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.

At the end of the War of 1812, the Treaty of Ghent, signed on 24 December 1814, ushered in an era of peaceful relations between the United States of America and Great Britain. A century later, the “Guns of August”, 1914, started the “Great War”, the victorious end of which was because the two great countries were allies in that conflict and generally ever since.

Sadly, our friends to the west seem unable to help with the prevention of present invasions of the British Isles. I wonder what my grandfather Harris would think (having spent five years on the Western Front in the defence of Britain) of the present state of the Army, and more importantly, the Royal Navy, the now apparently lacklustre “wooden walls” of the country. His sacrifice cost him an early death, likely due to what is now acronymed as “PTSD”. Little did he know that it would not be the Germans that were to be successfully scaling the White Cliffs of Dover!

As the new century was unfolding and the Empress of India was reaching the end of her then longest of British reigns, the invention of gun steel brought forth a new and final (for Bermuda) wave of British fortifications, starting in 1901 and ending in 1957.

The last years of the 1800s also saw the formation of the Bermuda Militia Artillery, a gunnery regiment associated with the Royal Garrison Artillery. That was followed by the infantry body of the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, later Bermuda Rifles.

These two proud groups were amalgamated into the Royal Bermuda Regiment in 1965, although the regal accolade from Buckingham Palace would come more recently. The two corps served honourably overseas in both World Wars and 125 Bermudians were lost in action in the conflicts.

Gun steel allowed for the production of “wire-wound” barrels of great strength, and new propellants, like cordite, gave projectiles greater ranges to target. Thus, after the RML period, new defence works were built at Bermuda and existing forts were altered to take the new, but fewer, larger guns, or rifles, up to a 9.2-inch calibre with a range of some 20 miles.

Many jobs for Bermudians were created throughout the island in the construction and logistical support for the instalment of the new “rifles”. Once again the British Army poured millions of pounds sterling into the local economy: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” (and the dinero)!

The largest of the new works was the twin sets of 6- and 9.2-inch guns at St. David’s Battery, on a high cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the entrance to the “Narrows” channel, the only route for ships into Murray’s Anchorage and Grassy Bay at the Dockyard.

This coupling of four of the mainstay arms of British coastal defence may well be unique, as usually one or the other calibre was used at a site overlooking the sea or river estuaries.

All four weapons are extant, if in a dubious state of military preparedness! If we might quote our famous Philly cousin, Ben Franklin (he of the $100 note): “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” (Sounds like a truism applicable to more peaceful fields, like education.)

The military thinker from the East, Sun Tzu, perhaps said it better: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him.” Old Sunny would likely be astounded at the way in which the enemy is “being received” by some modern states: “Praise be to whomever and pass the iPhones!” Apologies, I digress.

St David’s Battery was manned by the Bermuda Militia Artillery for half a century until the dissolution of Coastal Defence throughout the British Empire in the later 1950s. The guns fell silent and the Narrows lay undefended, as it remains today except perhaps for a couple of Rib Boats of the Royal Bermuda Regiment.

On September 3, 1939, Bermuda’s readiness for war with Germany consisted of the pair of 6-inch Breech Loaders at St. David’s, all other guns of the 1910s either mothballed or removed. The BMA was mobilised at the Battery, along with the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers (my uncle Irwin Harris served there), and an entirely new set of two such guns was constructed on the western side of Warwick Camp. These were to protect the landing places along the south coast from an invasion from Deutschland (intent on being “Über Alles” — perhaps the slogan of present invaders).

In April 1941, the few Bermuda coastal defences came to a sticky, or perhaps wimpy, end when the American Forces arrived on the supply ship American Legion to install their own guns to hold the island against the Germany Kriegsmarine. That is not to say that our local defenders did not continue to act well and honourably, it is just that the Yankees held the stronger hands throughout the game into Victory Day in 1945.

In 1957, the extraordinary coastal defence systems of the worldwide British Empire fell silent, never to be revived in Bermuda or elsewhere, as sadly witnessed on the south coast of Britain today, Martello Towers notwithstanding!

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