At the eastern end of Ireland Island was the "Keep", or citadel, of the Dockyard defences. It was a six-acre fort, with seven irregular bastions, named "A" to "G". The lower ground, or Keep Yard, contained the Sea Service stores, which in 1857 comprised two bomb-proof magazines for 6,540 barrels of powder, a shell store, a filling room and a shifting house. Lighters from the Keep Pond served the fleet at anchor in Grassy Bay with munitions from these stores, or removed them thereto if a ship was under repairs in the Dockyard.

¿ Bermuda Forts 1612-1957

In 1951, six years after the end of World War Two that had claimed the lives of 35 Bermudian military personnel, the northern part of the great Bermuda Dockyard was closed by the Royal Navy and ceded to the Bermuda Government.

That transaction and others wherein the Government has acquired former military lands is often referred to as the "handing back" to the local authority of such lands. In most instances, this was not true, as the lands originally belonged to private families, who lost them to the military authorities in compulsory purchase operations.

Particularly from the end of the American Revolution in 1783, much acreage of private property in Bermuda has been appropriated in the "national interest" for military purposes.

Other acquisitions were made for civilian purposes in that same interest, the two largest being the lands of what is referred to as "Tucker's Town" ¿ which has yet to seen the arising of any urban constructions ¿ and possibly the largest land grab of all, the acreage taken for the Bermuda Railway, now the Government "Railway Trail".

In the way of such acquisitions, the land is seldom returned to its original private owners after the purpose of compulsory acquisition has evaporated, but falls almost entirely to the benefit of the local government.

Taken from Bermudian families in 1808, the northern part of Ireland Island became the site of the largest dockyard built by the British in the Americas, while the southern acreage was used for housing, hospitals, a parsonage and essential cemeteries, and a Spar Yard for ship repairs. Watford and Boaz Islands were later also purchased by compulsory order and the families of all these western lands were scattered throughout Bermuda thereafter.

The construction of the Dockyard began in 1809 and wooden buildings were hastily erected, as plans were laid for great fortifications and buildings of a monumental nature in the very hard Bermuda limestone, which fortuitously there existed on the surface in large hills that could be quarried. In 1823, shiploads of convicts were brought from Britain to supply the main labour force that was needed for the blasting and carving of that stone into building blocks, for all the buildings that are now standing at dockyard as major historical monuments.

For almost a century from 1809, the North Yard of the Dockyard was the centre of naval activity at Bermuda, though militarily the command vested in the Governor as Commander-in-Chief and a number of large forts were built and occupied, especially in St. George's Parish, to defend the Dockyard from an American takeover.

When the age of the Dreadnought battleship was upon the world in the late 1800s, it was necessary to expand the Dockyard into a South Yard, today an industrial wasteland, following the departure of the Royal Navy in 1995, after 200 years of presence in Bermuda.

In 1951, six years after the end of the Second World War, which almost bankrupted Britain, the North, or historic, Yard was closed. For a period of operation as a "Freeport" under the Crown Lands Corporation-the forerunner of such quangos that often have "development" in their title-the transformation of the North Yard as a cultural and tourist enterprise, rather than an industrial site, began with the establishment of the Bermuda Maritime Museum in 1974.

Though there were many doubting Thomases, the allocation of the Keep at Dockyard for that purpose was a farseeing decision by the then Minister of Works, the late Gloria McPhee. On the success of the attraction by the Museum of visitors to the Dockyard, the West End Development Corporation was established in 1982 to bring the rest of the historic North Yard to life.

The Keep, or Museum, has two levels. That nearest sea level was the Keep Yard, which housed the massive gunpowder magazines of the Sea Service, awaiting the need for the Fleet to attack Washington once again, or such like tilt against the United States, which remained the major potential enemy throughout the nineteenth century at Bermuda.

The Keep Yard was segregated from the Upper Grounds and the great naval residence of the Commissioner's House, as the Yard was off limits to all but those who worked in the dangerous magazines. The present road to Commissioner's House from the Museum ticket office was only cut through the hard rock in the early 1900s.

After a long restoration, the Commissioner's House was opened by the then Premier of Bermuda, now Dame Jennifer Smith, in May 2000 and is filled with exhibits. In the original arrangement, the road to the Upper Grounds of the Keep and the Commissioner's House was by way of the highway from the Dockyard Gate, up past the Casemate Barracks, and down the long causeway, known as the Northwest Rampart, which incorporated Bastions "H" and "I" and was a major feature of the fortifications that connected the Keep with the Casemates complex and Land Front to the south.

At the junction of the Northwest Rampart and the Keep, a gap was traversed by means of a wooden drawbridge, the size and width of which allowed only for pedestrian traffic. For many decades, the path past Casemates and down the Rampart and across that bridge was the only road to the Commissioner's House.

To recreate a sense of this major road at high level in the Dockyard, volunteers, who are carrying out restoration at the Casemate Barracks and Land Front, recently cleared the roadway along the Northwest Rampart. Interested persons can view some of that road by accessing the ramps behind the Bermuda Glassworks or the Mast Stores building, occupied by the Department of Marine & Ports Services.

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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.