DESCRIPTION: Age 3> YearsB>Stature 5Feet<$>7< Inches<$>; Forad<$>fullund<$>; Eyes<$>>blue<$>B>Nose<$><rdinary<$>; large<; Chin<$I>ordina$>; Hair<$>li sandy; Complexion<$I>light; <ace<$>oval<$>.

— Signae of the Bearer<$>Albert Fi/I>

I<$>N the centuries before fingerprint scanners and passport readers, immigration officials had to assess visitors on the description given on the back page of passports. For Albert Fitz, one of several secret agents, or spies, sent to Bermuda in the 1840s, the officer at St. George’s, the port of entry, would know that anyone with a “full round” forehead, an ordinary nose and chin and a light oval face set with blue eyes, could not possibly be a terrorist.

Perhaps the official was trained in phrenology, an accepted pseudo-science of the day that suggested that the criminal nature of a person could be determined by bumps on the head, not by so torturing the soul on entry to Bermuda, but by looking at the topography, or landscape, of the skull.

Having a “large” or big mouth would presumably disqualify the visitor from being a spy, but that is exactly what Albert Fitz was on his entry into Bermuda in late 1841.

Following the recent Fourth of July celebrations, where at least 4,000 Bermudians flocked to a party at Dockyard hosted by the US Consul General, the local representative of an enemy of old, it may be of interest to look again at a little known story of Bermuda-United States relations of the early Victorian Age.

We love a good party, of course, and will partake of the table of a foe as fast as we would devour that of a friend. In that nothing much has changed, as Bermudians have excelled at playing both sides for their middlenefit. The Fourth of July 2007 marked 231 years of Independence of what became the United States from Great Britain. It must be gratifying to some in the not-so-great Britain of today, that that day of Independence needs still to be celebrated, while the young probably say “get over it” and “get a life”. The anniversary date should be celebrated by Bermudians, not for patriotic empathy with our American cousins, but because July 4, 1776 marks the day that we all started to get rich, as British money poured in to build a huge dockyard and many fortifications.

Prior to this memorable year, Bermuda was something of a backwater, as the British military and thus the government in England had but a passing interest in the place.

We were already engaged in international business by way of pirating as legal privateers and through trade in the outstanding Bermuda sloop, the fastest ship afloat in its heyday.

Come 1783 and the end of the war with the old East Coast colonies, the British military viewed Bermuda as the perfect replacement for its lost harbours at Boston, New York and elsewhere on that eastern shore.

The TV ad recommends a programme as “a little bit Brit”, in the English affection for puns, but the military airing at Bermuda was a big bit Brit, far outstripping the expenditure at all the other remaining British possessions bordering the Western North Atlantic and the Caribbean.

By the time of the next bash between Britain and America in 1812, the Dockyard was under construction and a series of forts were planned to defend the Narrows Channel and the anchorages at St. George’s.

For 25 years after the War of 1812 things settled down, but hostilities threatened in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, with the Canadian Rebellion and the Maine Boundary Dispute.

As Bermuda would be a central factor in any conflict between the USA and Britain, the authorities in Washington sent at least three spies (that we know of!) to Bermuda.

The first was Secret Agent Albert Fitz in late 1841, followed by Captain Minor Knowlton in 1842 and 1849 and Lieutenant Frederick Prime in 1852.

Capt. Knowlton found the Bermuda population of 10,000 to be “universally loyal”.

In his view, “the blacks strongly prefer the English government to our own, and for reasons too obvious to mention. The whites because of the great artificial importance given to the colony by the government and the great expenditures of money made in it in the attempt to make it the great military and naval depot for this part of the world.”

Lieut. Prime was so excited by his visit that he drafted an invasion plan for Bermuda from his later outpost of Fort Alcatraz in California.

New information has come to hand on one of these clandestine visitors from marine artist John Hutchinson, a great-great-grandson of Albert Fitz (www.hutchinsonsart.com).

The illustrations given here are with his courtesy. From a passport issued by Governor Reid on January 29, 1842, we can surmise that Fitz had completed his survey of the Bermuda fortifications and was on his way to the “Turks Islands” on the schor Elizabeth & Esther<$>, possibly the names of two important ladies of the Master, Samuel Nelmes, but his real destination was Nassau, where he checked out Forts Montagu, Charlotte and Fincastle.

By May 1842, he was at Barbados, following an examination of military works at Jamaica, and found it to be the premier British base ihe West Indies.By the time of these visits, Albert Fitz had married Eliza and they had seven children, one of whom became the head of the Harvard Medical School and another made a fortune in the East Indies trade. Fitz was born in 1809, the year construction started at the Bermuda Dockyard and died as US Consul at Haiti in 1852.Of the Bahamas, Fitz wrote that the disposition and expectations of the inhabitants resemble those of the Bermudians, with the exception of their not being so jealous of strangers, nor so belligerent towards Americans.

It is to be hoped, after all the hard work of his team, that Mr. Gregory Slayton, the present US Consul General at Bermuda, has noted an improvement in our attitude.

On the other hand, one wonders what he was doing the other week, lurking about the greatest fortifications at Bermuda at the Dockyard, under the pretext of organisia party for Bermudians.

* * *

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