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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 defence of the colony against an expected Spanish attack was the first concern of the first Governor of Bermuda, Richard Moore, when he and fifty-one other settlers arrived at Bermuda aboard the Plough on the 11 July 1612, to join the three men left behind in Bermuda from the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture. The construction of fortified coastal artillery batteries was consequently prioritised over other construction, with the artillery manned by volunteers (convicted criminals were also sometimes sentenced to serve in the batteries instead of imprisonment). A militia was also raised on the lines of the militia in England, which grew to a battalion composed of nine companies (one for each parish). All fit males between the ages of 16 and 60, whether free, indentured, or enslaved, were liable for militia service.
Bermuda tended toward the Royalist side during the English Civil War, being the first of six colonies to recognise Charles II as King on the execution of his father, Charles I, in 1649, and was one of those targeted by the Rump Parliament in An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego, which was passed on the 30 October 1650. With control of the "army" (the militia), the colony's Royalists deposed the Governor, Captain Thomas Turner, elected John Trimingham to replace him, and exiled many of its Parliamentary-leaning Independents to settle the Bahamas under William Sayle as the Eleutheran Adventurers. Bermuda's defences (coastal artillery batteries and forts, as well as its militia) were too powerful for the task force sent in 1651 by Parliament under the command of Admiral Sir George Ayscue to capture the Royalist colonies. The Parliamentary Navy was consequently forced to blockade Bermuda for several months 'til the Bermudians negotiated a peace.
Bermuda became the primary Royal Navy headquarters and dockyard in the Western Atlantic, following American independence, there was a parallel build-up of military defences to protect the naval base. Seeing the militia as having become superfluous, with the large number of regular soldiers then present, the Colonial Government allowed it to lapse after the War of 1812, however, it did raise volunteer units at the end of the century to form a reserve for the military garrison.
Following the loss of Britain's ports in thirteen of its former continental colonies after the American War of Independence, Bermuda assumed a new strategic prominence for the Royal Navy, and it became one of four Imperial fortresses. When Hamilton, a centrally located port founded in 1790, became the seat of government in 1815, it was partly resultant from the Royal Navy having invested twelve years, following American independence, in charting Bermuda's reefs. It did this in order to locate the deepwater channel by which shipping might reach the islands in, and at the West of, the Great Sound, which it had begun acquiring with a view to building a naval base. However, that channel also gave access to Hamilton Harbour. The Royal Navy had originally invested in property around St. George's, but slowly moved all of its operations to the West End once the channel had been charted. In addition to serving as a naval base and coaling station for its North America & West Indies Squadron, the Royal Navy developed Bermuda as its only dockyard between the Canadian Maritimes and the West Indies where major repairs to large vessels could be made. It was initially the winter headquarters of the Admiralty based in the Maritimes, but became the year-round headquarters during the course of the century. The blockade of the southern US Atlantic Seaboard, as well as the Burning of Washington, carried out during the War of 1812, was orchestrated from the Admiralty House in Bermuda, then located at Mount Wyndham, in Bailey's Bay, just prior to the ill-fated British assaults on Plattsburg, Baltimore and New Orleans.
Prior to the American War of Independence, the only Regular Army unit in Bermuda was an Independent Company, based in St. George's. With the buildup of the Royal Naval establishment in the first decades of the nineteenth century, a large number of military fortifications and batteries were constructed, and the numbers of regular infantry, artillery, and support units that composed the British Army garrison were steadily increased. The investment into military infrastructure by the War Office proved unsustainable, and poorly thought-out, with far too few artillery men available to man the hundreds of guns emplaced. Rapid technological advance in artillery rendered many of the forts obsolete before they were completed, and several were abandoned, or removed from use, soon after construction. Following the Crimean War, the trend was towards reducing military garrisons in colonies like Bermuda, partly for economic reasons, and partly as it became recognised that the Royal Navy's own ships could provide a better defence for the Dockyard, and Bermuda. Still, the important strategic location of Bermuda meant that the withdrawal, which began, at least in intent, in the 1870s, was carried out very slowly over several decades, continuing until after the Great War. The last Regular Army units were not withdrawn until the Dockyard itself closed in the 1950s. In the 1860s, however, the major build-up of naval and military infrastructure brought vital money into Bermuda at a time when its traditional (cedar- and sail cloth-based) maritime industries were giving way under the assault of steel hulls and steam propulsion. The American Civil War, also, briefly, provided a shot-in-the-arm to the local economy. Tourism and agricultural industries would develop in the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, it was defence infrastructure that formed the central platform of the economy into the twentieth century.
The Colony's prominence as a naval station was underlined during both world wars thanks of its location in the North Atlantic Ocean, its naturally-protected waters, and the presence of the Royal Naval Dockyard and its military defences. With the US, the primary threat to Bermuda in the nineteenth century, becoming an ally in both wars, US forces began to make use of Bermuda also.
