🇧🇲 Bermuda

The Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez came upon the islands, which had no indigenous population. The archipelago was thereafter used by Spanish and Portuguese ships as a replenishment spot for fresh meat and water, but neither crown attempted settlement.

The islands were mentioned in the published history Legatio Babylonica and included on Spanish charts of the same year. This gave Bermuda its first documented place in European geographical knowledge of the Atlantic.

An inscription long attributed to Spaniards is now thought to have been carved by shipwrecked Portuguese sailors. It is the earliest surviving physical trace of human presence on the archipelago, then known to mariners as the Isle of Devils.

Pequots, Wampanoags, Podunks, Nipmucks, Narragansetts and others were exiled and sold into slavery in Bermuda, notably after the Pequot War and King Philip's War. Some islanders, especially in St David's, still trace their ancestry to these deportees.

A flotilla of seven ships bound for Virginia was broken up by a storm and the flagship was deliberately driven onto the reef, saving all aboard. The castaways built the Deliverance and Patience and several attempted to rebel and remain, arguing a right to establish their own government — the founding episode of Bermudian settlement.

The charter amended the boundaries of the First Colony of Virginia far enough across the Atlantic to include Bermuda, bringing the archipelago under English law. The citizenship rights guaranteed to settlers in the original charter of 10 April 1606 thereby applied to Bermudians.

The colony, officially named Virgineola, was settled with the arrival of the ship the Plough. New London, renamed St George's Town, became the first capital and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.

Renamed in commemoration of Sir George Somers, Bermuda was separated from Virginia and vested in the Company of the City of London for the Plantacion of The Somers Isles, whose royal charter confirmed settlers' citizenship rights. Bermudians went on to settle the Carolina Colony and help establish other English colonies in the Americas.

Acts of 1616 and 1620 banned the hunting of certain birds and of young sea turtles, prompted by the archipelago's limited land area and resources. The turtle act may be the earliest conservation law in the New World.

Tucker sent the ship Edwin to the West Indies to obtain slaves to dive for pearls; one arrival was Black and the other Native American, and no pearls were found. Enslaved Africans and Native Americans were subsequently trafficked in large numbers from America and the Caribbean, reshaping the colony's population.

The proclamation delegated internal legislation of the colony to the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Bermuda, while the UK Parliament retained ultimate legislative authority. Dating from 1620, the House is one of the world's oldest legislatures.

As the Black population grew, white settlers' fear of insurrection produced a statute forbidding enslaved people to buy, sell, barter or exchange tobacco or other produce without permission. It marked the codification of racial control in the colony's law.

On the execution of Charles I, Bermuda was the first of six colonies to recognise Charles II as King, and royalist colonists removed the Somers Isles Company's governor. The ensuing local civil war was ended by militias, with dissenters pushed out to settle the Bahamas under William Sayle.

An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego punished the rebellious royalist colonies and threatened them with invasion. Bermuda's government eventually negotiated an agreement with Parliament that retained the local status quo.

Parliament dispatched a fleet under Admiral Sir George Ayscue to capture the royalist colonies, but Bermuda's barrier reef, coastal artillery and militia made its defences too powerful to assault. The episode established the archipelago's reputation as a naturally fortified Atlantic position.

Fifty-four Bermudians settled permanently on Jamaica following Cromwell's invasion, joined by some 200 more in 1658. Bermuda's role as a seeding population for other English colonies in the Americas was already established.

Major rebellions occurred in 1656, 1661, 1673, 1682, 1730 and 1761. The 1761 conspiracy was found to involve the majority of the island's enslaved population; six people were executed and all Black celebrations were prohibited.

After returning to Bermuda and local government following the civil war, Sayle led colonists from the islands to found Charleston. Bermuda thereby became a staging point for mainland English colonisation.

The Company had suppressed shipbuilding to keep Bermudians farming, but Virginia far surpassed the islands in tobacco. After islanders demanded revocation the company was dissolved, and Bermudians rapidly abandoned agriculture for shipbuilding, salt, whaling, privateering and the merchant trade.

The Congress's September 1774 resolution to ban trade would have meant collapse of Bermuda's inter-colonial commerce, famine and unrest. Bermudians sent delegates in July 1775 and exploited a clause permitting exchange of American goods for military supplies, confirmed with Benjamin Franklin and others.

On 14 August 1775 gunpowder was taken from the Bermudian magazine while Governor George James Bruere slept and loaded onto three American vessels. The Continental Congress exempted Bermuda from its trade ban on 2 October, and the island acquired a reputation for disloyalty; Britain passed the Prohibitory Act, sent HMS Scorpion and stripped the forts of cannon.

HMS Nautilus and HMS Galatea had secured the island in 1776, their captains' pursuit of prizes causing severe food shortages. Refortification and naval and loyalist privateering activity brought 91 French and American ships captured in the winter of 1778–1779 and famine on the island in 1779.

On his father's death the governorship passed to an active loyalist, who populated the colonial government with like-minded men. Even Henry Tucker abandoned trade with the United States amid the presence of multiple privateers.

