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This month
in history

Closure of HM Dockyard
March 31, 1951

A brief noonday ceremony made it official—HM Dockyard closed down its mammoth operation in the west end, ending an era lasting nearly 200 years.

It began in 1793, when the British purchased 141 acres of land at Ireland Island to establish a base in the North Atlantic after losing the war of independence to its former colony, the United States of America. Bermuda’s position, midway between Britain and its other colonies in the Canada and the Caribbean, was of strategic importance.

Construction of HM Dockyard, which was called the ‘Gibraltar of the West’, began in 1809 with slaves and free black men, working under the supervision of British engineers, supplying the labour. The next set of workers were British and Irish convicts, who were shipped across the Atlantic and holed up in airless hulks moored off Dockyard. Convicts provided the bulk of labour from 1824 to 1863. By the end of the 19th Century, workers were being brought in from Caribbean islands, such as Jamaica, St. Kitts, Nevis and Saba.

Dockyard, which had its own movie theatre, hospital, church, schools and shops, was of major economic importance to Bermuda, employing more than 1,000 locals. A major legacy was its apprenticeship scheme, where hundreds of Bermudians, black and white, received a rigorous training in trades such as plumbing, carpentry and masonry and as shipwrights. When Dockyard closed down, 50 Bermudian apprentices were sent to Portsmouth, England to complete their training.

News that the Dockyard was to be closed came as a major shock to Bermuda, although the establishment of U.S. bases at Morgan’s Point in Southampton and St. David’s in 1941 lessened its impact on the economy.

The pullout took place in phases and the leave-taking was an emotional one. In September 1950, 250 navy personnel had been shipped back to England, leaving 180 to be repatriated over the next few months. Barbadians working at Dockyard were also sent back home in two shiploads.

The closure turned a base that had hummed with activity into a ghost town. Seven officers and 20 sailors took part in the closing ceremony that saw the British Navy flag, the White Ensign, taken down from the flagpole in front of Commissioner’s House. The Royal Gazette reported that by the end of the ceremony, “an atmosphere of desolation had settled over the area.” According to the report: “No longer would ships berth alongside the deserted arms for repair or seek the sanctuary of the big drydock.”

Sources: The Royal Gazette, September 17 and 18, 1950, and April 2, 1951; Bermuda: Five Centuries by Rosemary Jones; Bermuda Journey by William Zuill.
Image courtesy Bermuda Maritime Museum

Born this month
Sir Henry James "Jack" Tucker March 14, 1903 - January 9, 1986 Banker, founder of United Bermuda Party, Government Leader
Sir Henry Tucker - a dominant figure in Bermuda's business and politics'	Often called the architect of modern Bermuda, Sir Henry Tucker, is considered—with Dr. E.F. Gordon—one of the island’s two most important leaders of the 20th Century. He became Bermuda’s first government leader on May 22, 1968 in the first election held under a new Constitution and a two-party system. Tucker, a founder of the United Bermuda Party, was a dominant figure in business and politics for three decades before that. He piloted the bill in Parliament that gave women the right to vote. As the number two, then the number one man at the Bank of Bermuda, he oversaw its transformation from local bank to international financial institution. He also helped lay the foundation for international business. A man of discipline, considerable leadership ability, imposing physical stature—at 6-feet, 2.5 inches tall—and a reputation for being ruthless, he was opposed to women having the vote early in his political career, and also argued forcefully against voting rights for all (universal adult suffrage), racial integration and party politics. As black Bermudians became more insistent in their demands for equality, and amid concerns that political instability would ruin the private trust and international business he had crisscrossed the world to establish, Tucker became a convert to the gospel of racial equality and convinced many of his Front Street cohorts to follow his lead. Tucker got his start in banking in New York, but returned home in 1934 when the Bank of Bermuda recruited him for its number two post. He became a founding member of the Forty Club. Members, who were drawn primarily from the group of merchants whose shops lined Front Street and were known as the Forty Thieves, met each month to discuss current affairs. In 1938, the same year he was promoted to the post of general manager at the Bank, he was elected to Parliament as a representative for Paget. Neither he nor his fellow parliamentarians had to do much campaigning beyond giving a few speeches. During the lead-up to the election, Tucker said he was opposed to giving women voting rights because it would lead to universal adult suffrage to the detriment of Bermuda. By then, the first exempt company Elbon Ltd, a subsidiary of candy company Life Savers had been set up in Bermuda, on July 8, 1935, largely because of the contacts Tucker had established in New York. In 1936, Parliament passed a law that allowed the Bank of Bermuda to establish trusts for wealthy overseas clients. With the incorporation of International Match Realization Company the following year, the foundation for international business had been laid. In 1940, a year after the outbreak of the Second World War, Bermudians learned that a US base was to be established in Bermuda, but the Americans were eyeing land in Warwick and Southampton that would have split the island in two. Tucker was a member of a three-man delegation—the others were fellow Members of Colonial Parliament (MCPs), his uncle Sir Howard Trott and John Cox—that was dispatched to Washington to present the Americans with an alternative proposal. On October 27, 1940, the US agreed to build the main base in St. David’s as well as islands off Castle Harbour. The alternative proposal meant the loss of less land and the displacement of fewer people. In November 1942, Tucker was appointed to the Executive Council, the forerunner to Cabinet, which the Governor chaired. In 1943, after having an apparent change on heart on voting rights for women, he piloted a Women’s Suffrage Bill in Parliament. It failed to pass the House, but he was successful on his second attempt in 1944. The about-face, which gave property-owning women the right to vote after a campaign that lasted nearly 30 years, established a pattern that would typify his post-war political career. Two decades later, he would reverse his position on such major issues as universal adult suffrage, racial integration and party politics. Tucker formed the UBP in 1964 in response to the establishment of the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in 1963. At a constitutional conference in London in 1966, Tucker led the delegation for the UBP and emerged with dual-seat constituents in a 40-seat Parliament—an arrangement that his critics argued benefited the UBP. By the time of the 1968 election—the first under full universal adult suffrage—the UBP, with Tucker as Government Leader, had adopted many initiatives from the PLP political platform, from free high school education to the establishment of old-age pensions. The UBP won 30 seats to the PLP’s 10. It was the start of the UBP’s unbroken 30-year tenure as the ruling party. Tucker was a power broker who, under pressure by demands that were being made by black Bermudians, oversaw Bermuda’s transition to a modern democracy. Those who hold him in high esteem say he was a visionary because he had the courage to change course and work towards a new racially integrated Bermuda. Critics argue he was motivated solely by his interest in preserving the economic dominance of Bermuda’s white minority and not by any desire to bring black Bermudians into the economic mainstream. See Tucker’s complete biography and also that of Dr. E. F. Gordon, who was also born this month, on March 20,1895.

