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Bermuda



 


Tree: Nederlandse voorouders

Notes:
Bermuda /bɜrˈmjuːdə/, in full The Islands of Bermuda, also referred to as the Bermudas or the Somers Isles, is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, located off the east coast of the United States. Its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about 1,030 kilometres (640 mi) to the west-northwest. It is about 1,239 kilometres (770 mi) south of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and 1,770 kilometres (1,100 mi) northeast of Miami. Its capital city is Hamilton.



Bermuda was discovered in 1505 by Spanish sea captain Juan de Bermúdez, after whom the islands are named. He claimed the apparently uninhabited islands for the Spanish Empire. Although he paid two visits to the archipelago, Bermúdez never landed on the islands because he did not want to risk crossing over the dangerous reef surrounding them. Subsequent Spanish or other visitors are believed to have released the feral pigs that were abundant on the island when European settlement began. In 1609, the Virginia Company, which had established Virginia and Jamestown on the American continent two years earlier, established a settlement, founded in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew of the sinking Sea Venture steered it on the reef so they could get ashore.



It was first administered as an extension of Virginia by the Company until 1614, before its successor, the Somers Isles Company, took over until 1684. At that time, the company's charter was revoked and the Crown took over administration. The islands became a British colony following the 1707 unification of the parliaments of Scotland and England, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. After Newfoundland became part of Canada in 1949, Bermuda became the oldest (and, since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the most populous) remaining British Overseas Territory. Its first capital, St. George's, was established in 1612. It is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.0



Bermuda's economy is based on offshore insurance and reinsurance, and tourism; the two largest economic sectors.0 Bermuda had one of the world's highest GDP per capita for most of the 20th century and several years beyond. Recently, its economic status has been affected by the global recession. It has a subtropical climate. Bermuda is the northernmost point of the so-called Bermuda Triangle, a region of sea in which, according to legend, a number of aircraft and surface vessels have disappeared under supposedly unexplained or mysterious circumstances. The island is in the hurricane belt and prone to severe weather.



History



Pre-settlement



Bermuda was discovered in 1505 by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermudez.0 It is mentioned in Legatio Babylonica, published in 1511 by historian Pedro Mártir de Anglería, and was also included on Spanish charts of that year. Both Spanish and Portuguese ships used the islands as a replenishment spot to take on fresh meat and water. Legends arose of spirits and devils, now thought to have stemmed from the calls of raucous birds (most likely the Bermuda Petrel, or Cahow) and the loud noise heard at night from wild hogs. Combined with the frequent storm-wracked conditions and the dangerous reefs, the archipelago became known as the Isle of Devils. Neither Spain nor Portugal tried to settle it.



Settlement by the English



For the next century, the island is believed to have been visited frequently, but not settled. After the failure of the first two English colonies in Virginia, a more determined effort was initiated by King James I of England (James VI of Scotland), who granted a Royal Charter to the Virginia Company.



It established a colony at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Two years later, a flotilla of seven ships left England under the Company's Admiral, Sir George Somers, and the new Governor of Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, with several hundred settlers, food and supplies to relieve the colony of Jamestown. Somers had previous experience sailing with both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. The flotilla was broken up by a storm. As the flagship, the Sea Venture, was taking on water, the Admiral of the company, drove it on the reef and gained the shores safely with smaller boats - all the 150 passengers and a dog survived. They stayed 10 months, starting a new settlement and building two small ships to sail to Jamestown. (William Shakespeare's play The Tempest is thought to have been inspired by William Strachey's account of this shipwreck.) The island was claimed for the English Crown, and the charter of the Virginia Company was later extended to include it.



In 1610, all but three of the survivors of the Sea Venture sailed on to Jamestown. Among them was John Rolfe, whose wife and child died and were buried in Bermuda. Later in Jamestown he married Pocahontas, a daughter of the powerful Powhatan, leader of a large confederation of Algonquian-speaking tribes. In 1612 intentional settlement of Bermuda began with the arrival of the ship Plough. St George's was settled that year and designated as Bermuda's first capital. It is the oldest continually inhabited English town in the New World.0



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 coins to circulate in North America were struck in Bermuda.



Company colony



Because of its limited land area, Bermuda has had difficulty with over-population. In the first two centuries of settlement, it relied on steady human emigration to keep the population manageable. Before the American Revolution more than ten thousand Bermudians (over half of the total population through the years) gradually emigrated, primarily to the American South. As Great Britain displaced Spain as the dominant European imperial power, it opened up more land for colonial development. A steady trickle of outward migration continued. With seafaring the only real industry in the early decades, by the end of the 18th century, at least a third of the island's manpower was at sea at any one time.



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.



In 1649, the English Civil War raged and King Charles I was beheaded in Whitehall, London. In Bermuda, related tensions resulted in civil war on the island; it was ended by militias. The majority of colonists developed a strong sense of devotion to the Crown. Dissenters, such as Puritans and independents, were pushed to the Bahamas.



In the 17th century, the Somers Isles Company suppressed shipbuilding, as it needed Bermudians to farm in order to generate income from the land. Agricultural production met with limited success, however. The Bermuda cedar boxes used to ship tobacco to England were reportedly worth more than their contents. The colony of Virginia far surpassed Bermuda in both quality and quantity of tobacco produced. Bermudians began to turn to maritime trades relatively early in the 17th century, but the Somers Isles Company used all its authority to suppress turning away from agriculture. This interference led to the islanders demanding, and receiving, the revocation of the Company's charter in 1684, and the Company was dissolved.



