St. George's Garrison, Bermuda

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Coordinates: 32°23′02″N 64°40′23″W / 32.383763°N 64.672985°W / 32.383763; -64.672985
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St. George's Garrison
Bermuda
St. George's Garrison (and St. George's Town) as surveyed by Lieutenant Arthur Johnson Savage, RE, in 1897-1899
St. George's Garrison is located in Bermuda
St. George's Garrison
St. George's Garrison
Location in Bermuda
Coordinates32°23′02″N 64°40′23″W / 32.383763°N 64.672985°W / 32.383763; -64.672985
TypeBarracks
Site information
OwnerWar Office
Operator British Army
Site history
Built1793
Built forBoard of Ordnance and War Office
In use1793 - 1957
Garrison information
GarrisonBermuda Garrison
OccupantsBritish Army, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, United States Army Coast Artillery Corps

St. George's Garrison was the first permanent military camp of the

British colony and Imperial fortress of Bermuda (or The Somers Isles), 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.

History

The

Benjamin Bennett) aboard HMS Lincoln. Prior to this, the only military forces in Bermuda had been the part-time militia and voluntary gunners who manned the fortified coastal artillery batteries. The Independent Companies was permanently-stationed in the colony, with its personnel effectively settling there and receiving periodic replacements for discharged or deceased personnel. Barracks were not provided as its personnel were accommodated in private homes in St. George's Town
, the colonial capital.

Following the conclusion of the

United States of America
.

US independence, however, resulted in Bermuda's elevation to an

47th Regiment of Foot and an Invalid Company of the Royal Artillery sent to Bermuda in 1793, and Vice Admiral Sir George Murray, Commander-in-Chief of the new River St. Lawrence and Coast of America and North America and West Indies Station, setting up the first Admiralty House, Bermuda, at Rose Hill, St. George's, in 1794, with the naval base temporarily established in and around St. George's Town while Ireland Island and other land at Bermuda's West End were being acquired for construction of the dockyard. The first anchorage for the fleet was what is still known as Murray's Anchorage, in the Northern Lagoon off St. George's Island.[1][2][3][4]

The regular artillery company and the infantry were stationed on the hill to the east of St. George's Town (known since as Barrack Hill), where the Royal Barracks were constructed, with detachments posted to forts and other locations around Bermuda, but mostly at the East End where the only channel suitable for large shipping was located, and hence where defences were strongest. The Militia and volunteer gunners, who could be embodied in wartime for full-time service, remained vital to the defence of the colony, but as the regular units of the Board of Ordnance (which included the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, as well as commissariat stores, ordnance, transport, and barracks departments) and British Army increased, the colonial Government ceased to fund and maintain the Militia. Although the Militia and volunteers were brought up to strength during the 1812 to 1815

American War of 1812, they were allowed to fade away thereafter, and the regular military forces (after the Crimean War, the Board of Ordnance was abolished in 1855 and its military corps, stores, and transport departments were absorbed into the British Army, making it the regular military force) would assume complete responsibility for land and coastal defence.[5]

Bermuda's importance was due to its location, midway between Nova Scotia and the British West Indies, and 640 miles off the Atlantic seaboard of the new United States. This meant it was perfectly placed to dominate the coast of the United States, as was demonstrated during the American War of 1812 when the squadron of the Royal Navy's North America Station maintained a blockade of the Atlantic coast of the United States.

The naval and military forces based in Bermuda also carried out amphibious operations against targets on or near to the Atlantic coast of the United States during the war. In 1813, Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Thomas Sydney Beckwith arrived in Bermuda to command a military force tasked with working with the Royal Navy in raiding the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States, particularly in the region of Chesapeake Bay, with the aim of drawing American forces away from the border of the Canadas. The force, which was split into two brigades, was composed of the infantry regiment then on garrison duty in Bermuda, the 102nd Regiment of Foot, Royal Marines, from the ships of the naval squadron, and a unit recruited from French prisoners-of-war. It took part in the Battle of Craney Island on the 22 June 1813.

In August 1814, a force of 2,500 soldiers under Major-General

Baltimore, Maryland, in the Battle of Baltimore.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Bermuda also served as the main base from which the Royal Navy controlled the western Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic to the West Indies (in the twentieth century, the Bermuda-controlled North America and West Indies Station (as the North America Station became in the aftermath of the American War of 1812) of the Royal Navy would become the America and West Indies Station, its area growing to include the western South Atlantic and the Atlantic coast of South America, as well the Pacific Coast, from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic
).

Ordnance Island (left) and St. George's Town as seen from Barrack Hill in 1857
RML 10 inch Mk II gun closeup Fort St Catherine
Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers camp at Tucker's Town, St. George's Parish, Bermuda, in 1867. Summer tent camps were a tactic to combat Yellow fever epidemics that stuck the soldiers in barracks especially heavily.

