Deservedly high in importance to Great Britain as Bermuda has ever been held as a well-placed sentinel over her West Indies and South American interests and possessions; as a refuge and depot for her fleets and ships in that particular ocean where her envied naval supremacy is in most danger of disputes; and in close proximity to an increasingly powerful and impulsive nation, scarcely deigning to disavow its disregard of any rights found to interfere with long cherished schemes of aggrandisement and acquisition; and hitherto unable, if not unwilling, to control among its people a wild spirit of aggression dangerous to the maintenance of peace . . . Its capture, or the destruction of its arsenals at the outbreak of a war, would be a calamity of serious influence on the issue of the struggle.IN this preamble to a report on the defences of Bermuda in 1857, a coterie of military officers set the stage for the continued fortification of the island in order to hold it and the vital naval base at Ireland Island. The officers covered the full range of the military at Bermuda: Colonel Hemphill commanded the 26th Regiment of infantry, Colonel Monty Williams the Royal Engineers, Lt. Col. Turner of the Royal Artillery and Master John Parsons, RN, represented the Royal Navy.

Their recommendations for strengthening the existing fortifications and the making of new forts, as well as blocking channels into Castle Harbour, were almost obsolete before the ink was dry on their extensive document. The development of rifled artillery then being carried out in Britain would see the birth of new types of guns, firing projectiles rather than cannonballs, that would be capable of blowing their recommendations sky-high, or at least in the case of Dockyard, into the waters of Grassy Bay.

In less than a decade, all their ideas would be swept away, along with the guns and some of the fortifications they proposed to improve to hold Bermuda against an American invasion.

For history, such reports are invaluable as they are often the only surviving evidence of military circumstances where the forts that existed at the time of the survey have since vanished.

Such is the case of the Ravelin Tower of the Bermuda Dockyard, the history of which must be unravelled in part from military reports and plans, for it was utterly destroyed in the building of the South Yard and Pender Road between 1901 and 1907.

Some physical evidence of its existence does survive in the Land Front, which is the main line of the Dockyard fortifications. This evidence was uncovered, or rather unblocked, in recent work by volunteers working on Saturday mornings at the Casemate Barracks to the rear or north of the Land Front.>here were three outworks to the south, or Somerset, side of the Land Front; only that to the west called the Right Advance has survived. To the east protecting the only road into the Dockyard was the Couvre Porte, which was demolished in 1901-07, along with the central Ravelin Tower.Between the Land Front and these redoubts was a major ditch, cut into the bedrock, about 20 feet wide and up to 30 feet deep. Branches of that main ditch went around each of the outworks and were bounded by the glacis to the south, an area kept cleared so as to expose an enemy marching on the fortifications. The Ravelin Tower and its ditch were further separated from the glacis by a Counterguard, which was another line of masonry fortifications, accessed by a tunnel and a bridge from the tower.

The outwork was also demolished at the beginning of the 20th century, with a last underground staircase being discovered and destroyed in the building of the Westgate Correctional Facility in the early 1990s.

The Ravelin Tower was a casemated irregular hexagon. That is to say that like the “Casemated” Barracks, it had a bomb-proof roof of some eight courses of brick laid in a great arch over the rooms below.

It could house 22 men and had two 24-pounder cannon on its roof and four 24-pounder cannonades in the casemates, the purpose of the latter being to fire anti-personnel grapeshot along the length of the Land Front ditch.

From the Ravelin Tower to the Counterguard was a new type of drawbridge, one of a group at Bermuda that marked “the first invention of new types of drawbridges since medieval times”.

This one must have been particularly amusing to use, for it was like one of those animal toys one had in one’s youth. When the bottom of the toy was pushed up, the giraffe collapsed; when released the giraffe stood upright again through the tightening of strings through its body under the force of a spring.

The Counterguard rope drawbridge worked on a similar principle: wait until the Americans were on it, pull the lever and the bridge collapsed, spilling the enemy into the ditch. Once so freed of its burden of enemy soldiers, the bridge was winched back into place.>From the Tower to the Land Front was a fixed bridge, seen here in the only known photograph of the situation (courtesy of Wendell Hollis). Once across the bridge, the soldier descended under the Front through two flights of stone stairs, offset the one from the other across a small central room for defence purposes. At the bottom of the stairs, another bridge, carried on a great stone corbel in the Land Front wall, allowed the soldier to enter the Casemate Barracks, by way of a tall arched doorway. These stairs were discovered in recent work at the Barracks, after the removal of blocking masonry in the doorway of the Land Front side of the bridge.

The door to and from the bridge in the south wall of the Casemate Barracks was also partly unblocked, as seen in the picture. At the top of the stairs, one may now leap into oblivion to join the Ravelin Tower and its Counterguard, for only thin air and a drop of more than 50 feet occupies the space where once stood the wooden bridge some of the finest fortifications ever constructed at Bermuda.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion, not necessarily those of the trustees or staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharris@logic.bm0,g)>, to PO Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone at 799-5480.