If Bermuda were in the hands of any other nation, the base of our operations would be removed to the two extremes, Halifax and Jamaica, and the loss of this island as a Naval Establishment would be a National misfortune.

¿ Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, December 31, 1861

On March 8, 1860, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Milne arrived at the Bermuda Dockyard to become commander-in-chief of the North America and West Indies Station, a position he was to hold through all but the last year of the American Civil War.

Forty-three years earlier, when the Dockyard was but an embryonic facility, Milne had been on station as a midshipman in HMS Leander, once the flagship of his father, Sir David Milne, "one of the most distinguished seamen in British naval History".

Milne, the son, was to distinguish himself, not by any heroics or great battles won, but by the diplomatic skills that he exercised on the Station in preventing the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and the Northern States of the Civil War.

What is noteworthy, though, was that in 1837, while commanding HMS Snake, he captured two slavers on the Brazilian Station.

Civil War matters came to a head with the famous "Trent Affair", whereby in November 1861, two commissioners of the Confederate (or southern) States were forcibly removed from a British vessel, the Royal Mail Steam Trent in Bahamian waters, in effect a neutral ship.

War fortunately was averted and Milne spent much of his remaining time on the Station dealing with the defence of British America and the issues surrounding the transshipment of goods from England and Europe, via Bermuda, to the Confederacy.

This became a boom time for the island, as well as for the Bahamas, as they were best situated geographically for such shipping activity to and from the coast of what is now the southern United States.

To geography was added the political advantage that many in the islands were sympathetic to the Confederacy: "This feeling, in Bermuda at least, effervesced to the point of violence toward United States citizens, and extreme courtesy to Confederate commissioners and agents".

Such emotions aside, the Bermudians came down on the side of hard cash, for it was with the southern, not northern, states, that money could be made in the Civil War.

The Confederacy was short of many types of supplies, especially war materiel and such had to be imported from Europe. The line of transportation, however, was due to be interrupted by the blockage of the southern ports by the navy of the North and so a new system of importation was devised.

By that method, freighters brought cargo to St. George's, Bermuda, and Nassau in the Bahamas, at which harbours the goods were transferred to a new type of ship, the blockade runner. This was a fast, sail and steam powered vessel, with a low hull profile to help escape detection.

The first such runner, given its port of departure, was appropriately named Bermuda and it arrived at Savannah, Georgia, on September 28, 1861. After other successful runs, the Bermuda was captured in April 1862.

At Bermuda, the island, several important antiquities have survived from the Civil War, including a wooden ram that broke loose in a storm and eventually drifted into Dolly's Bay, St. David's, where its bones are still in evidence.

Two ships of the Confederacy also found graves in Bermuda waters, one to the west and the other to the south of the island.

The Nola was built as a paddle-wheel steamer in late 1863 and was intended for use out of Bermuda in running the blockade. In early January 1864, on her maiden Atlantic voyage, the Nola struck the reefs near the Western Blue Cut and was lost.

The marine archaeologist, Dr. Gordon Watts, and a team from the Maritime Museum and East Carolina University recorded the remains of the Nola in the mid-1980s.

Several months later, in suspicious circumstance, the Mary Celestia cleared St. George's for Wilmington, North Carolina, but ended up at the bottom on the south shore off Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. The remnants of its paddle wheels and a portion of the deck yet sit on the sands and are a major attraction for scuba divers. Edward James, who also painted the block runner off St. David's, published herewith, memorialised the sinking in a watercolour, also exhibited in this article.

The other antiquities of the Civil War at Bermuda were already ancient at the time, in technological terms, and remained so throughout the conflict. These were the principal forts of the coastal defence of Bermuda and the all-important Dockyard, shown here in plans and in watercolours of the late 1850s from the Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection.

They were antiquities in being built for smoothbore cannon, firing balls of iron and had been in fashion nigh on 300 years.

The coming of steam and iron ships, and rifled artillery, firing elongated shells, was the death knell of such works of art.

After the Civil War, they were rebuilt to house the new forms of artillery, so that the most complete example today of the earlier forts is the Land Front of the Dockyard.

The Dockyard fortifications were the largest and the only ones in the west of the island. At the eastern end of Bermuda stood Forts Catherine, Victoria, Albert, George and Cunningham, all of which were much altered in the 1870s. Excepting the parochial exclusion of Dockyard, these fortifications are part of Bermuda's World Heritage Site and in part reflect the inadequate nature of Bermuda's defences during the Civil War.

Aside from the older forms of artillery, one British officer writing in 1857 was of the view that the forts were all in the wrong localities, for "the places in Bermuda which are almost impregnable by nature, are well defended by art; but the weak points are left wholly defenceless".

Fortunately, none were put to the test by the armed forces of the Northern States.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.