From the port of La Rochelle, in the year of our Lord 1556, set out a man-of-war of some hundred tons, along with a pinnace of twenty-five tons, crewed by one hundred fifty soldiers and sailors, and commanded by a sea captain from La Rochelle by the name of Captain Mesmin.

THE privateer from La Rochelle in France took a Spanish prize in the Caribbean and headed home, with half the crew manning the newly-pirated acquisition. Unfortunately, the Bermuda reefs intervened and the prize became one of the early shipwrecks at the island. Some of the crew from the wreck were probably the first people to set foot on Watford Island, from which place the largest bridge in Bermuda is so named, spanning the gap between that island and Somerset.

The story is one of treachery and ethnic betrayal that began from the moment of the wrecking of the Spanish vessel. Captain Mesmin, in the French ship, hung offshore and received entreaties from the wrecked crew to take all of them aboard his ship and back to France. No such luck and Mesmin left the 45 men to their own devices, their ship still partly afloat, but firmly wedged and half sunk on the reefs.

After some wailing and gnashing of teeth and with their ship breaking apart under their feet, the abandoned sailors made two rafts, the better to reach dry land at Bermuda, seen in the distance. Enduring a bashing from the sea, both rafts floated to land, but one ended up at the eastern end of Bermuda and the other grounded to the west.

The occupants of the latter, having set foot back on terra firma, with no loss among their number, they began to walk along the coast hoping to find some trace of their companions. But they had not got very far when they came across an obstruction in their path in the shape of a river which was at least 300 paces across.

That obstructive “river” is believed to be the channel between Watford and Somerset Islands.

The 25 shipwrecked mariners were obliged to return to the remains of their raft and reuse it to traverse the gap from Watford Island to Somerset. In so doing, as they had demolished part of the raft for firewood, five of the men were left behind on Watford Island, becoming in a way its first settlers.

The other score took two weeks to travel to the eastern end of the main island of Bermuda, where they found the other members of the shipwrecked crew. Due to prickly pear, “they were forced to cut up their hats to put them on their feet as soles, because their shoes were all ripped and torn”.

The treacherous saga continued and a boat was built to take the men back to the Caribbean. This was accomplished, but three of the sailors, being ethnic Normans and not from La Rochelle, were left behind in Bermuda. A ship sent out from Normandy to that end later rescued them.So the years passed and other shipwrecked souls came and went, the last of significance being the crew and passengers of the Sea Venture in 1609. Two hundred years later, the Royal Navy established the main dockyard of the North America and West Indies Station, ultimately commanding the three islands of Watford, Boaz and Ireland, north of Somerset.

Bermudians then occupying those lands, described by one British officer as being “less than human”, lived in splendid isolation without a bridge to Somerset.

The building of the Dockyard displaced them, but even then, it was not until 1902 that a bridge to the mainland finally spanned the Watford gap. Prior to 1900, a “horse ferry”, being a small flat-bottomed boat that could accommodate a horse and carriage, traversed the channel.

The remains of the wharf and slip for the ferry Watford and Somerset can still be seen, the latter being preserved after restoration by the Maritime Museum for the Ministry of Works some 15 years ago. A similar horse ferry connected St. George’s Island with the mainland across Ferry Reach.

In 1887, a great storm cut communication between Somerset and the Royal Naval islands and that “object lesson” pressed forward the need for a bridge. By the turn of the century, the Dockyard was to be expanded and “Watford Island Bridge” became part of the contract. Many Bermudian families of today in Somerset first came to Bermuda to be employed on the construction of the South Yard and the bridge.The structure was started in August 1901 and eventually spanned the 450 feet of the channel. Great cast-iron cylinders were sunk into bedrock and filled with concrete.

Some 3,000 tons of local stone, 200 tons of cement and 55 tons of granite were required for the works, along with 433 tons of steel for the bridgework and central swinging span.

The opening day duly arrived on September 24, 1903, as did the heavens: “the bright smart-looking khaki of the soldiers quickly assumed the appearance of brown paper; many pretty dresses became limp and bedraggled, and clung affectionately to their fair owners”.

That was but a cloudburst and the weather cleared for the opening of what was considered “the crowning structure in the work of providing continuous overland communication throughout Bermuda”, following the completion of the Causeway at St. George’s Parish in 1871.

The people of Somerset had constructed a triumphal arch at their end of bridge and a great crowd gathered. The Governor, Sir Henry LeGuay Geary, KCB, pressed an electric bell and the swing span opened to allow a procession of boats, including as passengers all the schoolchildren of Somerset, to enter Mangrove Bay.

Watford Island Bridge lasted for 54 years; its replacement from 1957, a mere 23 years.

The present Watford Bridge, minus the Island, was built in 1982, and claimed to be “one of the most successful tributes to the use of galvanising in civil engineering”: It is supposed to have a “design life” of 120 years. Seeing is believing, so perhaps our great-grandchildren will.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent drharris@logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.