Believe it or not but Bermuda once held colonial ambitions.

Most Bermudians are not aware that much of the Island's original fortune was made by settling another set of islands nearly a thousand miles away – the Turks and Caicos

Turn back the dial to 1678 and you'll find that Bermudian sailors were also seasonal salt collectors. When they came upon the un-inhabitated islands they cleared the land and created the Salinas (salt-drying pans) that still exist on many islands. They would spend their summers raking up salt.

The majority of the salt went aboard boats to supply the cod-fishing industries of New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

Salt was a precious commodity back then as it was used not only for flavouring food but for preserving it as well.

Originally white sailors would do the raking however once a permanent settlement was created slaves were brought to do the back breaking work. In fact Mary Prince – the famous Bermudian slave who was later freed and became the first black woman to publish an account of her life in Britain – was one such slave who was sent to the southern Islands by a Bermudian master.

In 1706, the French and the Spanish briefly captured the Turks and Caicos Islands from the Bermudians.

Four years later the British reclaimed the islands for Bermuda but in subsequent years the place became primarily a haven for pirates and British Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution.

For many years, the Bahamas (itself originally settled by Bermudian puritans in 1647) and Bermuda fought for control of the archipelago.

Bahamas attempted to tax Bermudian salt traders in 1773 but this failed as Bermudians refused to pay a penny. While Bermudians made up a majority of rakers any British subject was allowed to do so and some Bahamians soon got in the game.

By 1783 Bermuda was sending sixty to seventy-five ships to the Turks each year, during the six months that salt could be raked.

Nearly a thousand Bermudians — almost ten percent of the population — spent part of the year on the Turks engaged in salt production, and the industry became more productive.

But the Bahamas continued to harbour ambitions to replace Bermudians as salt rakers and in 1786 they seized five Bermuda Sloops, Bermuda responded by informing Bahamas they would now be arming their ships.

The fighting continued until 1803 when the British gave Turks and Caicos to Bahamas despite bitter protests from Bermudians. Soon after many Bermudians abandoned their homes and slaves in Turks and Caicos.