I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enamelled receptacle of extraordinary beauty . . . Here was every sensuous curve of the "human figure divine" but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.

¿ Edward Weston, photographer (1886-1958)

Human waste is a neglected aspect of Bermuda's history, an out-of-sight, out-of-mind (and out of body) subject. Once completed, soon forgotten. There are, of course, a number of topics under that heading, subsets of the modern mind that equates civilisation and good living with the delight of throwing things out, sending them "to de pond" in older parlance.

Now all the ponds are full or protected nature sanctuaries, while the biggest, at Pembroke Marsh, has become a mountain of vegetation waste that lately exhibited the fiery display of a volcano, with ash but no lava, as area residents can testify.

Then there is the waste of humans themselves, a talent in which we may excel, like many other societies. We often take especial delight in ignoring or discarding our own, if an overseas expert can be found to fit the bill. Mind you, we don't need any local brain surgeons, as we have long been labeled as "dumb Bermudians". This is a large subject, often mentioned by several writers to the editors of the local papers, but not the main topic of this article.

As archaeologists "digging in the dirt", those of my profession have an umbilical connection with waste of the physical varieties. Without discarding, cementing into disuse, and strewing the landscape with any manner of waste products, there would be no archaeology, or geology for that matter. The cycles of archaeology and geology are but a continuum of building up and breaking down, of creation and wasting, or destruction.

Archaeology depends upon the making of waste, though it is preferable to have a Bermuda bottle-return law, rather than have to deal with a billion examples of beer, wine and other glass containers that are now buried in the local landscape.

The order of magnitude has changed greatly since Roman times and two million plastic bottles, for example, are discarded every five minutes in the United States, to give but one statistic of modern waste management.

As we approach our quatercentenary or quadricentennial ¿ tongue twisters for the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Bermuda in 1609-1612 ¿ some might like to reflect on the 400 years of solid human waste that we have imposed, and increasing deposit, on this paradise. Architecturally, a number of designs of buildings have evolved for the implementation of human waste disposal and some examples of prior examples yet exist.

The earliest surviving masonry garderobe, or latrine, in Bermuda is probably that at the Landward Fort, facing Tucker's Town Point, on Castle Island. It is a classic medieval garderobe of the type that can still be found in European castles.

No toilet, of a beauty as in the eye of the great American photographer, Edward Weston, would be found, for the seat of waste deposition was a wooden bench, with a central hole. Sometimes, the garderobe was a communal affair, notable example being the three-holer that was seen in the early 1980s on a Bermuda National Trust property.

In the castle setting, the garderobe overhung the moat, so that the waste made a direct cannonade to the waters below. At Castle Island, as may still be seen, the waste went straight into Bermuda's moat, that is to say, the waters of the Atlantic within Castle Harbour.

The Castle Island garderobe is built in the shape of a buttery, an architectural feature otherwise used as an early form of cool storage for foodstuffs and wine. Garderobes were also used for storage, as the noxious fumes deterred insects. A derivative word, the wardrobe, another storage devise, evolved from such usage of the garderobe.

At the Dockyard are two latrines, which represent a different type of garderobe, the high-level business bench being supported over a vertical cesspit up to 50 feet high.

That structure could be seen as an imaginary ditch, with the old straight-drop principle retained. One of the latrines at the Casemate Barracks was for officers and the other, on the western wall of the Dockyard fortifications, was for the soldiers.

Earlier Bermuda homes would have had an outhouse at ground level, with a cesspit below and a few examples of this important architectural monument have survived. Later on, toilets and "indoor plumbing" were introduced, but cesspits remained the same holes in the ground, if separated from the action by some yards of pipework. Archaeologists particularly like American Standard toilets, for each, if you have ever looked into the water tank, has the date of its manufacture stamped within.

Mount Bermuda rises some 15,000 feet from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, but only 200 feet or so is above sea level. That is to say that the island we call home is less than one per cent of the mountain, or conversely, 99 per cent of Bermuda is under the sea. In area, the island is some 20 square miles, but in approximate volume, Bermuda only has a mass of about one-third of a cubic mile.

For 400 years, we have been depositing waste into that small volume of landmass. Our method of deposition is still of medieval standards, for, with few exceptions, we continue to use the sea as the moat for waste, albeit through the filter of Bermuda stone. It is unlikely that we can continue such a deposition for the next 400 years, without extremely detrimental environmental consequences.

The author thanks mathematician and Maritime Museum trustee Dr. Douglas DeCouto for assistance in calculating the figures herein.

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