| Admiralty House, Bermuda | |
|---|---|
 Admiralty House at Clarence Hill, formerly St. John's Hill | |
| Active | 1795–1956 |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  Royal Navy |
| Role | Station command |
| Garrison/HQ | North America and West Indies Station |
Admiralty House, Bermuda, was the official residence and offices for the senior officer of the Royal Navy in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, originally the Commander-in-Chief of the North America and West Indies Station.
The first location of the Admiralty House had been at Rose Hill, in St. George's Town, between 1795 and 1806. This was where Irish poet Thomas Moore was employed as a clerk to the Admiralty Court in 1803. St. George's Harbour, up 'til that time, had been the only harbour suitable for large naval vessels that also had a known access route through Bermuda's encircling barrier reef (the Admiralty had plans to utilise Castle Harbour but its shallow waters, and its treacherous entrance through Castle Roads proved dangerous in stormy weather). The Royal Navy had begun establishing itself in and around the town, especially at Convict Bay, but had longer-term plans for a dockyard and naval base at the opposite end of the archipelago. Royal Naval hydrographers had spent a dozen years in charting the reef, and had discovered a channel that enabled the Royal Navy to begin mooring vessels off the northern shore of St. George's Island at a location that became known as Murray's Anchorage, after Vice-Admiral Sir George Murray, who led the first fleet to anchor there in 1794. This also opened up the West End of Bermuda, where the Royal Navy had already begun purchasing land around the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour, to access by large vessels. [1]
St. John's Hill, a property at Spanish Point, in Pembroke Parish that belonged to John Dunscombe (a Bermudian who later became a prominent resident and Lieutenant-Governor of Newfoundland), was rented by the Admiralty in 1810 as a residence for the Royal Naval Commander-in-Chief, by then Admiral Sir John Warren. It was then intended to move Admiralty House to a building on Langton Hill, also in Pembroke, but this evidently did not happen. In 1810, Admiralty House moved instead to the rented Mount Wyndham, above Bailey's Bay. [2] This location allowed observation of both St. George's Harbour and Murray's Anchorage, and signals could be passed between these points with visual aids (flags or lights). Mount Wyndham was "granted by" the House of Assembly in 1812, and St. John's Hill (which was still being rented by the Admiralty, but had been sitting vacant) was adapted to a naval hospital during a yellow fever epidemic that year. [3]
With the development of the Royal Naval Dockyard underway at Ireland Island, Bermuda, Mount Wyndham was unable to provide visibility of the base or the Great Sound, where a new anchorage would be located at Grassy Bay. Consequently, Spanish Point was rented by the Admiralty for a peppercorn beginning in 1813. However, the blockade of the Atlantic Seaboard harbours of the United States during the American War of 1812 was orchestrated from Mount Wyndham, as was the punitive raid on the Chesapeake Bay in 1814 that included the Burning of Washington. In 1816 St. John's Hill was purchased by the Government of Bermuda for £2,000-3,000 pounds and gifted to the Admiralty by the House of Assembly. "Admiralty House" moved there from Mount Wyndham in the same year. [4]
In 1822, St. John's Hill was renamed "Clarence Hill", commemorating Admiral of the Fleet, Prince William, the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), and remained Admiralty House until 1956, when it finally closed. [4] During the interim, the Commander-in-Chief based there saw his station expand from the North America Station to the North America and West Indies Station with the absorption of the Newfoundland Station and the Jamaica Station, and to the America and West Indies Station in 1926, when it absorbed the geographic areas of the former South East Coast of America Station and the Pacific Station. Alliance with the United States of America in the Second World War, and subsequently in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would see the United States Navy taking preeminence in the western North Atlantic with Bermuda's dockyard reduced to a base (without facilities to repair or refit ships) in 1951, and the role of the Commander-in-Chief on the station being abolished in 1956, leaving no requirement for an Admiralty House.
The Bermuda Government then used Admiralty House as a barracks for the Bermuda Police Service (the first constables housed there were originally caretakers). [5] After the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Rifles amalgamated in 1965 to form the Bermuda Regiment (now the Royal Bermuda Regiment), it housed one of the regiment's rifle companies until the early-1970s, when all sub-units of the regiment were collected at Warwick Camp. In 1973, the property was adapted for the rehabilitation of drug addicts by The Group, a charity with wide backing. Although the grounds are still generally referred to as Admiralty House, the Admiralty House itself was deemed unsafe, and uneconomical to repair, and was deliberately burnt down on 24 January 1974. Later that year, the Government of Bermuda's Department of Education began planning to redevelop the Admiralty House grounds as a unified campus for the Bermuda College. This was to include the college Department of Hotel Technology's hotel training school, a working hotel where students could gain practical experience. Although the foreshore and the eastern slope of Clarence Hill were to be designated a botanical and biological preserve, the campus plan was protested by the Admiralty House Park Association, which included local residents, and by the organisations already based on the property. The protests were ultimately successful as the hotel training school, originally titled Stonington Beach, was instead placed on the South Shore in Paget (the main campus of the college was situated separately at the former Prospect Camp, until moving to the same site in Paget in the 1990s). [6]
While most of the grounds are now public parkland, the Clarence Hill property retains a naval use as part of it has since 1968 housed TS Bermuda, the headquarters unit of the Bermuda Sea Cadet Corps. [7]
Mount Wyndham (where the press of the Great Seal of the Confederacy, which had been waiting in Bermuda for delivery to Charleston, South Carolina by blockade-runner, was kept for many decades after the defeat of the Confederate States of America ended the American Civil War) returned to use as a private dwelling after Admiralty House was relocated to St. John's Hill, and currently is part of a housing condominium development which includes many newer buildings. [8]
Rose Hill became the site of the St. George's Hotel, and currently is occupied by the St. George's Club, a time sharing development made up of seventy-one cottages, an administration building (also containing a restaurant), and storage buildings. No earlier structures remain. [9]
While the defence of Bermuda remains the responsibility of the government of the United Kingdom, rather than of the local Bermudian Government, the island still maintains a militia for the purpose of defence.