Hamilton town became the colonial capital in 1815 with the movement of

Hamilton Parish
to Spanish Point, near Hamilton town. The military remained headquartered at St. George's as St. George's Garrison was the only large camp in Bermuda.

In the 1840s, however, land was acquired in

Devonshire Parish, to the east of the Town of Hamilton, for the construction of Prospect Camp
, and, by the 1860s, the Bermuda Garrison headquarters and most of the infantry had relocated there. As the coastal artillery defences remained heaviest at the East End, the Royal Artillery remained mostly stationed at St. George's Garrison. In the 1860s, the Royal Navy transferred its landholdings in the eastern and central parishes to the military, and its land at Convict Bay and Naval Tanks in St. George's were both absorbed into the adjacent St. George's Garrison, with Convict Bay becoming a Royal Engineers Yard.

After the last convict labourers used to build the Royal Naval dockyard were removed from Bermuda in 1863, Boaz and Watford Islands at the West End, the site of Clarence Barracks (which had been built to house convicts), was transferred from the Admiralty to the War Office and became a third main army camp in Bermuda. The colony was divided into three military districts, with the western controlled from Clarence Barracks, the central from Prospect Camp, and the eastern from St. George's Garrison, and overall headquarters for Bermuda at Prospect.

St. George's Garrison, which usually connoted the various barracks, forts, and other facilities occupying contiguous land to the east and north of the town (including the Royal Barracks, New Barracks built in the 1860s, the Station Hospital, Royal Engineers Yard and hutment barracks, various married quarters, single officers' quarters, messes, Fort St. Catherine's, Fort Victoria, Fort Albert, the Western Redoubt, and sundry other facilities) consequently included several nearby satellite facilities, such as Town Cut Battery (Gates' Fort), Fort George, Alexandra Battery, the Army Ordnance Corps depot of Ordnance Island and the Commissariat facility (later an Army Service Corps Wharf) on Water Street in St. George's Town, and control of all of the more distant fortified coastal batteries and other military facilities and detachments scattered about St. George's Parish and eastern Hamilton Parish.[14]

BL 9.2 inch gun Mk X at Fort Victoria on St. George's Island in Bermuda

The number of batteries decreased at the end of the nineteenth century as the range and power of coastal artillery guns rapidly increased, with a consequent reduction in the number of soldiers. Drastic cutbacks of the British Army following the

St. David's Battery could be kept ready for war, much of the weekly training took place at St. George's Garrison, where the Bermuda Militia Artillery headquarters was located at Convict Bay.[15]

During the

Second World War, the Royal Canadian Navy was given use of Convict Bay, which it commissioned as HMCS Somers Isles.[16]
The US Army was given use of Fort Victoria and Fort St. Catherine's. The Canadian and United States forces were withdrawn at the end of the war.

Closure

In 1951, the British Government, in another round of post-war defence cutbacks, reduced the Royal Naval dockyard to a base, with the ships based there being required to cross the Atlantic to Portsmouth to undergo repairs or refits. At the same time it was decided to remove the regular units and detachments of the Bermuda Garrison in 1953, leaving the part-time units and the United States forces (which had received 99 year free base leases in Bermuda from the British Government during the war, and to which control of the North-Western Atlantic region was delegated within the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The regular British Army units had been so reduced prior to this that all were based at Prospect Camp. Boaz and Watford Islands had been returned to the Admiralty before the Second World War, and with he disembodiment of the part-time local units of the British Army after the war, St. George's Garrison was largely vacant. The decision to close the Bermuda Garrison was quickly reversed by Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill after he hosted United States President Eisenhower and French Premier Laniel at a conference in the Mid-Ocean Club at Tucker's Town
in 1953. However, another round of cutbacks to the British Army was to result in the closure of he garrison in 1957, and the withdrawal of all regular army personnel other than those of Government House and the Permanent Staff of the part-time units. At the same time, most of the remaining Admiralty, and all of the remaining War Office, land in Bermuda was transferred to the local government in exchange for £750,000.

