History of 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 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.
The Virginia Company administered the island as an extension of Virginia until 1614; its spin-off, the Somers Isles Company, took over in 1615 and managed the island until 1684, when the company's charter was revoked and Bermuda became an English Crown Colony. Following the 1707 unification of the parliaments of Scotland and England, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain, the islands of Bermuda became a British Crown Colony.
When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, Bermuda became the oldest remaining British colony. It has been the most populous remaining dependent territory since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Bermuda became known as a "British Overseas Territory" in 2002, as a result of the British Overseas Territories Act 2002.
Initial discovery and early colony
The earliest depiction of the island is the inclusion of "La Bermuda" in the map of Pedro Martyr's 1511 Legatio Babylonica. The earliest description of the island was Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés' account of his 1515 visit with Juan de Bermúdez aboard La Garza. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in 1527 affirms the island was named after the captain who discovered it. Henry Harrisse documents earlier voyages by Juan Bermúdez in 1498, 1502, and 1503, though John Henry Lefroy noted Bermúdez left no account of visiting the island. Samuel Eliot Morison lists a 1505 discovery by Juan Bermúdez, citing the investigation into the Archivo de Indias by Roberto Barreiro-Meiro. Compounding the confusion is the record of a Francisco Bermudez accompanying Christopher Columbus on his first voyage, a Diego Bermudez accompanying Columbus on his fourth voyage, and Juan's brother Diego Bermudez accompanying Ponce de León in a 1513 voyage. Thus, the only clearly documented account is of Juan Bermudez visiting the island in 1515, with the implication he had discovered the island on an earlier voyage. The island was definitely on the homeward course for returning Spaniards, as they followed the Gulf Stream north followed by the Westerlies just north of Bermuda. The Spanish avoided the uninhabited island's reefs and hurricanes, calling it Demoniorum Insulam. Yet, Spanish Rock bears the date of 1543, but little further details. A Frenchman called Russell was wrecked there in 1570, followed by the Englishman Henry May in 1593, but both managed to escape. Spanish Capt. Diego Ramirez was stranded on the rocks of Bermuda after a storm in 1603, when he discovered the "devils reported to be about Bermuda" were actually the outcry of the Bermuda petrel. He did note the former presence of men, including remnants of a wreck.In late August 1585, an English ship Tiger commanded by Richard Grenville on his return from the Roanoke Colony, fought and captured a larger Spanish ship Santa Maria de San Vicente off the shores of Bermuda.
The 1609 shipwreck of ''Sea Venture''
On 2 June 1609, Sir George Somers had set sail aboard, the new flagship of the Virginia Company, leading a fleet of nine vessels, loaded with several hundred settlers, food and supplies for the new English colony of Jamestown, in Virginia. Somers had previous experience sailing with both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. The fleet was caught in a storm on 24 July, and Sea Venture was separated and began to founder. When the reefs to the East of Bermuda were spotted, the ship was deliberately driven on them to prevent its sinking, thereby saving all aboard, 150 sailors and settlers, and one dog. William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, in which the character Ariel refers to the "still-vex'd Bermoothes", is thought to have been inspired by William Strachey's and Silvester Jourdain's accounts of the shipwreck.The survivors spent nine months on Bermuda. With ship's supplies mostly gone except for some domestic pigs, the castaways subsisted on rainwater, palm tree pulp, cedar berries, fish, birds, and by hunting for the plentiful wild hogs from past Bermuda shipwrecks.
The master's mate and 7 other sailors were lost at sea when Sea Ventures longboat was rigged with a mast and sent in search of Jamestown to rescue the lot. The sailors were not seen again. The remainder of castaways built two new ships: Deliverance at and 80 tons, and Patience at and 30 tons, mostly from Bermuda cedar. When the two new vessels were completed, most of the survivors set sail on May 10th, completing their journey to Jamestown on June 8, 1610. Christopher Carter and Edward Waters remained, the latter being accused of murder, while four others had died, including John Rolfe's infant daughter. Later in Jamestown, Rolfe's wife died. The castaways arrived only to find the colony's population almost annihilated by the Starving Time, which had left only sixty survivors. According to Sir William Monson, the "swine brought from Bermuda" saved Virginia until the timely arrival of Lord De La Warre.