With the thirteen continental colonies acknowledged as independent, Bermuda was administered regionally with the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Imperial administration passed from the Home Office to the War Office in 1801 and, from 1824, to a North American department.

Stockdale was given a financial incentive to move his family to Bermuda and establish the paper, sold by subscription and delivered to subscribers. He also provided other printing services and operated Bermuda's first local postal service.

Vacationing on the island to escape North American winters first developed in Victorian times, laying the foundation of the modern tourism industry.

At the end of the century volunteer corps were formed to provide a reserve for the imperial garrison. These units are the ancestors of the modern Royal Bermuda Regiment, today the only military unit remaining in Bermuda apart from cadet corps.

Work started on a large dockyard intended as the principal naval base guarding western Atlantic shipping lanes. To protect it the British Army established the Bermuda Garrison and heavily fortified the archipelago, making Bermuda an imperial fortress colony.

During the War of 1812 the headquarters of the North American Station had recently moved from Halifax to Bermuda, from where the raids on the American capital were planned and mounted. With regular soldiers and a dockyard in place, the local militias were disbanded after the war.

The son of Benedict Arnold strengthened the dockyard's defences in the aftermath of war with the United States. The Keep of the dockyard today houses the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Maritime Museum.

Enslaved people aboard the American brig were liberated when it came into Bermudian waters. The sculpture We Arrive, unveiled in Barr's Bay Park in 2010, commemorates the event.

The vessel landed the first Portuguese settlers on 4 November 1849, beginning immigration from the Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde that now accounts for roughly a quarter of the population. In June 2018 Premier Edward David Burt announced 4 November 2019 as a public holiday marking the 170th anniversary.

Having been under the Commander-in-Chief America and then the Nova Scotia Command, the garrison was constituted a separate command as Canadian confederation approached. Its Major-General or Lieutenant-General served as Commander-in-Chief and also as civil Governor of Bermuda.

The confederation of most British North American colonies into the Dominion of Canada left Bermuda and Newfoundland outside the new dominion. The political, naval and military hierarchy in Bermuda became increasingly separated from Canada, and the archipelago was progressively grouped administratively with the British West Indies.

The established church in Bermuda, attached to the See of Nova Scotia between 1825 and 1839 and then part of the Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda, gained its own diocese. It continued under the Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda until 1919, when each received its own bishop.

Prisoners were distributed according to their views of the war, with 'Bitterenders' closely guarded on Darrell's Island and others held on Morgan's, Tucker's, Burt's and Ports Islands; Hinson's Island housed underage prisoners. An attempted mutiny en route led to martial law being enacted on Darrell's Island, and the camp cemetery lies on Long Island.

On the night of 25 June 1902 the Boer prisoner slipped past barbed wire and patrol boats and swam 1.5 miles to the main island, navigating by Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. He settled in the US and spied for Germany in both world wars, being arrested in 1942 for leading the Duquesne Spy Ring.

Murdoch took office on 23 January 2025 as the Crown's representative in the territory. The governorship remains the channel through which the UK exercises its retained authority.

The tax applies to multinational enterprises with annual revenues of €750 million or more, ending the absence of any corporate income tax. Bermuda had been a popular tax avoidance location; Google alone shifted over $10 billion of revenue through a Bermudian subsidiary, cutting its 2011 liability by $2 billion.

A new visa policy allowed residency in exchange for investing at least $2.5 million in real estate, government bonds, the debt relief fund, the Bermuda Trust Fund or charity. It sought fresh capital inflows for an economy vulnerable to external shocks such as the 2008 recession.

Until 1 July 2018 balloted males were required to serve three years and two months part-time from the age of 18. The regiment thereafter reverted to the voluntary basis of its 19th-century predecessors, and formed the Bermuda Coast Guard in early 2020.

The 2016 census gave a population density of about 1,201 people per km² on 53.2 km², with a racial makeup of 52% Black, 31% White, 9% multiracial and 4% Asian. By 2019 the population of around 64,000 made Bermuda the second-most populous British Overseas Territory.

Category 2 Gonzalo hit on 18 October 2014 and Category 3 Nicole on 14 October 2016, both striking Bermuda directly. Category 2 Paulette hit in 2020 and Hurricane Ernesto made the most recent direct strike as a weakening Category 1 storm on 17 August 2024.

The men, captured in Pakistan in 2001 and cleared for release years earlier, could not be returned to China or admitted to the United States, and Bermuda and Palau agreed to take the group of 22. The four were granted limited citizenship in Bermuda in August 2018.

Approval of the application enabled Bermudian students to enter the university at a subsidised rate by 2010. In 2010 it was announced Bermuda would be an 'associate contributing country' because of local laws.

On 5 September 2003 winds exceeding 120 mph hit the island, the last major hurricane to make a direct strike for over a decade. Hurricane Emily in 1987 had been the first in three decades to strike the island.

Despite minimal trade with the Caribbean and being some 1,600 km from the Caribbean Sea, Bermuda joined the bloc primarily to strengthen cultural links with the region. The United Bermuda Party argued that membership was detrimental to Bermuda's interests.

The Act defined maintained, aided and private schools, distinguishing them by their receipt of public funds since the 1965 desegregation. In the same year one of the aided schools became a private school, and the only boys' school had admitted girls earlier in the decade.

