Scholarly analyses and wartime letters with personal connections commemorated the 75th anniversary of the decommissioning of the Royal Naval Dockyard.

The Naval Dockyards Society in the UK joined the National Museum of Bermuda to host a celebratory conference at the weekend.

Elena Strong, the executive director of the NMB, said the conference was an “intimate” success.

She added: “It was the perfect blend of scholarly analysis and personal stories.”

Twenty people attended the commemoration conference, including visitors from Canada, the US and Britain.

The morning was made up of presentations exploring the early history of Bermuda’s maritime scene and the role the island played in conflicts in the North Atlantic.

It started with a presentation by Neil Kennedy, an associate archaeology professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

Dr Kennedy gave his presentation on the marketing strategies that Black Bermudian women employed while selling goods on Ireland Island in the West End.

His presentation was followed by Lisa MicNiven, an archivist with the Naval Museum of Halifax, who studied the connections between Bermuda and Halifax through burial records.

Ross Nedervelt, of Florida International University, closed out the morning with “Challenging Identities: Bermudians, American Mariners and the Royal Navy in the Atlantic Border-sea, 1783-1815“.

The presentation explored the cultural exchange that took place in Bermuda between locals, Americans and British citizens stationed on the island.

The afternoon focused on Dockyard during the modern age, spanning from the Second World War to the present day.

Samantha Middleton, who specialises in naval history, pointed out that Bermuda grew as an important port for convoys during the Second World War.

Dr Middleton explained that it came as the US grew more heavily involved in the war and the risk from German submarines increased.

Ian Grant, a publisher, presented letters that detailed correspondence between his parents while his father was stationed in Bermuda during the Second World War.

The letters, which Mr Grant said he found in the attic of his family home, painted a picture of his father’s life at the Dockyard, while his wife stayed at their home in Plymouth.

Yasmin Khan, a professor at the University of Oxford, looked at the Dockyard’s closure in 1950 after 150 years of service.

Dr Khan’s lecture approached the closure as part of the wider fall of the British Empire.

The conference ended with a presentation from Guy Collender of the University of Portsmouth, who looked at Dockyard’s shift from a naval base to a cultural and historical site.