Previous Bermuda Biographies home pages by month:

In the News

- Bermuda Day restored
- Masterworks opens
- Museum gets new look
- Book chronicles early history

Go fly a kite!

One of the island’s most enduring traditions will be celebrated this month—by Christians and non-Christians alike. On Good Friday, March 21, thousands of multi-coloured, tissue paper kites will take to the skies—if the winds co-operate. Legend attributes Bermuda’s kite-flying tradition to a minister who was trying to explain Christ’s resurrection to a Sunday school class.

Government reverts to Bermuda Day

Government has done an about-face on its plan to change Bermuda Day to National Heroes Day. Culture Minister Dale Butler told a press conference the rethink came in response to a public outcry. He also announced this year’s Bermuda Day will be observed on Monday, May 26 because May 24 falls on a Saturday. The theme for Heritage Month 2008, which is observed throughout May, and Bermuda Day is ‘Life in Old Bermuda.”

See our May 2007 home page for the origins of Bermuda Day.

Masterworks gets a permanent home

Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art has opened in the Botanical Gardens in Paget. It’s the culmination of a vision that began 12 years when founder Tom Butterfield began tracking down works of art painted during the late 19th and early 20th Century by artists while vacationing in Bermuda.
What began with a nucleus of 12 paintings has grown to 1,200 works and the new building is Masterworks’ permanent home. Artists represented in Masterworks’ collection include Americans Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Charles Demuth and Marsden Hartley and Frenchman Albert Gleizes.
The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. Admission is $5 for ages five and up.

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New look for old museum

The Bermuda Historical Society Museum has reopened following a facelift that has given it a fresh look and more space, and made it more diverse. Now original portraits of Sir George and Lady Somers and writer-historian Terry Tucker share space with a drawing of May 24 Marathon Derby runner Stanley Burgess.
A section devoted to the Boer War features the story of James Dolan, a black Bermudian who fought in that war.
And along with china collections brought back to Bermuda by sea captains, early examples of cedar furniture and silverware crafted by Bermudian artisans, it houses a cabinet made by a craftsman of more contemporary vintage, W. E. R. Joell.
In May, the room that links the gallery with the Bermuda National Library, will become known as the Bermuda Historical and Cultural Studies Room. The museum, located at the entrance to Par-la-Ville Park in Hamilton, is open Monday to Friday from 10 am to 3 pm and by special appointment. Admission is free.

Book chronicles early history

A new book has just rolled off the Bermuda Maritime Museum presses. Butler’s History of the Bermudas, written by 17^th Century Bermuda governor Nathaniel Butler, and its language modernised by editor Clara Hallett, is now available at the Museum and in bookstores. Price is $40.

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