Maritime economy



Bermudians rapidly abandoned agriculture for shipbuilding, replanting farmland with the native juniper (Juniperus bermudiana, called Bermuda cedar) trees that grew thickly over the whole island. Establishing effective control over the Turks Islands, Bermudians deforested their landscape to begin the salt trade. It became the world's largest and remained the cornerstone of Bermuda's economy for the next century.



Bermudian sailors and merchants relied on more than export of salt, however. They vigorously pursued whaling, privateering, and the merchant trade. Vessels sailed the normal shipping routes, but were required to engage an enemy vessel no matter the size or strength. As a result many ships were destroyed.



The Bermuda sloop became highly regarded for speed and maneuverability. The Bermuda sloop HMS Pickle, one of the fastest vessels in the Royal Navy, carried the news of the victory at Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson to England.



Bermuda and the American War of Independence



American independence led to great changes for Bermuda. Prior to the war, with no useful landmass or natural resources, Bermuda was largely ignored and left to its own devices by the London government. By being so deeply involved in trade, Bermuda merchants and financiers had played roles out of proportion to the colony's size in relation to the development of the Triangle Trade, and the trans-Atlantic English and British empires.



Its people were settlers and founders of new colonies, especially in the American South. Its merchant fleet and a web of expatriate Bermudian merchants dominated trade through a number of American Atlantic Seaboard ports and the West Indies. Bermudians fished for cod on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, and were involved in the lumber industry in Central America. Most importantly, they dominated the North American salt trade with de facto control of the Turks Islands.



Had Bermuda not been so remote from the American coastline, and the Royal Navy not enjoyed supremacy on that part of the Atlantic, it would almost certainly have been the fourteenth colony to join the rebellion. The close economic, family, and historical ties ensured Bermudians were strongly sympathetic with the rebels at the start of the War. They supplied the rebels illegally with ships, salt and gunpowder. As the war progressed, economic realities caused Bermudians to seize opportunities; they turned to privateering against the Americans.



The end of the war, however, was to cause profound change in Bermuda, though some of those changes would take decades to crystallise. Following the war, with the build up of Naval and military forces in Bermuda, the primary leg of the Bermudian economy became defence infrastructure. Even after tourism began later in the 19th century, Bermuda remained, in the eyes of London, a base more than a colony. The Crown strengthened its political and economic ties to Bermuda, and the colony's independence on the world stage was diminished.



The war had removed Bermuda's primary trading partners, the American colonies, from the empire, and dealt a harsh blow to Bermuda's merchant shipping trade. This also suffered due to the deforestation of Bermuda, as well as the advent of metal ships and steam propulsion, for which it did not have raw materials. During the course of the following War of 1812, the primary market for Bermuda's salt disappeared as the Americans developed their own sources. Control of the Turks had passed to the Bahamas in 1819.



By the end of the 19th century, except for naval and military facilities, Bermuda was considered a quiet, rustic backwater. It had been superseded in the development of the English-speaking Atlantic world.



Fortress Bermuda



base guarding the western Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes. To guard it, the British Army built up a large Bermuda Garrison, and heavily fortified the archipelago.



During the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States, the British attacks on Washington, D.C. and the Chesapeake were planned and launched from Bermuda, where the headquarters of the Royal Navy's North American Station had recently been moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia.



In 1816, James Arnold, the son of Benedict Arnold, fortified Bermuda's Royal Naval Dockyard against possible US attacks. Today, the National Museum of Bermuda, which incorporates the "Maritime Museum", occupies the Keep of the Royal Naval Dockyard, including the Commissioner's House, and exhibits artefacts of the base's military history.



As a result of Bermuda's proximity to the southeastern US coast, during the American Civil War Confederate States blockade runners used it as a base for runs to the South to evade Union naval vessels and deliver much needed war goods from England. The old Globe Hotel in St George's, which was a centre of intrigue for Confederate agents, is preserved as a public museum.



Anglo-Boer War



During the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), 5,000 Boer prisoners of war were housed on five islands of Bermuda. They were located according to their views of the war. "Bitterenders" (Afrikaans: Bittereinders), who refused to pledge allegiance to the British Crown, were interned on Darrell's Island and closely guarded. Other islands such as Morgan's Island held 884 men, including 27 officers; Tucker's Island held 809 Boer prisoners, Burt's Island 607, and Port's Island held 35.



The New York Times reported an attempted mutiny by Boer prisoners of war en route to Bermuda and that martial law was enacted on Darrell's Island, in addition to the escape of three Boer prisoners to mainland Bermuda,0 a young Boer soldier stowed away and sailed from Bermuda to New York on the steamship Trinidad.



The most famous prisoner was Fritz Joubert Duquesne, who escaped from Bermuda during the First World War, settled in the US and became a spy for Imperial Germany. He claimed to have sabotaged and sunk HMS Hampshire, on which Lord Kitchener, the head of the British Army, died in 1916.



Lord Kitchener's brother, Lt. Gen. Sir Walter Kitchener, had been the Governor of Bermuda from 1908 until his death in 1912. His son, Major Hal Kitchener, bought Hinson's Island (with his partner, Major Hemming, another First World War aviator). The island had formerly been part of the Boer POW camp, housing teenaged prisoners from 1901 to 1902.

State/Province : Latitude: 32.3078, Longitude: -64.75049999999999


Birth

Matches 1 to 2 of 2

   Last Name, Given Name(s)    Birth    Person ID   Tree 
1 Dill, Thomas Melville  23 Dec 1876Bermuda I668003 Nederlandse voorouders 
2 O'Neill, Oona  14 May 1925Bermuda I670289 Nederlandse voorouders 

Feit

Matches 1 to 1 of 1

   Last Name, Given Name(s)    Feit    Person ID   Tree 
1 de Boer, Reint Jan  1880Bermuda I336324 Nederlandse voorouders 
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