HMD Bermuda (Her/His Majesty's Dockyard, Bermuda) was the principal base of the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War. The Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609. French privateers may have used the islands as a staging place for operations against Spanish galleons in the 16th century. Bermudian privateers certainly played a role in many English and British wars following settlement, with its utility as a base for his privateers leading to the Earl of Warwick, the namesake of Warwick Parish, becoming the most important investor of the Somers Isles Company. Despite this, it was not until the loss of bases on most of the North American Atlantic seaboard (following US independence) threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic that the island assumed great importance as a naval base (the attendant Bermuda Garrison of the British Army existed primarily to protect the naval base). In 1818 the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda officially replaced the Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax, as the British headquarters for the North America Station and its successors.
As prior to 1959, under section 87 of the Naval Discipline Act 1866 (29 & 30 Vict. c. 109), only sailors on the books of a commissioned naval vessel were subject to naval discipline, naval personnel assigned to shore duties were listed administratively as crew members of depot ships, originally usually hulks of old warships. In Bermuda, the depot ship was HMS Terror from 1857 to 1897, which was replaced by the former troopship (renamed HMS Terror in 1901). The former HMS Malabar was sold in 1918, following which the name HMS Malabar was applied to the Casemates Naval Barracks in the dockyard as a stone frigate under command of the Captain in Charge to which the shore personnel at Bermuda, whether belonging to the dockyard, to outlying naval facilities (such as Admiralty House, Bermuda, Royal Naval Air Station Bermuda, or the Royal Naval wireless station (from 1961, NRS Bermuda) at Daniel's Head), or to minor vessels assigned to the dockyard for local use, were administratively assigned. As a consequence, HMS Malabar was often used interchangeably with HM Dockyard Bermuda or Royal Naval Dockyard Bermuda, and has been often mistaken as referring only to specific subordinate naval facilities in Bermuda, such as the wireless station at Daniel's Head or the Royal Naval Air Station. After the Bermuda dockyard was reduced to a base in the 1950s, the part that continued to operate as a naval base was commissioned as HMS Malabar until 1995.
Post 1783
In the decades following American independence, Britain was faced with two threats to its maritime supremacy. The first was French, as Napoleon battled Britain for military, political, and economic supremacy in Europe, closing continental ports to British trade. He also unleashed a storm of privateers from the French West Indies in an attempt to cripple British trade in the New World. The Royal Navy was hard-pressed in Europe, and unable to release adequate forces to counter the menace of the privateers. In any case, multi-decked ships-of-the-line were designed to battle each other in slow-moving, opposing lines. However many guns they might have to bring to bear, they were not able to run down, or outmanoeuvre the small privateers.
The second threat was American. The first successful English colony in the North America, Jamestown, Virginia, which Bermuda was settled as an extension of, was intended to exploit the abundance of timber on that continent. This was at a time when Britain, and much of Europe, had long been stripped almost clear of trees. American timber had been one of the enablers of Britain's ascendancy to maritime supremacy, and, by 1776, a significant part of Britain's merchant fleet was made up of American ships. Despite its own, brief, naval dispute with Napoleon, the United States took full advantage of its neutral position in the wars between Britain and France in allowing its merchant fleet to trade with France and the countries under its influence, and the British Government was enraged by what it saw as America's failure to support it in combating a common threat. The British Admiralty was also enraged by the practice of American merchant and naval vessels to poach sailors from the Royal Navy at a time when its manpower was stretched to the limit. The US also had its own interest in breaking Britain's supremacy on maritime trade, and from the first days of the Republic it has often claimed to champion free trade.
First naval establishment in East End
The Royal Navy sought to counter the threat of French privateers in the New World by commissioning its own light vessels, built along the lines of traditional Bermuda sloops. The first three vessels commissioned from Bermudian shipyards were 200 ton, 12-gun sloops-of-war, ordered in 1795, and commissioned as HMS Dasher, HMS Driver and HMS Hunter. Over the next fifteen years, the Admiralty would commission a great many more vessels from Bermudian builders, manned by locally recruited officers and crews. Although the first were intended to counter the privateer menace, Bermudian sloops ultimately became 'advice' vessels, using their speed and handling to evade enemies, and carrying communications and vital freight around the globe. They were also used for reconnaissance and maintaining pickets. In addition to ships commissioned by the Admiralty, Bermudian merchant vessels were also bought up and commissioned for this purpose. The most famous was undoubtedly , which carried the news of British victory back from Trafalgar.