The City of Hamilton, in Pembroke Parish, is the territorial capital of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is the territory's financial centre and a port and tourist destination. Its population of 854 (2016) is one of the smallest of any capital city.
The North America and West Indies Station was a formation or command of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy stationed in North American waters from 1745 to 1956, with main bases at the Imperial fortresses of Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The North American Station absorbed the separate Newfoundland Station in 1825, and the Jamaica Station in 1830, to form the North America and West Indies Station. It was briefly abolished in 1907 before being restored in 1915. It was renamed the America and West Indies Station in 1926, absorbing what had been the South East Coast of America Station and the Pacific Station. It was commanded by Commanders-in-Chief whose titles changed with the changing of the formation's name, eventually by the Commander-in-Chief, America and West Indies Station.
Royal Navy Dockyards were state-owned harbour facilities where ships of the Royal Navy were built, based, repaired and refitted. Until the mid-19th century the Royal Dockyards were the largest industrial complexes in Britain.
Ireland Island is the north-westernmost island in the chain which comprises Bermuda. It forms a long finger of land pointing northeastwards from the main island, the last link in a chain which also includes Boaz Island and Somerset Island. It lies within Sandys Parish, and forms the northwestern coast of the Great Sound. It is regarded as one of the six principal islands of Bermuda, and part of the West End of the archipelago.
Sir Peter Parker, 2nd Baronet was a British Royal Navy officer, the son of Vice-Admiral Christopher Parker and Augusta Byron.
HMD 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 threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic that the island assumed great importance as a 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 (which would become the North America and West Indies Station after absorbing the Jamaica Station in 1830.
The Bermuda Sea Cadet Corps was created in 1966 and registered as a charity under the Bermuda Sea Cadet Association Act, 1968. The first unit had actually been created two years earlier.
Vice Admiral George Murray was a Royal Navy officer and politician. He was the third son of the Jacobite general Lord George Murray.
The Bermuda Garrison was the military establishment maintained on the British Overseas Territory and Imperial fortress of Bermuda by the regular British Army and its local militia and voluntary reserves from 1701 to 1957. The garrison evolved from an independent company, to a company of Royal Garrison Battalion during the American War of Independence, and a steadily growing and diversifying force of artillery and infantry with various supporting corps from the French Revolution onwards. During the American War of Independence, the garrison in Bermuda fell under the military Commander-in-Chief of America. Subsequently, it was part of the Nova Scotia Command until 1868, and was an independent Bermuda Command from then until its closure in 1957.
Prospect Camp, also referred to as Prospect Garrison, was the main infantry camp of the Bermuda Garrison, the military force stationed in the Imperial fortress of Bermuda. It also contained Fort Prospect, Fort Langton, and Fort Hamilton, as well as being the base for mobile artillery batteries, manned by the Royal Artillery. Outlying parts of the camp were disposed of in the early decades of the Twentieth Century as the garrison in Bermuda was reduced. The core area, including the barracks, passed to the local government when the garrison was withdrawn in 1957.
The Western Redoubt, or Fort William, is a square fort built on a crest on the eastern side of Government Hill, and within the boundaries of the original main British Army camp in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, St. George's Garrison.
The United States Naval Station Whites Island was a United States Navy (USN) facility located on White's Island in Hamilton Harbour, in the British Colony of Bermuda, 640 miles off the coast of North Carolina.
Fort Victoria is a disused British Army fort, built to house coastal artillery atop Retreat Hill, within St. George's Garrison, at the North-East of St. George's Island, in the British colony of Bermuda.
HMS Castle Harbour was a civilian harbour vessel of 730 tons that was taken-up from trade (TUFT) during the Second World War by the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda for use by the Royal Naval Examination Service and later armed and commissioned as a warship, providing harbour defence from submarines.
St. George's Garrison was the first permanent military camp of the Bermuda Garrison established in the British colony and Imperial fortress of Bermuda, with construction of Old Military Road and the original Royal Barracks commencing during the war between Britain and France that followed the French Revolution. It would remain in use until 1957, when it was transferred to the civil (colonial) government with most of the other Admiralty and War Office properties in Bermuda.
Lord Salisbury described Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Halifax as Imperial fortresses at the 1887 Colonial Conference, though by that point they had been so designated for decades. Later historians have also given the title "imperial fortress" to St. Helena and Mauritius, despite their lacking naval dockyards and not serving as home bases for station naval squadrons.
Scaur Hill Fort, also called Scaur Hill Lines and Somerset Lines, is a fortified position erected in the 1870s at Scaur Hill, on Somerset Island, in Sandys Parish, the westernmost parish of the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda.
Fort George is a square fort built on the crest of Mount Hill to the west of St. George's Town, near to, but outside of the boundaries of the original main British Army camp in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, St. George's Garrison.
The Admiralty buildings complex lies between Whitehall, Horse Guards Parade and The Mall and includes five inter-connected buildings.
Admiralty House has been the scene of many receptions, but last evening the historic mansion was graced by a bride — Miss Jean Orilla Kernick had just been married to Mr. William Joseph McCormack, who, as a member of Bermuda's police force, has been living there.
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