The US had operated a US Naval station on the island during the latter stages of the World War I to serve anti-submarine vessels crossing to the European war zone, and US Navy vessels had also used the island, which was a hub for trans-Atlantic convoys. This involvement of the allied US forces in Bermuda was built upon in the Second World War. Before the USA had entered that conflict, the British Government had granted it a free, 99-year base lease in Bermuda, along with a similar grant in Newfoundland for what became the Ernest Harmon Air Force Base. These grants were an extension of the Destroyers-for-bases deal agreement, but not actually part of it in that no loan of ships or other war material was received in return (although the agreement for the airfield to be constructed in Bermuda was that it be shared with the Royal Air Force). The US Army and the US Navy both began construction of air stations (an airfield and a flying boat station, respectively) in 1941, along with coast artillery batteries, and the USA operated these bases until the end of the Cold War. The bases consisted of 5.8 km2 (2.25 mi2) of land, largely reclaimed from the sea. From 1941 through 1945 the Bermuda Base Command coordinated the US Army's air, anti-aircraft, and coast artillery assets in Bermuda. [1]
The US bases were not the only, or even the first, air stations operating in Bermuda, however. The civil airport, a flying boat station on Darrell's Island, was taken over by the RAF at the start of the war, and used by two commands. The government airline, Imperial Airways/BOAC, which had operated Darrell's Island before the war, adopted its war time role, and its camouflaged flying boats maintained trans-Atlantic service through Bermuda throughout the war. US Navy aircraft also briefly operated from Darrell's Island, maintaining anti-submarine air patrols, before their own base was operational. Before the US entry into the war, anti-submarine air patrols were flown on an ad-hoc basis by the Walrus flying boats of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, operating from its own base on Boaz Island.
With the buildup of the US bases on the island, the enduring alliance post-war, under NATO, Britain's re-assessment of its global military role and responsibilities in light of subsequent break up of the British Empire, and its near bankruptcy from the cost of the war, the value placed on the Imperial bases in Bermuda rapidly diminished on the end of the conflict. However, the air bases remained in operation long after the war. Also, from 1954 to 1995 the US Navy operated a submarine-detecting SOSUS station designated Naval Facility Bermuda in a former Army coast artillery bunker at Tudor Hill. [1]
The Royal Naval dockyard and the attendant military garrison were closed during the 1950s. A small supply base, HMS Malabar, continued to operate within the Dockyard until it, too, was closed, along with the American and Canadian bases, in 1995. The US bases closed on 1 September of that year, but unresolved issues—primarily related to environmental factors—delayed the formal return of the base lands to the Government of Bermuda, which finally occurred in 2002. The only military unit remaining in Bermuda, today, is the Royal Bermuda Regiment, an amalgam of the voluntary units formed in the 19th century, and army and naval cadet corps.
Military expenditures 2005/06 (Revised) – dollar figure: $5,687,000 (Defence), $50,467,000 (Police).
Military expenditures – per cent of GDP: 0.11 NA% (Not including Police).
Military – note: defence of Bermuda is the responsibility of the United Kingdom
Adapted from the CIA World Factbook 2000.
See also Government of Bermuda Budget Statement 2006/07 (pdf file).
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.
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.
Bermuda has organised several different forms of militia between the 1612 and 1815. The roles of the militias included defence of the colony in complement with the activities of the British Army and Royal Navy.
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.
The Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) was created in 1894 as a reserve for the Regular Army infantry component of the Bermuda Garrison. Renamed the Bermuda Rifles in 1951, it was amalgamated into the Bermuda Regiment in 1965.
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.
Arthur Rowe Spurling, was a Bermudian who served during the First World War as an infantryman and an aviator, becoming an ace credited with six aerial victories. He later served as a ferry pilot during the Second World War.
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 Bermuda Volunteer Engineers was a part-time unit created between the two world wars to replace the Regular Royal Engineers detachment, which was withdrawn from the Bermuda Garrison in 1928.
Colonel Sir Richard Masters Gorham KB, CBE, DFC, JP was a prominent Bermudian parliamentarian, businessman and philanthropist, who served as a pilot during the Second World War when he played a decisive role in the Battle of Monte Cassino, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore DFC was an American-born Bermudian First World War fighter pilot, and commander of the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers and the Bermuda Flying School during the Second World War.
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 Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications is the name used by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee to identify collectively as a World Heritage Site St. George's Town, founded in 1612, and a range of fortifications, batteries, and magazines built between 1612 and 1939, the last of which was removed from use in 1953.
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.
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.
The Bermuda Militia Infantry was raised in 1939 as a part-time reserve of the British Army's Bermuda Garrison.
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.
Imperial fortress was the designation given in the British Empire to four colonies that were located in strategic positions from each of which Royal Navy squadrons could control the surrounding regions and, between them, much of the planet.
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.