In less than 12 months, the quadricentennial, or 400th anniversary, of the permanent settlement of Bermuda will begin, as the New Year breaks over the horizon from the east, whence the original settlers came.

A Government-led committee and other bodies are beginning to organise events and happenings to celebrate that anniversary, which marks four centuries of the human occupation of a beautiful and unique place that we call home.

In part, these events will "map out" where, when, and how we Bermudians have become what we are.

That geography of road maps is our heritage, some of which we share through things in common and others through differences, but shared it all is, as we have been marooned together these last 399 years on the only speck of land in the middle of the western North Atlantic.

The quadricentennial marks the start of the human habitation of Bermuda, but not its original birth to the consciousness of people, for that occurred a hundred years prior, give or take a year or two, as far as we are able to determine.

To the collective "map of the mind" of peoples everywhere, Bermuda did not exist until Europeans began to sail the ocean seas in the 15th century.

That distinction is shared with other oceanic islands, such as St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha to the south and some islands in the western Indian Ocean.

Before that, Bermuda belonged to the cahows, pimlicos, longtails, turtles, snails and landcrabs, as well as cedars, palmettos and 11 other endemic plants.

Unlike today, there were no rats in residence, but in the way of many colonisations, the early settlers set out to decimate the original occupants, the cahow being soon butchered almost to extinction, while turtles, protected by legislation, are only now making a comeback. In self-interest, it might said that now we appreciate that one turtle in the sea, tourism-wise, is worth more than a thousand in the pot.

In order to be imprinted on the geography of the human mind, Bermuda had to be found, written about and mapped. That the island shared in common with the two great continental land masses to the west and all of the islands of the Caribbean Sea, as far as mapmakers in the Old World were concerned.

While indigeneous peoples settled those continents and the West Indies islands, they knew nothing of Bermuda, perched on its great volcanic Mount Bermuda to the northeast.

Columbus sailed to the west in 1492 with all these lands absent on his sea maps, bound for Japan and the exotic lands of the East, for he considered the world to be round at a time when many thought it to be a flat rectangle and only an immense ocean separated him from those places.

The mapping of the Americas and the Caribbean islands began in earnest after October 12 that year, for the map is not only an instrument for good navigation and travel, but also for the ultimate control of country and sea. The mapping of the birth of Bermuda started some 13 years later, when a Spanish ship, La Garza, chanced upon the place on the northern and easterly sea-road from the Caribbean to Europe.

From about 1505, the island bore the name of the pilot, Juan Bermudez, for to him is assigned the honour of its discovery.

That word of mouth, or oral history, was fortunately committed to paper in a book that appeared in 1511, wherein "La Bermuda" appeared in one of the earliest published charts of the New World. Of our smaller cousin islands in the Caribbean, only "Ile Verde", probably Barbados, and Trinidad appear.

Bermuda then appeared on other sea charts of the later 1500s, but the first map of detailed import was produced in 1603.

It is the first such map known to have survived and was created by Captain Diego Ramirez during his visit that year, with his crew that included Venturilla, the first known African to grace our shores. Spanish Point is on the maps because of their visit.

Six or seven years later, following the wreck of his ship, Sea Venture, in the summer of 1609, Sir George Somers, by rowing around the island, made the second known manuscript map of Bermuda, which has survived in two copies, one here in the collections of the Bermuda National Trust and the other at the British Library.

Then in 1614, the mapping of Bermuda took a serious turn for the good, with the arrival of Richard Norwood, a mathematician of note in England.

It is thought that Norwood did three surveys of the island, the first being a precise mapping of the coastline. That map appears in the centre of the "chart" of the first forts of Bermuda by Nathaniel Butler, the latter is the first and only image of what the first official buildings of the island looked like in the first decade or two of settlement.

Norwood's second survey divided the island into 50-acre shares of land and was published as a map by John Speed in 1626. That chart was given its highest expression in the atlases of the Blaeu family of Amsterdam mapmakers in the 1630s and is considered to be one of the finest cartographic works of the 17th century.

The unusual shape of Bermuda became an artistic asset in that achievement. Norwood completed a third survey in 1663; it was never published but exists in several manuscript copies.

His surveys were the main instrument for land holding and control until 1899, when Lieutenant Andrew Savage undertook the first Ordnance Survey of Bermuda.

The six charts presented here represent the mapping of the birth of Bermuda, from its inception as a known place in human consciousness, through its complete division for settlement and colonisation, the latter might well be compared to the dreaded word "development" in present times.

The "Condos", a foreign ethnic group, have been invading and colonising for some years, so it is unclear what the Map of Bermuda will look like by the end of the quadricentennial celebrations in a few years' time.

* * *

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 telephone to 799-5480.