Somers returned to Bermuda on Patience in June and found Carter and Waters alive. Somers soon died, however, and while his heart was buried at Saint Georges, his nephew, Captain Matthew Somers, returned his embalmed body to England for burial at Dorset.
1612 official settlement
Two years later, in 1612, the Virginia Company's Royal Charter was officially extended to include the island, and a party of sixty settlers was sent on Plough, under the command of Sir Richard Moore, the island's first governor. Joining the two men left behind by Deliverance and Patience and Edward Chard, they founded and commenced construction of the town of St. George, designated as Bermuda's first capital, the oldest continually inhabited English town in the New World.Bermuda struggled throughout the following seven decades to develop a viable economy. The Virginia Company, finding the colony unprofitable, briefly handed its administration to the Crown in 1614. The following year, 1615, King James I granted a charter to a new company, the Somers Isles Company, formed by the same shareholders, which ran the colony until it was dissolved in 1684.. Representative government was introduced to Bermuda in 1620, when its House of Assembly held its first session, and it became a self-governing colony.
Somers Isles Company (1615–1684)
In 1615, the colony was passed to a new company, the Somers Isles Company, named after the admiral who saved his passengers from the Sea Venture. Many Virginian place names refer to the archipelago, such as Bermuda City, and Bermuda Hundred. The first British colonial currency was struck in Bermuda.Bermuda was divided by Richard Norwood into eight equally sized administrative areas west of St. George's called "tribes". These "tribes" were areas of land partitioned off to the principal "Adventurers" of the company, from east to west – Bedford, Smiths, Cavendish, Paget, Mansell, Warwick, and Sandys.
The company sent 600 settlers in nine ships between 1612 and 1615. Governor Moore dug a well in St. George, then built fortifications including Paget and Smith's batteries at the entrance of the harbour, King's and Charles' at the entrance to Castle Harbour, Pembroke Fort on Cooper's Island, and Gates' Fort, St. Katherine's Fort and Warwick Castle to defend St. George. In 1614, the first English-grown tobacco was exported, the same tobacco variety John Rolfe started to grow in Virginia. The exporting of ambergris was especially lucrative.
Slavery in Bermuda
In August 1616, plantain, sugarcane, fig, and pineapple plants were imported along with the first Indian and Negro, the first English colony to use enslaved Africans. By 1619, Bermuda had between fifty and a hundred black enslaved persons. These were a mixture of native Africans who were trafficked to the Americas via the African slave trade and Native Americans who were enslaved from the Thirteen Colonies. The first African slaves arrived in Bermuda in 1617, not from Africa but from the West Indies. Bermuda Governor Tucker sent a ship to the West Indies to find black slaves to dive for pearls in Bermuda. More black slaves were later trafficked to the island in large numbers, originating from America and the Caribbean.As the black population grew, so did the fear of insurrection among the white settlers. In 1623, a law to restrain the insolence of the Negroes was passed in Bermuda. It forbade blacks to buy or sell, barter or exchange tobacco or any other produce for goods without the consent of their master. Unrest amongst the slaves predictably erupted several times over the next decades. Major rebellions occurred in 1656, 1661, 1673, 1682, 1730 and 1761. In 1761 a conspiracy was discovered that involved the majority of the blacks on the island. Six slaves were executed and all black celebrations were prohibited.
Agricultural diversification
Though Bermuda exported more tobacco than Virginia until 1625, Bermuda diversified its agriculture to include corn, potatoes, fruit trees, poultry and livestock. This was especially true when prices collapsed in 1630, and tobacco took its toll on soil fertility, though the company continued to use tobacco as a medium of exchange and resist a diversified economy. Tobacco exports peaked in 1684, the last year of company control.English immigration essentially ceased by the 1620s when all available land was occupied. Because of its limited land area, Bermuda relied on emigration, especially to the developing English colonies in the Bahamas, the Carolinas, New York and the Caribbean. Between 1620 and 1640, 1200 emigrated, while the population reached 4000 in 1648. Between 1679 and 1690, 2000 emigrated, while the population reached 6248 in 1691.
The archipelago's limited land area and resources led to the creation of what may be the earliest conservation laws of the New World. In 1616 and 1620, acts were passed banning the hunting of certain birds and young tortoises.