The Bermuda Rock is a stratified and calcareous sandstone, of all degrees of hardness and density, ranging from a loose sandstone to a compact limestone; the sorts used in building varying between the softest Bath stone, and a second-rate Portland. The distribution of these varieties is most irregular: at St. George's, and generally throughout the islands, the former abound; but at Ireland Island, the eastern half is one quarry of the latter and harder description.

¿ Lieut. Richard Nelson, Royal Engineers, 1840

Aside from its geographical position and proximity to the monumental Gulf Stream ¿ the largest river in the world ¿ the most redeeming geological feature of the Bermuda Islands is the limestone plateau that forms the cap of Mount Bermuda, a great oceanic volcano.

For thousands of years, limestone was the building stone of choice and, unlike other rocks, it has the wonderful characteristic that it can be burnt and reduced to a powder form, known as "lime", having removed the stone as it were.

Like water from solid ice, lime can be combined with sand and aggregates to make plasters, mortars and concretes. Combined with water, limewash results, and that "wash" was one of earliest and most enduring of paints, used not only for waterproofing limestone buildings, but for decoration by the addition of pigments, such as red and yellow ochre.

Many of the greatest early buildings were made of limestone and many, including cathedrals, were lavishly, even luridly to our tastes, painted in coats of many colours in limewash. Here at Bermuda, there is some evidence to suggest that the early forts were painted red, that is with a limewash mixed with ochre, a deep red yet seen in some houses today.

Thus when the first settlers arrived in Bermuda in some numbers after July 1612, some of their company would have been familiar with the working of limestone, its combustion for lime and the creation of mortars to cement the stone together, as well as using the quicklime for white and colour washes.

In 1618, when Governor Daniel Tucker was constructing his timbered dream house, "The Grange", at the Overplus in Southampton, courtesy of the public purse, labour was dragooned into service. "Some men were set to work to dig cellars, others to burn lime and make mortar, others to make shingles."

A few years later, in 1621, Governor Nathaniel Butler erected the stone "Town House", now the State House, to encourage others to build in masonry. Part of his idea was to stop using scarce cedar timber for houses, for "there was an inexhaustible supply of stone, and of lime[stone] which would burn easily".

In May the following year, a small barque cleared for Jamestown, Virginia, and "her ballast was limestone, the best ballast in the world", possibly indicating that stone was being cut or quarried for export for building or burning into lime.

Limestone ballast served that shipping function, but was also a commodity that could be sold, rather that discarded upon arrival. The cut stone for building would have been of the soft "Bermuda stone" variety, while rubble rock would be the hard "limestone", as the old- timers call it.

Until the building of the Dockyard, the hard stone was not worked by Bermudians into building stones, with the possible exception of "wharf block", taken from coastal outcrops for that purpose.

In retrospect, the redeeming feature of the Dockyard was that the northern part of Ireland Island was possibly the largest mass of the hard limestone that could be quarried in all of Bermuda.

The density and hardness of this stone presented no particular problem to the Royal Engineers or the constructors of the Royal Navy, but the lack of an adequate local labour force required the importation of convicts after 1823.

For 40 years, the convicts worked the hard stone to create the many monuments of the Dockyard, including the fortifications, the Commissioner's House, the Casemate Barracks, the Great Eastern Storehouse with its two towers, the Mast Stores and the Victualling Yard. The fact that all these buildings were built in the hard limestone probably saved them from demolition in the 1960s.

The full story of the progress of construction has yet to be written, but Lt. Cdr. Ian Stranack, RN, when the Commanding Officer of HMS Malabar and Resident Naval Officer, began the process in the early 1970s.

The fortifications that surround the Dockyard to the east, north and west were built first. The Commissioner's House, the Casemate Barracks and some of the powder magazines in the Keep, where the Maritime Museum is located, followed.

By the mid-1840s, the main yard was still devoid of stone buildings. The original timber "clocktower building" remained from about 1812 and for a year or two from 1857 it stood behind its stone replacement, as shown in the painting illustrated here.

In the last years of convict labour to the early 1860s, all of the other stone buildings, bar one, were constructed to the west and north of the Great Eastern Storehouse. Recent research now pinpoints the last stone building to be erected in the Dockyard.

On a plan in the Maritime Museum archives, which recorded the damage to the Floating Dock by the 1878 hurricane, that last building is described as "The New Machine Shop". A photograph of its construction, wherein its walls are half-built and covered with scaffolding, can also further date the building, which stands between the Dockyard Gate and the Great Eastern Storehouse, for in the background is the Floating Dock, which was in that position in the Camber from April 1870.

Another photograph, looking towards the Casemate Barracks, shows the building almost complete. These are the only known photographs of the construction of any of the later buildings of the Dockyard.

The Machine Shop was thus begun after 1870 but completed before 1878, a decade or so after the convicts left the Dockyard. As the last building of the Dockyard, its facades reflect the lack of a good supply of limestone and possibly of expert masons. Compared to the squared blocks of the adjacent "Clocktower Building", most of the walling of the Machine Shop is of rubble, or irregular, stones, excepting details around the doors and windows.

Despite those differences in masonry work, the Machine Shop, the last, or youngest, building of the Stone Dockyard, is still a fine, if unrestored, monument to the use of the very hard limestone, a usage which makes all of the Dockyard unique in Bermuda and of international import, worthy of World Heritage Site status.

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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 telephone to 799-5480.