When England, in 1607, settled on what was later to become Virginia, Spain faced a bold challenge for this was an affront to Spanish hegemony in the region.

Philip III considered forcing the English settlers out of North America, as they had done with the French Huguenot settlers in Florida years ago, but knew this would mean an unwanted war with England.

Instead, he instructed his ambassador to England, Don Pedro de Zuniga, to keep a close watch on English plans for Virginia. If it became clear England wanted to establish a colony there Spain would then decide what steps should be taken to prevent such action.

The ensuing diplomatic correspondence between the king and Don Pedro reveals increasing concern about the English presence in North America. Don Pedro believed Virginia would be used as a base for privateering and for launching attacks on Spanish merchant fleets and strongly advised immediate action to oust the English.

Tied to this external threat facing Virginia were a series of internal problems. Together they placed England’s New World colonial experiment at considerable risk. The settlers had to do battle against the native Americans who lived around Jamestown; there were persistent crop failures; many workers were unwilling to work; and morale was very low. As Charles Andrews says, “at best the experiment was not succeeding”.

A loss of this foothold in North America would have seriously set back England’s North American colonial policy. Because Virginia was on such shaky ground, such an uncertain colony, England needed a haven, a strategic location where it could firmly establish itself and easily counter any attack. There was but one place which offered these qualities and also allowed for the easy defence of Virginia: the islands of Bermuda.

Bermuda was very attractive from a strategic point of view. The group of islands that comprise this colony adds up to a small area of land (a mere 21 square miles) and is surrounded by a dense coral reef through which large vessels can pass at only two easily defensible locations. Moreover, its isolation made it a simple matter to keep track of any approaching vessels.

The Island also proved appealing since it was uninhabited and had a ready supply of food: an abundance of wild hogs (left by previously stranded Spanish and Portuguese sailors) and hundreds of thousands of Cahow (a bird endemic to Bermuda) which could be captured by hand.

But if Bermuda would eventually prove itself the ideal location for England to gain a foothold in the New World it remained a place shrouded in mystery and intrigue — hundreds of years before talk of the Bermuda Triangle. The Spanish, frightened off by the seemingly ever-present storms and high-pitched screams (the Cahows’ cries), had their own name for a land they thought was taken over by evil spirits: the Islands of Devils.

In contrast, the English quickly developed a romantic attachment to their new found jewel in the Atlantic. Shakespeare, for example, found accounts of the ship-wrecked Sea Venture so appealing he used them to create Prospero’s lonely and enchanted island in ‘The Tempest’.

Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, George Chapman, Edmund Waller and Andrew Marvell (and even earlier, John Donne) were all captured by Bermuda’s allure and they extolled the exotic charm of this Island.

Bermuda was settled by Sir George Somers (who was shipwrecked en route to Virginia) in 1609 and incorporated into the charter of the Virginia Company three years later. Under Governor Richard Moore’s tenure (1612-15), defence preparations were the priority of the day as the English sought to secure themselves in North America. Eight forts were immediately brought under construction. Wesley Frank Craven has observed that “[w]ith a footing so secure as... [Bermuda] might be made, England was not easily to be excluded from the advantages of the new world”.

That this Island could provide protection for Virginia and also prove beneficial to England’s wider New World objectives was clearly recognised by contemporaries as its major importance: “The full discoverie... of those Barmuda lands, which hitherto have been held in the world as inaccessible... and given up to the divels power... are found a habitation of such safetie and securitie (having no enemie within nor any to be feared without, because the entrance is so difficult) and of such plentie of all things for life... as for the present they bee even as a new life and a seminarie to Virginia.

“The planting of them ‘our countrimen’ (besides the benefit of the Adventures) must needs adde much to the strength, prosperitie, and glorie of this kingdome, would proove a singular benefit to the native inhabitants of Virginia, and also to such our countrimen as should go over, and in all tend to the glorie of God.”