The fortifications enclosing the Dockyards enclose an area of about 880 yards in length and 400 in breadth, and consist on the land or Southwestern side of a regular front extending across the land from shore to shore, with ravelin, deep ditches, and good glacis, and on the Northern extremity of the island, of an enclosed Keep in the form of an irregular heptagon. Between these, which are connected on the West side by a well-flanked and bastioned line of rampart, lies the Dockyard, the front or Eastern side of which is a line of wharves, slip, etc., abutting on the basin, which is enclosed by a stone breakwater. Defence of Bermuda and Construction of the South Coast Road, 1853-1890.

At 15 acres, the "fort" of the Dockyard is the largest in Bermuda, into which most of the other 90-odd fortifications of the island could fit. The dockyard defences have three main areas: the Land Front (including the Casemate Barracks complex of buildings) and the Northwest Rampart, which leads to the third component, the Keep, where the Maritime Museum was started in 1974. As a "heritage and tourism defence strategy", the first two parts are to be joined to the Keep, forming the National Museum of Bermuda, which thus encompasses all of the fortifications of the Dockyard.

Over the last four years, volunteers have been working on Saturdays on "pre-restoration" and archaeological work at Casemate Barracks, and have been joined from time to time by others whose public spirit has led them to help to defend the military heritage of the Dockyard. One such dynamic group has sallied forth from XL for the last 3 years, as volunteer action for the "XL Global Day of Giving". Other businesses are following the excellent lead of the XL teams, requesting time and space on the restoration work on the ramparts of the Dockyard.

On May 27, 2010, some 20 volunteers from XL, including the CEO, Mike McGavick, descended on the Museum for another Day of Giving, this time at the Keep rather than Casemate Barracks, the site of their earlier good works. The team, appropriately enough for defence heritage matters, was led by Colonel Sumner H. (Chip) Waters of XL, a Bermudian and late of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The team was divided into two battalions, one to attack the beaches and the other to assault Bastion "B", one of the key features of the defences of the Keep.

A defence report of 1857 gives a good description of the Keep, which was provided to the XL army in order to develop their assault tactics: "The seven irregular bastions composing the Eastern Keep, mount with their flanks, curtains and occasional casemates, 14, 8-inch guns, 9, 32-pdr guns, 28, 24-pdr guns, 15, 24 pdr. carronades, and 2, 10-inch mortars. The flanking is good, and the elevation of its ramparts above the sea, about 36 feet. Its entrance through the Dockyard is by a sallyport in the centre of one of its curtains, with drawbridge over a drop ditch and two casemated guardhouses on the inner side. Excepting on the Dockyard side, the work is surrounded by water, its escarp partly of masonry, being totally exposed, and its elevation is considerably less that the higher part of the Land Front which it takes in reverse, so that neither could be held after the other had fallen."

With great imagination (and no need for fundraising), the British Army named the seven bastions of the Keep by the letters "A" through "G", with a final two, "H" and "I", being on the Northwest Rampart. The second one, alphabetically, at the Keep is Bastion "B", which is where half the XL team spent the day with jackhammers, a mini-excavator and wheelbarrows.

The Bastion has undergone three periods of armament, the first being in the 1820s for smooth-bore cannon. The second took place when the modern arms race began in the 1870s with the introduction of guns firing projectiles, loaded from the rear, or breech, of the weapon, a far more efficient method than the age-old one of stuffing cannonballs in at the muzzle, or front. Lastly, after gun steel was invented, Bastion "B" was rearmed in the late 1890s with a 4.7-inch Quick Firing Rifle, later removed as unnecessary, probably in the mid-1920s.

During the final rearming, the northern underground and casemated gunroom was filled up with rubble from the construction of the 1890s powder magazines. Its single gunport was blocked with concrete and the tunnel into the brick-vaulted chamber was also blocked. The task of the XL team was to jackhammer through the gunport concrete and to unblock the entrance to the gunroom and begin to remove the rubble infilling, which was packed by the Royal Engineers right up to the ceiling. Both missions were accomplished by the end of the one-day XL preservation campaign.

On the beach, the second half of the XL team attacked the tons of debris that had accumulated on the rocky beaches on the eastern side of the Keep, thus helping to defend the environment of that heritage site, as well as the waters of Grassy Bay. The amount of trash that people have consigned to the sea and which floats around the ocean currents before making landfall on the beaches, coasts and estuaries of the world is utterly appalling. The rotten carapace of a small turtle found by a volunteer may indicate, as often now happens, that that youngster of the sea was a victim of discarded fishing lines, small plastic bottles or some other piece of rubbish that appears to be food.

As the 16th century poet, John Heywood, stated: "Many hands make light work", a proverb that the XL team proved once again, in the public spirit, while engaged in heritage tasks that require many hands for the work to be done at all.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum.

Comments may be made to drharris@logic.bm or 704-5480.