US forces withdrew despite a 99-year lease, as part of the wave of base closures following the end of the Cold War; the SOSUS station NAVFAC Bermuda, converted from an army bunker in 1954, also shut. The Canadian facility and the Royal Navy base HMS Malabar closed in the same year, ending nearly two centuries of foreign garrisoning.

A referendum on independence from the United Kingdom was decisively rejected in August 1995, and Bermuda remains a British overseas territory.

Although tourism continues to be important to the island's economy, international business surpassed it in recent decades as Bermuda developed into a highly successful offshore financial centre, particularly for insurance and reinsurance.

The governor was shot dead on 10 March 1973 during a period of civil unrest. The killing was the most violent episode in modern Bermudian politics and coincided with tentative moves towards independence.

The Immigration Act 1971 and the 1981 Act made Bermudians and most other colonial British nationals citizens of the collective British Dependent Territories rather than of Britain, excepting Falkland Islanders, Gibraltarians and the Crown Dependencies. The status change effectively created a separate second-class nationality within the British realm.

By the end of the decade offshore finance and insurance had overtaken visitor income as Bermuda's economic mainstay. Over 15,000 exempted or international companies are now registered, most holding no office space or employees, and the territory has among the highest GDP per capita in the world.

The currency switch aligned Bermuda's money at par with the US dollar. It confirmed the island's economic orientation towards the United States, its largest trading partner.

Amid a racist backlash against ethnic-Indian migration from newly independent African colonies, Britain modified the 1962 Act to restrict entry by British nationals including Bermudians. Bermudians had previously shared Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies status and rights within the British Isles.

The constitution established the framework of internal self-government that has since been amended several times, most recently on 1 October 2020. The United Bermuda Party held government from 1968 until 1998.

Voting had previously depended on a certain level of property ownership. Universal suffrage, together with the development of a two-party political system in the 1960s, transformed the basis of political representation.

Recruitment started with seven constables from Barbados, amid 20th-century immigration of British West Indians into Bermuda. It marked a formal institutional link with Caribbean police services despite traditional local antipathy towards West Indian labour migrants.

The school system had been racially segregated before 1950. On desegregation two formerly maintained 'white' schools and both single-sex schools opted to become private schools rather than accept public grants-in-aid.

The summit was convened at Winston Churchill's insistence to discuss relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, followed by conferences in 1957, 1961 and, last, in 1990 between Margaret Thatcher and George H. W. Bush. The meetings marked Bermuda's role as a mid-Atlantic diplomatic venue.

Roman Catholic worship had been outlawed in England and its colonies until the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 and operated under restrictions into the twentieth century. Once established, Bermudian Catholicism formed part of the Archdiocese of Halifax until its separation in 1953.

The cahow, believed extinct since the 1620s, was found again and became Bermuda's national bird. Only 165 of the island's 1,000 vascular plant species are native, and fifteen, including the endemic cedar, are found nowhere else.

The dockyard and garrison, long central to Bermuda's economy through construction work and local supply contracts, were shut down after the Second World War. Only the small Royal Navy supply base HMS Malabar remained within the dockyard area.

Regular services using land-based aircraft at what is now L.F. Wade International Airport replaced the flying boats. This helped tourism reach its peak in the 1960s and 1970s.

The command co-ordinated air, anti-aircraft and coast artillery assets, while construction began on 5.8 km² of airbase land largely reclaimed from the sea. The US Navy also ran a submarine base on Ordnance Island from 1942 to 1945, making Bermuda a marshalling point for trans-Atlantic convoys.

Washington had requested base rights in Bermuda in May 1940, but Churchill was unwilling to concede without return. The September agreement gave the US bases, with the airfield built by the US Army used jointly for the duration of the war; RAF Transport Command moved there from Darrell's Island in 1943.

Some 1,200 censors of British Security Coordination intercepted and analysed all mail, radio and telegraphic traffic bound for Europe, the US and the Far East. Working closely with the FBI, they enabled the discovery and arrest of Axis spies in the US, including the Joe K ring.

Regular air services from New York and Baltimore linked Bermuda to the North American mainland. This established the aviation connection on which the later tourist economy depended.

A rail line constructed in the 1920s opened in 1931 and closed in 1948. Its right of way survives as the Bermuda Railway Trail.

After several failed attempts an aircraft flew from New York City to the islands. Deutsche Luft Hansa began experimenting with seaplane flights from Berlin via the Azores in 1936, opening the archipelago to aviation.

Protectionist tariffs on goods entering the US ended Bermuda's once-thriving agricultural export trade to America. The loss encouraged the deliberate development of tourism as an alternative source of income for the islands.

The island was one of the centres of the liquor traffic into the United States while Prohibition was in force. It reinforced Bermuda's role as an offshore entrepôt closely tied to the American market.

Bulb exports to New York, financially vital to Bermuda, had become badly diseased from the late 19th century to the mid-1920s. Exports recovered from 23 cases in 1918 to 6,043 cases in 1927 from 204 lily fields, and flourished until the 1940s when Japanese producers captured much of the market.