For a few centuries before the present one, the longest-range communication in the ether was probably the sound of gunshot, especially from larger weapons like cannon, sometimes used as guns to announce noonday.

Thus it was easy for Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet, in his ‘Concord Hymn’ of 1837 to extrapolate such communication to the famous phrase of ‘a shot heard around the world’.

That was to commemorate, from a United States point of view, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War at Concord, Massachusetts, bringing the ‘first British fatalities and the first British retreat’: the latter folk might see that shot as a dirge, rather than a hymn, but one cannot always chose song or fate.

Today, that military epithet is ‘heard’ round the earth as a signal of the beginning of the modern democratic state, via the internet, which exceeds the gun, church bells, radio and telephone in its capacity to communicate at any distance, instantaneously.

Except for a few places that sound a noonday gun and on ceremonial occasions like a 21-gun salute and of course the resounding noise from many areas of human conflict around the globe, the cannon is largely relegated to historical contexts, the knowledge of which is of interest to many.

That is especially so for the men in the family, many of whom have an abiding interest in old castles, muskets and big guns, the latter of which we have aplenty in Bermuda, as it was too expensive to ship them out for melting down as fodder for new weapons.

So with new emphasis on Cultural Tourism hereabout, we could get a big bang and lots of bucks, if we advertised and exploited such major military artefacts to potential visiting wannabe soldiers.

We need such heritage to be announced as shots heard throughout the world, or at least on the eastern part of North America from whence most of our visitors come, if not with gun in hand.

At the National Museum, we have more than an abiding interest in such military heritage, as the fifteen acres of the defences of the Bermuda Dockyard, the home of the institution, are the largest such works in the island, into which most of the other fortifications might just about fit.

In other words, the primary collection of artefacts of the Museum are those fortifications and the buildings of outstanding history importance contained within, anchored to the north by the Commissioner’s House and southward by the great Casemate Barracks.

Within those heritage ramparts are a number of guns on interior display, or exhibited in their original battlement positions.

One gun recently excavated near Casemates is thought to be only one of two known examples of a King Charles I cannon of a type of cast iron known as ‘special metal’, made around 1640.

Elsewhere on the site, most of the guns were removed, but most of the emplacements remain, such as those on the southern sector of the defences, just south of Casemates Barracks and which block the landward approach to the Dockyard from coast to coast, from the Right Advance in the northwest to the South Orillon to the southeast.

The latter feature, or ‘ear’ (from the French) of the Land Front fortifications, was unfortunately destroyed in the southward extension of the Dockyard in the first decade of the 1900s, so it was of great interest when the Museum received the first known photograph of the top of the Orillon, given recently by James Hallett.

The detail in the image relates to a report on the Dockyard defences, dated 17th July 1857 and signed by AJ Hemphill (Colonel 26th Regiment Commanding the Troops), Monty Williams (Col Comg Rl Engrs), HA Turner (Lt Col Comg Rl Artillery) and John Parsons (Master R N).

‘The guns mounted in the Land Front are as follows: On the faces of the two half-bastions and including a short cascinated return [Orillon] at the extreme left, are one 32-pounder, ten 24-pounder guns on iron traversing platforms; four of the five on the left face are on terraces, and traverse nearly all round, so as to bear on the [Great] Sound and anchorage [Grassy Bay], as well as on the land [towards Somerset].

In the casemated return [Orillon] at the extreme left of the front there are three 24-pounder carronades, bearing on the Sound and basin entrance.

A little in rear of the left shoulder of the left bastion [that is, the Orillon], a short line of rampart for two guns is thrown out to bring a flanking fire on the Eastern shore southwards and on the entrance of the basin, the foundations of this which are in the water, having partially settled, the guns have not been mounted.’

The Orillon and Great Wharf Rampart were sadly demolished in the extension of the Dockyard in the early 1900s, but through the evidence of the illustrations here, we can surmise that the cannon of the latter were mounted between 1849 and 1857, a few years after the Dockyard fortifications were finally finished, having been started shortly after 1809.

The photograph of the top of the Orillon shows two of the 24-pounders, that is a cannon firing a solid ball weighing 24lbs, mounted on wooden traversing carriages.

The walkway on the right connected the Orillon with the terraced gun emplacements of the Land Front and also covers the tunnel through which the only road into the Dockyard passed, after one has traversed the drawbridge (seen in the right foreground).

On the lower left foreground, the traversing part of a gun carriage may be seen, as the carriage and cannon have been removed from the middle terraced emplacement of the Land Front, overlooking the Orillon.

This view of the terraces and the Orillon has added much to our knowledge of the Dockyard fortifications, through one photo definitely worth a thousand words.

But that is the limit for the text of this article, so one cannot go out with a bigger bang, or ‘sting in this tale’, except to say that one day perhaps the remains of the Dockyard fortifications will all be rearmed, with an occasional shot fired to remind some of our visitors that we are still British, if somewhat American by cultural subterfuge.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.