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.

Some of you may have tired of my banging on about guns and forts in Bermuda, but such military accoutrements remain a major facet of our heritage, if somewhat ignored by various authorities over many decades.

Today you will have some relief as we look at a recent development, so to speak, of a photograph of the “Watford Gap” sold at Bonham’s in 2021, along with what is thought to be the earliest panoramic view of the City of Hamilton waterfront, likely in 1862.

Shown here, as developed by my cousin Max Kehrli, not in a darkroom but in the illumination of a computer screen, the image is duplicated in the Bermuda Archives and has its matt embossed, “S.W. Gault, Photographer”.

That signature brings the image into the bracket of the four years Gault was in Bermuda, arriving in 1861, setting up “Quayle & Gault, Photographers” in a room in the pharmacy of another American, James Bell Heyl. Samuel then married a Bermudian, which I hasten to say had nothing to do with his very early demise in 1865, aged only 29!

James Heyl later expanded his chemistry into photography and likely bought or received Gault’s inventory. His daughter, Edith, made him famous with the publication in 1951 of a book of his photographs, Bermuda Through the Camera of James B. Heyl, 1868—1897. Two pictures in that compendium likely date to 1862 and have in common with Gault’s Watford Gap image the many masts of Her Majesty’s fleet, anchored in Grassy Bay off the Dockyard.

One is the now famous image which usually focuses on the Convict Hulk, Medway, of which our Derek Mitchell’s several times grandfather was the Quartermaster (that means he cannot claim, Aussie-like, to be descended from a crook). The other also has a forest of “the Admiral’s fleet of white-sailed ships”, but is a view from Spanish Point towards the northwest and the Dockyard.

We now consider these three views to be the work of Samuel Walter Gault in the spring of 1862, when such a large assembly of British warships occurred in Bermuda. Like a Tall Ship’s Race, what an incredible sight it must have been for Bermudians, by land and sea!

With the addition of John Athill Frith, a Bermudian operating at St George’s, Gault, Quayle and Bell, all Americans, may be said to have established photography as a commonplace business in the island.

You may well wonder about the Royal Navy fleet in Bermuda that year, as Marc J. Loost, a friend and an American lawyer once residing in London, also asked in very considerable detail. Here is part of his findings and conclusions in 2009:

“The 1862 ‘Heyl’ photograph seems indeed to be an historic photograph of an extraordinary assembly of British wooden screw ships of the line and frigates, which would never again come together or collect in equal numbers in Bermuda and probably anywhere else outside the United Kingdom.

“The photographer probably realised the importance of taking this photograph before the ships would leave the island, for the photograph must have been taken, I believe, during the 12 days between April 24 and May 5, 1862. On May 6 before 1pm, every two-decker in the photograph sailed from Bermuda.

“It was no longer necessary for these ships to remain at Bermuda. It appeared that a peaceful solution had been found to the Trent Affair [late 1861] and that Britain and the Northern United States would not go to war over that incident.

“I hope that all this paper work can be of some use to you, and I wish you success in discovering who was the professional photographer who could have taken such an historic panorama photograph.”

An image of the Fleet in Grassy Bay appeared in The Illustrated London News on April 12, 1862, which suggests that the Trent Affair had caught the attention of the English media. To Americans reading that magazine, the propagandic show of force must have been eye-watering, as eight of the Royal Navy’s heavyweights rode at anchor in a choppy sea off the Bermuda Dockyard, perhaps awaiting the order to pay a second visit to Washington, DC!

A historian from Virginia, Fred D. Taylor, is responsible in the last few years for putting S.W. Gault on the map of Bermuda heritage and considers him to be the “grandfather of Bermuda photography”. Hopefully, the suggested connection of Samuel with the two ‘Heyl’ photographs of the Fleet in Grassy Bay may encourage others to come forth with more examples of the work of this very early American photographer in our waters.

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