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Darrell's Island is a small island within the Great Sound of Bermuda. It lies in the southeast of the sound, and is in the north of Warwick Parish. The island is owned by the Bermuda Government.
The 1621 version of Richard Norwood's map of Bermuda shows Darrell's Island at that time appears to have been called Captain Tucker's Island ("Ca. Turker Iland") presumably for Captain Daniel Tucker (Governor of Bermuda from 1616 to 1619). What is now known as Hinson's Island is shown on the same map as Darrell's Island ("Dorrel Iland"). The islands of the Great Sound were part of the Royal Naval land purchases in Bermuda following the American War of Independence. The Royal Navy used the islands for various purposes in the 19th century. Darrell's Island was also used as a quarantine station. During the Second Boer War, it was used (along with several of its neighbours) as a prisoner of war camp.
In 1936, Imperial Airways built an air station on Darrell's Island. This operated as a staging point on scheduled trans-Atlantic flights by Imperial Airways and Pan American. The island was taken over as Royal Air Force Bermuda during the Second World War. After the war, it returned to civil operation until air services moved to new land-based facilities at Kindley Field (now Bermuda International Airport). Subsequently, Darrell's Island was briefly used for film location work.
32°16′30.27″N64°49′15.94″W / 32.2750750°N 64.8210944°W
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Bermuda was first documented by a European in 1503 by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez. In 1609, the English Virginia Company, which had established Jamestown in Virginia two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent it from sinking, then landed ashore. Bermuda's first capital, St. George's, was established in 1612.
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 destroyers-for-bases deal was an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on September 2, 1940, according to which 50 Caldwell, Wickes, and Clemson-class US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy from the US Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions.
Kindley Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base in Bermuda from 1948–1970, having been operated from 1943 to 1948 by the United States Army Air Forces as Kindley Field.
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.
The Great Sound is large ocean inlet located in Bermuda. It may be the submerged remains of a Pre-Holocene volcanic caldera. Other geologists dispute the origin of the Bermuda Pedestal as a volcanic hotspot.
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 Royal Air Force (RAF) operated from two locations in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda during the Second World War. Bermuda's location had made it an important naval station since US independence, and, with the advent of the aeroplane, had made it as important to trans-Atlantic aviation in the decades before the Jet Age. The limited, hilly land mass had prevented the construction of an airfield, but, with most large airliners in the 1930s being flying boats, this was not initially a limitation.
Naval Air Station Bermuda, was located on St. David's Island in the British Colony of Bermuda from 1970 to 1995, on the former site of Kindley Air Force Base. It is currently the site of Bermuda International Airport.
Admiral Sir Charles Edward Kennedy-Purvis was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Deputy First Sea Lord.
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.
The Bermuda Flying School operated on Darrell's Island from 1940 to 1942. It trained Bermudian volunteers as pilots for the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm.
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.
The Bermuda Base Command was a command of the United States Army, established to defend the British Colony of Bermuda, located 640 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It was created in April 1941 when United States Army troops were sent to the island.
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.
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.
Tucker's Island was an island of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It was part of the land leased to the United States Government in 1941 for ninety-nine years for the construction of the Naval Operating Base Bermuda, a joint shipping base and naval air station. Tucker's Island was joined by infilling to nearby Morgan's Island, and the two were connected to the Main Island by a narrow infilling, creating a peninsula. The base, by then designated the Naval Air Station Bermuda Annex, was closed in 1995 along with other US bases in Bermuda. After a delay while the issue of toxic waste deposits was argued between the British/Bermudian and US Governments, the land was handed back to the Government of Bermuda and allowed to return to nature pending the clean-up of toxins and a decision on its future. The only user of the area was the Royal Bermuda Regiment, which had begun training there when it was still a US base. Following public outrage at plans to develop a Jumeirah resort hotel at Southlands, then a wooded private estate on the South Shore, the government traded the former US naval base to the developers in exchange for Southlands, most of which was designated as parkland. Morgan's Point, as the former naval base is now called, is currently being cleared to make way for the new resort.
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.
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.
RNAS Bermuda was a Royal Naval Air Station in the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island until 1939, then Boaz Island, Bermuda. Bermuda became the primary base for the North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy in the North-West Atlantic following American independence. It was the location of a dockyard, an Admiralty House, and the base of a naval squadron.