Since the closure of the garrison, the local government has used parts of the New Barracks for police accommodation, and then for the St. George's Secondary School, and the former Sergeants' Mess is now occupied by a nursery school. the original Royal Barracks no longer exist, with new housing units constructed in their place. The Station Hospital has been used for flats, but is currently becoming derelict. Sergeant's quarter's to the north of this have been removed and were replaced in the 1960s with the building currently housing the Bermuda Branch of the Royal Artillery Association. Most of the other buildings remain, mostly as private housing. A new accommodation block was built opposite the Garrison church to house Bermuda Police Service constables. Fort St. Catherine's has housed a museum since the 1960s. Town Cut Battery has been restored as a visitor site. Alexandra Battery is under restoration. A hotel was built on Retreat Hill, between Fort Victoria and Fort Albert, in the 1960s, occupied successively by Holiday Inn, Loew's, and Club Med. After sitting vacant and increasingly derelict for twenty years, this was demolished in 2008. The St. George's Golf Course, which occupies areas of the Garrison that had never been built upon as well as the former locations of hutment barracks and married quarters, which has also been out of operation for years, is being redeveloped in conjunction with the destruction of natural space (and of part of the golf course) on St. Catherine's Point for the construction of a resort.[17]

References

  1. ISBN 9780921560036
    .
  2. ISBN 9780921560005
    .
  3. ^ Gordon, Donald Craigie (1965). The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defense, 1870-1914. Baltimore, Maryland, USA: Johns Hopkins Press. p. 14. There were more than 44,000 troops stationed overseas in colonial garrisons, and slightly more than half of these were in imperial fortresses: in the Mediterranean, Bermuda, Halifax, St. Helena, and Mauritius. The rest of the forces were in colonies proper, with a heavy concentration in New Zealand and South Africa. The imperial government paid approximately £1,715,000 per annum toward the maintenance of these forces, and the various colonial governments contributed £370,000, the largest amounts coming from Ceylon and Victoria in Australia.
  4. ^ MacFarlane, Thomas (1891). Within the Empire; An Essay on Imperial Federation. Ottawa: James Hope & Co., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. p. 29. Besides the Imperial fortress of Malta, Gibraltar, Halifax and Bermuda it has to maintain and arm coaling stations and forts at Siena Leone, St. Helena, Simons Bay (at the Cape of Good Hope), Trincomalee, Jamaica and Port Castries (in the island of Santa Lucia).
  5. ISBN 9780921560005
    .
  6. ^ "Attack on Baltimore launched from Bermuda in 'War of 1812'". Atlas Communications. 2005.
  7. ISBN 9780921560036
    .
  8. ^ "Bermuda Online: British Army in Bermuda from 1701 to 1977; 1881 to 1883". Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  9. ^ Harris, Dr. Edward Cecil (21 January 2012). "Bermuda's role in the Sack of Washington". The Royal Gazette. City of Hamilton, Pembroke, Bermuda. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  10. ^ Grove, Tim (22 January 2021). "Fighting The Power". Chesapeake Bay Magazine. Annapolis: Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  11. ^ Kennedy, R.N., Captain W. R. (1 July 1885). "An Unknown Colony: Sport, Travel and Adventure in Newfoundland and the West Indies". Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, Scotland, and 37 Paternoster Row, London, England. p. 111. As a fortress, Bermuda is of the first importance. It is situated almost exactly half-way between the northern and the southern naval stations; while nature has made it practically impregnable. The only approach lies through that labyrinth of reefs and narrow channels which Captain Kennedy has described. The local pilots are sworn to secrecy ; and, what is more reassuring, by lifting buoys and laying down torpedoes, hostile vessels trying to thread the passage must come to inevitable grief, So far Bermuda may be considered safe, whatever may be the condition of the fortifications and the cannon in the batteries. Yet the universal neglect of our colonial defences is apparent in the fact that no telegraphic communication has hitherto been established with the West Indies on the one side, or with the Dominion of Canada on the other.
  12. ^ VERAX, (anonymous) (1 May 1889). "The Defense of Canada. (From Colburn's United Service Magazine)". The United Service: A Quarterly Review of Military and Naval Affairs. LR Hamersly & Co., 1510 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; subsequently LR Hamersly, 49 Wall Street, New York City, New York, USA; BF Stevens & Brown, 4 Trafalgar Square, London, England. p. 552. The objectives for America are clearly marked,—Halifax, Quebec, Mon- treal, Prescott, Kingston, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Halifax and Vancouver are certain to be most energetically attacked, for they will be the naval bases, besides Bermuda, from which England would carry on her naval attack on the American coasts and commerce.
  13. ^ Dawson, George M.; Sutherland, Alexander (1898). MacMillan's Geographical Series: Elementary Geography of the British Colonies. London: MacMillan and Co., Limited, London, England, UK; The MacMillan Company, New York City, New York, USA. p. 184. There is a strongly fortified dockyard, and the defensive works, together with the intricate character of the approaches to the harbour, render the islands an almost impregnable fortress. Bermuda is governed as a Crown colony by a Governor who is also Commander-in-Chief, assisted by an appointed Executive Council and a representative House of Assembly.
  14. ^ "World Heritage List: Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda". United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
  15. ISBN 0969651716
    .
  16. OCLC 220578378
    .
  17. ISBN 9780921560111
    .
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