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.

Last week saw the celebration of our shared heritage in Emancipation Day, followed by Mary Prince Day. Some celebrations and heritage icons and items evolve, but others remain the same, such as artwork of Bermuda and the United States.

Such heritage material can only be preserved or destroyed: they cannot change like names of days or new interpretations of historical events or periods. Such legacies are often held by heritage institutions, here and overseas, and several significant Bermuda items have come to light in very recent times, thanks to the digital age.

Their survival is due to the preservation diligence of professional institutions, in these instances the Yale Centre for British Art at Yale University and the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia.

Starting with the first Bermuda Government archivist, former Censor #6174 at the Princess Hotel in World War Two, Lawrence Gurrin, the foundations were laid for our wonderful Bermuda Archives, presently precipitously housed in basement accommodation.

Mr Gurrin, by the bye, usually had Christmas dinner with us on Point Finger Road in the 1950s, perhaps, somehow, inspiring a love of history to my siblings and me. He was good friends in particular with my father, a Bermudian who never had the chance of higher education but admired the results of such in others such as Censor Gurrin.

In the Bermuda Archives are preserved a remarkable set of watercolours and lithographs by one Edmund Gilling Hallewell, who arrived here in 1841 with the XX Regiment of Foot, one of the security corps of the British Empire, then approaching its zenith.

In addition, thanks to a friend, several albums of Hallewell’s artwork have made it possible to prepare a book on this remarkable fellow and to follow the images of his travels here and on the North American continent.

Later the first Commandant of the fabled military school of Sandhurst, Edmund was considered one of the outstanding veterans of the Crimean War, which he recorded in a 14-foot by 18-inch panorama of the Battle before Sevastopol, a name now again known worldwide. It is now in the Royal Collection Trust, as he gave it to the Empress of India on his birth date, April 22, 1855.

Executing panoramas was a format of painting Hallewell began in Bermuda as a mere 20-year-old, making five such watercolours in 1842 (and one in 1844) of the local landscape. Those were bundled, accordion-like, into a book that was sent to the Foreign Office to encourage emigration to Bermuda: what effect it had is unknown.

Those images were thought to be the basis for his commercially available set of 13 lithographs made in 1848, but that is not the case. Hallewell made new sepia watercolour panoramas as templates for the lithographers in London, two of the originals are preserved in the Bermuda Archives: irrefutable proof.

Unlike the singular nature of a watercolour sketch or oil painting, lithographs could be manufactured in quantity and thus of more commercial significance to an artist. The lithograph plates were made from Hallewell’s single originals, printed in black and white and then sent to a workshop of other artists, who applied colour to the prints.

Hallewell sold his lithographs as single plates, in a book of 13 prints, that could be cut out and framed individually, or as three panoramas, wound onto a spool in a lovely mahogany “Case”. Some of his lithographs adorn the walls of Bermuda law offices and other firms, as the multiplication of each image made it possible for many to buy them, making him perhaps the most well-known artist of Bermuda from the 19th century.

Only one of the books survives in public hands and it is preserved in its brown cover in the Bermuda National Trust collections in the Bermuda Archives. Very recently, the only other known cover, in brilliant red and gold, has been found to be preserved by the venerable Royal Geographical Society of South Australia (search Hallewell at www.rgssa.org.au) which also holds an exceptional set of the coloured lithographs, but not from the book (the contents of which have long been removed apparently).

So, only two book covers and one complete book are preserved in public domains!

Hallewell also joined the 13 lithographs into three panoramas of Bermuda: No 1 was four plates of a view from Spanish Point; No 2 is a view likely from Gibbs Hill looking towards Gibbs Hill Lighthouse on the nearby Mount Hill (six plates) and No 3, in three plates, is a scene from St. David’s Island to St. George’s. The prints had to be cut down to 9 inches in height to be glued onto a 20-foot piece of fine linen and then wound around a spool inside a mahogany column, or “Case”.

The only known example of a Hallewell Case in the public domain is at the Yale Centre for British Art, which acquired that Bermuda heritage masterpiece some decades ago. Perhaps first found there by the former Bermuda Government archivist, John Adams, we recently received the news that the Case had been opened for the first time in living memory! Due to the glory of the Digital Age, this preserved piece of joint heritage can now be viewed by all at https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/alma:9933344303408651, thanks to our American colleagues at the Centre.

Freedom has many meanings, but it is undeniable that the Digital Age is emancipating much of our joint heritage by making it accessible to all by way of the internet. Many thanks to the Yale Centre for British Art and the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia for preserving that Bermuda Heritage and making it available to the present peoples of Bermuda, and indeed, the world.

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