BERMUDIANS have been covering their bets from the earliest days of settlement, almost 400 years ago. After a few days or weeks hanging out on Smith’s Island, just inside the only channel into the easternmost harbour at Bermuda, the settlers moved across the anchorage to establish the first town of English origins in the New World.

Apparently called “New London” for a short period, an appellation that might now be applied to the City of Hamilton with all its Lloyd’s of London insurance lookalikes, the first permanent people of Bermuda soon came up with a more heavenly name and the capital became the Town of St. George.

History records not who made that decision, but perhaps the preacher at St. Peter’s Church was instrumental in the choice of a saintly name for the new town.

St. George was the patron saint of England, but fortunately for distinctive advertising, we did not lose the surname of Spanish pilot Juan de Berm|0xfa|dez, who discovered the islands in 1505, for the less marketable “New England”.

New England shorts, or New England Triangle, somehow lack the cachet that the name Bermuda has given to those well-known features of leggy fact and heady fiction.

The patron saint watches yet over his namesake town, for it is now under extra protective cover through its designation by UNESCO in 2000 as a part of Bermuda’s World Heritage Site.

Across St. George’s Harbour to the southwest, someone labelled the largest island bordering the bay with another holy man’s name, presumably in honour of St. David, the patron saint of Wales.

Here no inference is made to the “difficult” relationship of Wales to London and England, any more than to the unusual associations between St. David’s and St. George’s and the rest of Bermuda.K>Suffice<$> it to say, the St. David’s Islanders of former years considered themselves apart from the rest of Bermuda, a separate ethnic group of the archipelago, if you will. Perhaps their descendants, now somewhat taken over by new settlers from other parts of Bermuda, might look to some possible Welsh roots, along with those from England, Africa and what is now called New England in the northeast United States. The flag of St. David would look good flying over the cricket field at Bermuda’s easternmost island, the closest to Wales in geographical fact.

Militarily, St. David’s had nothing to do with the protection of Bermuda until the governor of that name built Fort Popple in the 1730s in what is now Little Head Park.

Thereafter the island retreated into isolation until it awoke in the early 1900s with the constructions of the largest gun emplacements of that period at Great Head, fronting the Narrows Channel.

A far larger incursion took place in 1941, when a portion of St. David’s was reduced to rubble for the construction of an airfield for the American Army. While of social and financial damage to St. David’s Islanders, Kindley Field, named after Captain Field Kindley, a US air-ace in World War One, ushered a generation of unprecedented prosperity for most of Bermuda with the advent of aeroplane touriSt.<$> David’s Battery was built in the first decade of the 20th century and by 1907, “the works at St. David’s are now ready for their armament; the pedestals are ready in their places, and the works can be handed over at once.” It was an entirely new “fort”, incorporating the latest gunnery. At the same time Forts Cunningham and Catherine, Alexandra and Whale Bay Batteries and the Keep at Dockyard were upgraded with the same technology of steel, wire-wound, breech-loading rifles.

St. David’s Battery was the largest of the new emplacements and unique in the then British Empire, as it comprised two pairs of guns at one site.

To the north were two six-inch BL guns; while to the south were two 9.2-inch weapons, which were the biggest in Bermuda.

The former were the only operational guns at Bermuda at the start of the Second World War on September 3, 1939.

The purpose of St. David’s Battery was to be the patron saint of the Narrows Channel, the only way ships could enter the inner harbours of Bermuda at Murray’s Anchorage, Grassy Bay at Dockyard, the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour. Its guns were aimed to stop an enemy from gaining access to the Narrows and that remained its function until the end of coastal defence in 1956.

The guardian angels at the Battery were the men of the Bermuda Militia Artillery, who manned the site as an auxiliary of the Royal Artillery, the “Gunners” of the British Army, as opposed to infantry soldiers, represented here by the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps and later the Bermuda Militia Infantry.

A corps of black Bermudians with white officers, the BMA served with distinction on the Somme in World War One, where a number lost their lives. All local forces were amalgamated into the Bermuda Regiment in 3.St.<$> David’s Battery is part of Bermuda’s national park system and in the last few years, the Parks Department has been actively guarding that World Heritage monument. Invasive trees and encroaching vegetation have been removed and the guns have been cleaned and painted. We owe a considerable debt to the men of the BMA and the other local forces, who gave military service and some their lives to guard Bermuda. A similar debt is owed to the historical monuments that were the instruments of their duties.

In restoring St. David’s Battery, that debt is now being recognised, and in part repaid, by the preservation of this site that was once home to the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers.* * *Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can sent to drharris<$>@>logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.