a decade later in one of the earliest surviving photos of any Bermuda fortifications, seen from Fort Victoria. In its sixth life, the fort was rearmed for the last time in the 1870s with Rifled Muzzle Loaders, but the 18-ton guns were tossed over the ramparts in the early 1900s. In its seventh life in the late 1950s, the fort became a "tourist attraction", in an effort by the then outstanding tourism authority, the Trade Development Board. Guns were brought to the site from Fort Albert, instead of taking the originals out of the sea and off St. Catherine's Beach.

As it's now in its eighth life as part of Bermuda's World Heritage Site, we would approach such buildings as heritage monuments, which will then be attractions for all comers, including tourists. The care of such sites must include the involvement of heritage professionals, such as archaeologist and architectural historians.

If this is not done, opportunities to enhance such sites will be overlooked and, at worst, heritage will be destroyed in well-meant but misguided attempts to preserve the monument. Whether most of the forts live to see their ninth life should not be left to chance. The "whither and dither the Fates led us" Bermuda motto cannot continue to apply in present circumstances.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion and not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm , to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 734-1298.