A hotel set on Hamilton Harbour served as headquarters for intense intelligence operations for the British Government during the Second World War.

Fairmont Hamilton Princess housed twelve hundred secret agents, experts, scientists and linguist in the former Adam Lounge, dubbed Room 99, from 1940 to 1945. It was chosen because of because of it's strategic geographic location.

The story says because Bermuda had a stable Government, a long shipping tradition, first class harbours, a British Naval base and a base for flying boats at Darrell's Island, it was the best place to operate out of.

Working out of a two-storey wooden building, the Gazebo Lounge and the Adam Lounge, the Gold Lounge today, the men intercepted all postal, telegraph and radio traffic between the Western Hemisphere and Europe.

Flying boats to Darrell's island would drop off packages which were delivered by launch to the Princess dock. The mail was sorted in the present-day Gazebo Lounge area before being sent over to the Adam Lounge to check all the details. The parcels were then searched by the Imperial Censorship staff for microdot messages that could have been sent by German spies. The men would decode the secret correspondence, extract the letters from the tightly sealed envelopes and put them back without anyone knowing.

They were led by Senior Representative of British Intelligence, Sir William Stephenson or code name "Intrepid", who helped to trap German spies and agents in the US. The Canadian also helped frustrate the operations of Hitler. Sir William retired in 1964 and moved into a suite at The Princess with his wife. They eventually moved into a home in Paget were he lived until he died at the age of 93 in 1989.

The hotel was closed at the start of the war. It was re-opened by the British Government with the nickname, "Bletchley in the Tropics" after Bletchley Park, the English country house where the "Enigma" code was broken.