The sun has gone down, "like battle target red", behind the cedars. The skimming Bermudian boats, with their black crews of marketmen and washerwomen, have vanished under the dusky shores. The flag-ship has fired her evening gun; and I have retired, for the last time, to my cabin on board the Scourge. The captain has reported himself and his errand to the admiral; the admiral has communicated with the Governor: ¿ tomorrow, I will know my appointed home.

¿ John Mitchel, Jail Journal

About the time that the final plans were being formulated for the construction of the Bermuda Dockyard, John Mitchel was born in 1815 in County Derry in Ireland. Destined perhaps to be the most famous, or infamous, of all the convicts transported to the Dockyard between 1823 and 1863, Mitchel's Jail Journal, which in part describes his time in the "vexed Bermoothes", "has no equal in the literature of the prison".

However, "For the patriotic Irishman it is from beginning to end a national tonic and a joy ¿ in its relentless exposure of English and Irish cant, humbug, and hypocrisy."

Mitchel is considered to be the "greatest Irish Nationalist from the time of Tone to the beginning of the 20th century": that is to say, the whole of the 19th century, for Theobald Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism, died of a self-inflicted wound to avoid being hanged for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Coming to an intellectual maturity at the beginning of the great Irish famine caused by the potato blight in the mid-1840s, John Mitchel established a newspaper in Dublin, through which he advocated a "holy war to sweep this island clear of the English name and nation", a battle that was waged in some form by others into modern times, only to cease following the repercussions of September 11, 2001.

"We are not amused", presumably said Queen Victoria and Mitchel was tried for treason-felony; he was sentenced to a possible slow death through the boredom of transportation overseas for 14 years.

The first stop on the aptly-named Scourge was Bermuda on June 20, 1848. At the Dockyard, Mitchel was to find his "appointed home", as a solitary on the hulk Dromedary for the next ten months.

Meanwhile ashore, the last great phase of convict work was proceeding apace in the Dockyard, as the great complex of stone buildings in the yard itself arose, culminating in the Great Eastern Storehouse with its twin towers.

Prior to 1847, only the fortifications, the Commissioner's House and the Casemate Barracks had been completed, according to the evidence of the scene painted from the upper veranda of the House in that year.

From his solitary confinement, presumably to avoid his incitement of the other convicts, Mitchel would have watched the building activities in the yard that ultimately produced buildings of World Heritage status. It is of note that the convict establishments of Australia and Tasmania, where Mitchel was later sent and from whence he escaped to the United States, are being considered for such World Heritage Site designation.

Always the observer and commentator, Mitchel captures impressions of Bermuda in those times, even from his arrival as they awaited passage through The Narrows at St. George's: "presently a boat came off: the boatmen were mulattoes, with palmetto hats; the pilot himself an utter negro". He later remarks that native "scores of boats, of a peculiar and most graceful rig, are flying in all directions", assuredly a reference to the Bermuda Rig, which I state once again, one of the island's highest cultural and technological achievements, used today by most racing yachts and sailing boats.

Once through the channel and up the North Shore, the rebel finds "there is a thick population all along here: their houses are uniformly white, both walls and roof, but uncomfortable-looking for the want of chimneys; the cooking-house being usually a small detached building".

From the national greenery of his native Ireland, Mitchel does not take well to parched Bermuda. "The land not under wood is of a brownish green colour and of a most naked and arid, hungry and thirsty visage. No wonder: for not one single stream, not one spring, rill, or well, gushes, trickles, or bubbles in all the three hundred isles, with their three thousand hills. Heavens! What a burned and blasted country."

But upon reflection, Mitchel sees that "these are fertile and fine islands; they bring forth and nourish thousands of creatures to all appearance human; have two towns even; cities of articulate-speaking men, one of them being the seat of government and 'legislature'; have a dockyard, two barracks, two newspapers, absolute 'organs of opinion' (with editors, I suppose, puffs, and other appurtenances); what is better, have abundance of fruit, vegetables and fish; and I can see some cows, and plenty of goats, pigs and poultry".

A widely-read man, John Mitchel goes on to write that: "Verily, the land is a good land. It was here, amongst these very cedars that noster George Berkeley desired to establish a missionary college, with a view to convert red Americans to Christianity, and gave up his fat deanery of Derry that he might take up house here as Principal."

He then goes on to relate that Berkeley, after whom the Institute here is named, was promised a goodly grant of money by the British Government and went to Rhode Island to await the cheque, which never arrived.

Dean Berkeley went home in despair to Ireland, and Mitchel summarised: "Good man! He little knew what a plague Ministers thought him, with his missionary colleges; they had quite another plan for the conversion of the red people ¿ to convert them, namely, into red humus. But they gave George a bishopric at Cloyne, and there he philosophised and fiddled till he died."

John Mitchel's last day in Bermuda was Sunday, April 22, 1849 and he was worried that he would be searched before leaving his cell on the Dromedary, with the possibly confiscation of his diary with the reflections above, and others, possibly seditious, contained therein.

Fortunately, for us and history, he took his leave unmolested: "Four o'clock. ¿ At Sea. The cedar-groves of Bermuda are sinking below the hazy horizon.¿ So ends my 'Dream of the Summer Islands'."

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