We are informed that there is a very large magazine in your island under a very feeble guard.

THE war was not going well for the British.

"Those mercenary troops, a few of whom lately boasted of subjugating this vast continent, have been checked in their earliest ravages and are now actually encircled in a small space, their arms disgraced and suffering all the calamities of a siege."

So wrote General George Washington in early September 1775, from a camp near Cambridge, the hometown of Harvard University, and very short of gunpowder to bring matters to a conclusion.

Back on the island front, starvation was a strong possibility, as the Royal Navy blockaded shipping out of American ports. Apart from a few decades after the settlement of Bermuda in 1612, we have always been dependent on the east coast of what is now the United States for our grub.

The latest intimation of that dependency was witnessed on September 11, 2001, when plane travel to the island was suspended for several days. If terrorist activity had caused the cessation of shipping for several weeks, food riots would likely have followed. Little has changed in 200 years in our need for daily supplies of American foodstuffs.

The rebels in the US had also placed an embargo on shipping to other British colonies, which exacerbated the local food chain.

President Washington, as he later became, had a deal in mind: "food for oil", or rather "burgers for gunpowder".

On September 6, 1775, he wrote "To the Inhabitants of Bermuda", addressed in the particular, "Gentlemen".

In flowery diplomatic language, George states that he knows there is a goodly supply of gunpowder at St. George's, which he needs to fight the Redcoats. He suggests that the Gentlemen, while covering their rears, might acquire the powder and send it to his Continental Army. In return, the Continental Congress would remove Bermuda from the list of embargoed destinations. If, Gentlemen, you do this, that is steal the gunpowder from the Governor's Magazine, "your island may not only be supplied with provisions, but experience every other mark of affection and friendship which the grateful citizens of a free country can bestow on its brethren and benefactors".

Washington was writing formally about an idea that had already been mooted between Bermudian delegates and the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Such was communication in those days that his letter was penned several weeks after the powder had been stolen.

On the night of August 14, 1775, a group of men broke into the magazine a few hundred yards northeast of Government House (then partly situated where the Unfinished Church now stands). They made off with over 100 barrels of gunpowder, a treasonous act for which no one was ever condemned.

The magazine had been built on land owned by Governor Bruere's family. It was the second such military work erected in the vicinity of what later was called "The Gunpowder Cavern", a name perhaps harking back to the theft of 1775, but directly related to the last magazine of the Western Redoubt.

It is not known if the precise location of the 1770s magazine has ever been determined. What is certain is that St. George's had three magazines over three hundred years just to the east of the Unfinished Church, the last of which would have destroyed much of the town had it exploded.

THE first magazine would have been in the lower floor of Warwick Castle, which was built on the hill just to the northeast of the town around 1614. Captain John Smith published an illustration of the little tower fort in 1624, a drawing probably made by Nathaniel Butler, the third Governor (1619-1622).

Aside from that sketch and a few written references, little else is known of this redoubt, which was used as a beacon for shipping and also a place of refuge for women and children, while factions of men in early Bermuda were sorting out their differences in the town below.

It is most likely that Warwick Castle was destroyed in the building of the "Western Redoubt", aka, "Fort William" in the 1840s.

The name of the fort distinguished it from the "Eastern Redoubt", a short distance to the northeast, adjacent to Fort Victoria. The Eastern Redoubt became Fort Albert, in honour of the Queen's consort.

The Western Redoubt began life almost as a clone of Fort George, with some minor adaptations at rampart level due to the nature of the terrain. An outstanding feature is the cliff on its western side, created by the removal of the hillside, possibly for building stone at an earlier time. The fort was sunk into a ditch of two storeys, so that only a few feet of the battlements of the Keep, or main building, could be seen above the ramparts. The earliest recording of these features is probably the watercolour view that was painted by Le Marchant Tupper in the 1850s, reproduced here from the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection at the Bermuda Archives.

The development of longer-range guns soon after the Western Redoubt was finished quickly rendered it obsolete. In the 1880s, the ditch and the Keep were bricked and concreted over. All the interior spaces became a massive two-storey powder magazine, one of the largest in Bermuda, perhaps on a par with that on Agar's Island. It was these "caves" that led to the creation of the "Gunpowder Cavern" night club and restaurant in the 1960s. As it was underground, the citizens of St. George's would have been protected from the noise of the last use of this national monument. Built into the hill on three sides, they would not have well endured an explosion of its magazines, as the western cliff would have disintegrated.

A pyroclastic flow of hot gases and Bermuda stone would have been propelled downhill into the town, finishing off the Unfinished Church, along with the instant obliteration of much of St. George's splendid architectural heritage.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion, not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 799-5480.