The Royal Navy began to invest into Bermudian real-estate in 1795. Very early, it began to buy islands at the West End of the chain, and in the Great Sound, with the view to building a naval base and dockyard. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no known channel wide and deep enough to allow large naval vessels to gain access to the Great Sound. A naval hydrographer, Thomas Hurd, spent a dozen years charting the waters around the Colony, and eventually found the Channel through the reefs, which is still used today by vessels travelling to the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour.
Initially, the Royal Navy bought and developed property in and around the then capital of St. George's, at the East End. These included Convict Bay, which became a Royal Canadian Naval Base, , during the Second World War, and the brick building now housing the Carriage House Museum, and Restaurant. Once Hurd's Channel had been discovered, however, the Royal Navy soon relocated all of its facilities to the West End.
Relocation to West End In 1788 the Admiralty commissioned a nautical survey of Bermuda, with a view to establishing a new naval base there. Lt. Thomas Hannaford Hurd was ordered to undertake this, in the company of Lt. Andrew Fitzherbert Evans as his Assistant Surveyor. In 1794, Rear Admiral George Murray was appointed to command the North American squadron. He was sent a chart from Hurd's survey, and quickly saw the potential benefits of a base in Bermuda. The passage Hurd had surveyed through the reef into a new anchorage was named as "Murray's anchorage". On 18 May, Murray and his captains visited the town of St. George, where they were welcomed with a great reception. In the following week, Hurd and Murray explored the new anchorages, including other possible entrances, and also westwards to Grassy Bay and Ireland Island, which Murray regarded as an ideal location for a dockyard. Admiral St Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty commented that Hurd's accurate survey had convinced him that the arsenal should be transferred from Halifax to Bermuda.Webb, within
Captain Andrew Fitzherbert Evans was approached to be the first Commodore in March 1811. He accepted in April 1811. He sailed aboard the Guerriere in July 1811. Evans used the Tourterelle as his flagship, but later flew his pennant from . Evans was married to a Bermudian in 1794. His wife and children lived there from 1794 to 1808, hence his links to the island. Ruby was recommissioned in October 1810. From April to June 1811, she was fitted out at Chatham as depot ship for Bermuda. On 25 July 1811, she left Portsmouth and sailed to Bermuda. During 1812, HMS Ruby was used as the Receiving Ship at Bermuda. The ship remained in Bermuda and was broken up there in April 1821.
Numerous islands at the West End, and in the Great Sound were used for various purposes, but the core of the base, the Dockyard, began to take shape on Ireland Island, at the North West extremity of the archipelago. Initially, local labourers, free or enslaved, were sought to carry out the construction. With most working-age Bermudian men being skilled workers, involved in seafaring or shipbuilding, local labour proved scarce and expensive. (The Admiralty had acknowledged Bermuda's reliance on its merchant seamen by exempting them from impressment into the Royal Navy, to which all other British seamen were liable).
In view of attitudes found amongst the Bermudian population to manual labour, and the high cost of local labour, the labour force for the start of the work was, apart from specialist Bermudian artisans, built up from slaves and ex-slaves from various sources. The hired Bermudian slaves led unusually independent lives, finding their own work and bargaining with prospective employers for wages and conditions. Alongside them were ex-slaves taken off intercepted ships and who, by the Slave Trade Act 1807, should not have been treated as slaves but were considered still slaves by dockyard officials. Also, from 1813, refugees from American slavery of the War of 1812 who had opted for employment at Bermuda rather than armed service or resettlement in Canada, and who suffered similarly from the dockyard officials’ attitudes, finding their situation inferior to that of the hired Bermudan slaves, and who at the end of the War found themselves sent to Canada, despite their original choice of location, to make way for that part of the Corps of Colonial Marines that had been recruited on the Atlantic coast.Weiss (2017), within
Service afloat in the Royal Navy was not generally popular amongst seamen from any part of the British Realm, forcing the navy to rely on impressment, especially in North America. HMS Whiting was notorious in the Maritimes in 1805 for impressing locals. Although she had been built in Bermuda and had a Bermudian officer, Bermudians were exempted from impressment.
American War of 1812
One of the first Naval actions of the War was the capture of the Bermuda-built, , in a US port.
During the War, the British blockade of American ports was orchestrated from Bermuda, and a squadron based in Bermuda was active in the Chesapeake from February 1813 until the end of the War, British forces briefly occupying Kent Island in 1813 and establishing a base on Tangier Island in 1814, where the Royal Navy recruited from among refugee slaves a Corps of Colonial Marines. Other refugees were first brought to Bermuda in May 1813, where they were employed in the construction of the new Dockyard on Ireland Island in the company of hired artisans, both free and enslaved, and finally to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for resettlement.