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 Harris, will run throughout the year.

Apparently, we are getting a new bridge, a “swinging” one, to maintain a connection with our cousins down east in parts of St George’s Parish, including “Ye Olde Town”.

The island of that name and Somerset, the one in the far west, have been the problem children, in terms of joining them to the “Main”, as the central and largest part of the Bermuda archipelago was once known.

Those down east should be reminded that the trade winds here blow mainly from the west, so you are in the lowest, or most downwind parish, once the “Common Land” of the Bermuda Company (1615—1684).

Those who would venture out on the open ocean are reminded that: “Wind from the West, fish bite the best, wind from the East, fish bite the least.”

After that bit of a poke, we should remember that Bermuda originally, that is just after settlement in 1612 (not a soul here to colonise, etc), had three bridges but no causeways.

The smallest joined St George’s Island to Ferry Island and the flat-bottomed boat to Coney Island and the Main. The second, moving westward, was at The Flatts, where the current still courses through, in and out, of Harrington Sound (once considered for a Royal Naval dockyard by blasting a channel through the land just north of the Aquarium).

The third, as shown on John Smith’s (Governor Nathaniel Butler’s?) map, published in 1624, was between the Main and Somerset Island (“God’s Country”), now billed as “the smallest drawbridge in the world” to visitors. Mind you, let someone try and draw that bridge today to allow the mast of a small sailboat to pass through and you will see insanity personified from our once courteous Driving Class, especially the aggressive bumper-humpers!

In other words, until the coming of “The Causeway” and the Swing Bridge in 1871, St George’s was only reachable by boat (that might have been the cause of some peculiarities attributed to that Parish once upon a time, say, in St David’s Island, I could not possibly say!)

Before you think of the Causeway today, that stretch of seaborne roadway between Bluehole at Walsingham and the flattened western remnants of Longbird Island, I hasten to refer you to the original Causeway holding that name.

This was at the other, east, end of Longbird and rose in a great curve through the water to connect the land street with the Swing Bridge, a rampart for the road against the sea. It was blown away from living memory when the US Corps of Engineers (to our everlasting benefit) built Fort Bell and Kindley Field, the latter named for Captain Field Kindley, an American flying ace from the Great War (1914—18), a nice flip of title.

Rhetorically one may ask: “Who built the original Bermuda Causeway?” and “Where did the stone come from?” We can piece a few photographs together and make some suggestions about what may have taken place in the late 1860s. The surveyor involved was an Irishman, later Premier of Natal, South Africa, according to the internet.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Albert Henry Hime, KCMG, PC (August 29, 1842 — September 13, 1919) was an Irish Royal Engineers officer … In May 1866, he married Josephine Searle in Plymouth, and three months later moved to Bermuda … ‘where he was the engineer in charge of building the famous causeway’ … When it was finished, Hime delivered a report to Governor Lefroy in front of some 6,000 residents (approximately half of the population), describing his accomplishment as ‘solid and substantial … without any attempt at ornament’ … Lefroy responded that Hime’s name would become part of Bermuda’s history …”

While Hime was “commended by the secretary of state for the colonies and by the Bermudian assembly”, he appears to be hidden in our history and for the present generations, his Causeway monument was destroyed. Presently a new “Swing Bridge” is being installed: hopefully without any “ornament” and overruns!

Hime arrived in Bermuda in August 1866 and left for a West Indies posting late in 1871. A recent gift of an album to the National Museum suggests that he may have taken his own photographs of the Causeway, although some questions arise regarding one that appears in the album by Arthur Green to the Duke of Edinburgh, dated 1 January 1869. The same photograph is in the Hime Album but clearly erroneously dated 1871.

The photograph is of the hard limestone quarry at Paynter’s Vale on the waters of Castle Harbour, now the “Government Quarry”. In it, some blocks of stone are numbered and one may suggest that quarry provided the Dockyard-like stone for the ramp of the Causeway, elevating one’s horse and carriage onto the ten piers leading to the Swing Bridge.

Hence the Causeway would have looked quite splendid in Bermuda limestone, the appearance of which would have reminded people of the buildings yet surviving at the Dockyard. Sadly, no photographs appear to exist of Hime’s Causeway before its demolition by our friendly American Forces in the early 1940s.

As Arthur Green’s photographic assets were being sold at auction in April 1871 and he appears to have then left Bermuda, we can assume that photographs of the opening of the Causeway on 19 September 1871 are by Hime or a junior member of his Royal Engineers Corps. The jury is presently out on who made the photograph of the quarry at Paynter’s Vale, but it was likely Hime, rather than Green.

The coming of the US Forces at Kindley removed quite a bit of Bermuda building heritage including the Causeway, but they produced some of their own, much of which we had demolished, well before this anniversary year. Excepting, of course, the McDonald’s.

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