History of Bermuda - Bermuda and The American War of Independence

Bermuda and The American War of Independence

American independence was to lead to tremendous 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.

This ensured that the guiding hands on shaping the colony's society and economy were Bermudian ones. Although the British Government retained theoretical control via the appointed Governor, the real power in Bermuda remained with the wealthy Bermudian merchant families who dominated the economy, and filled the benches of the House of Assembly and the Privy Council, with the President of the Privy Council being undoubtedly the most Bermudian with the greatest political power.

The same lack of economic opportunities within Bermuda had led islanders to abandon agriculture following the dissolution of the Somers Isles Company in 1684, and turn wholeheartedly towards maritime activities. Bermuda played key roles in settling the New World, especially the southern colonies of what would become the USA. Bermudian merchant families established branches in ports on the American Atlantic Seaboard, and used their social networks, merchant fleet and their control of the salt trade (with resulted from de facto Bermudian control of the Turks Islands) to achieve a leading position in the merchant trade through those ports.

Bermudians diversified their interests widely, wherever they could reach by the sea. Involved in logging in Central America, merchant shipping between the North American colonies and the West Indies, fishing the Grand Banks ('til forbidden to by the Palliser's Act of 1775), whaling, and privateering.

As Bermuda's economy became wholly concerned with the sea, the colony became dependent on food imports fro North America.

The primary enabler of the development of Bermuda's web of commerce across the Americas was the growth of the British Empire, and from the beginning its primary trading partners were the British colonies on the North American continent.

When thirteen of these colonies rebelled, entering a war of secession, the strong bonds of blood, commerce, and history meant that most Bermudians sympathised with the rebels. It is entirely probable that, if Bermuda had not been so remote from the continental coastline, and had the Royal Navy not enjoyed near supremacy on the ocean, Bermuda would have been the fourteenth colony to join the rebellion. As this was not possible, Bermudians initially assisted the colonists by selling them Bermuda sloops via neutral ports to use as privateers. The number is unclear, but seems to have been very many, with British authorities reporting up to a thousand, although this number is clearly impossible given other sources state the number of ships built in Bermuda during the entire century numbered a thousand. Some historians state that the Bermudian-built privateers played a decisive role in the Americans achieving independence. With trade between the rebelling colonies and the rest of the Empire banned by both sides, Bermudians were faced with the threat of starvation, as well as the destruction of their trade. The Americans were dependent on Bermuda for salt, which the islanders offered the rebels in exchange for food. The Americans insisted on receiving gunpowder. Benjamin Franklin and Henry Tucker Sr. (a colonel of the Bermuda Militia, and a former President of the Privy Council, whose son, Henry Tucker, was then President of the Privy Council and son-in-law to Governor Breure, and whose other two sons were a colonel in the Virginia Militia and a politician in the rebel administration), orchestrated the theft of a hundred barrels of gunpowder from a magazine in St. George's, which was supplied to the Americans. Following this, the Continental Congress authorised trade with Bermuda (although this trade remained illegal in Bermuda).

As the war progressed, with no hope of joining the rebellion due to power of the Royal Navy (in the letter he had addressed to Bermudians soliciting the theft of the gunpowder, George Washington had written We would not wish to in volve you in an Opposition, in which from your Situation, we should be unable to support you: -- We knew not therefore to what Extent to sollicit your Assistance in availing ourselves of this Supply), with increasing numbers of Amercan loyalists in Bermuda (such as the privateer Bridger Goodrich), and with their economic opportunities dwindling, Bermudians overcame their sympathies for their erstwhile countrymen and unleashed their privateers (which, by the middle of the 18th Century already outnumbered those of any of the mainland colonies) upon American shipping. The Bermudian effectiveness was such that, when the US sued British privateers for wrongful seizures in British courts, following the war, a sizable part of the damages they were awarded were to have come from Bermudians, like Hezekiah Frith (although, with the local authorities tasked with collecting these damages being in sympathy with the defendants, most of these damages were never paid).

The fallout of the war was that Britain lost all of its continental naval bases between the Maritimes and Spanish Florida, ultimately the West Indies. This launched Bermuda into a new prominence with the London Government, as its location, near the halfway point from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean, and off the US Atlantic Seaboard, allowed the Royal Navy to operate fully in the area, protecting British trade routes, and potentially commanding the American Atlantic coast in the event of war. The value of Bermuda in the hands of, or serving as a base for, enemies of the United States was shown by the roles it played in the American War of 1812 and the American Civil War. The blockade of the Atlantic ports by the Royal Navy throughout the first war (described in the USA as the Second War of Independence) was orchestrated from Bermuda, and the task force that burned Washington DC in 1814 was launched from the colony. During the latter war, Confederate blockade runners delivered European munitions into Southern harbours from Bermuda, smuggling cotton in the reverse direction.

Consequently, the very features that made Bermuda such a prized base for the Royal Navy (its headquarters in the North Atlantic and West Indies 'til after the Second World War, also meant it was perpetually threatened by US invasion, as the US would have liked to both deny the base to an enemy, and use it as a way to extend its defences hundreds of miles out to sea, which would not happen 'til the Second World War.

As a result of the large regular army garrison established to protect the naval facilities, Bermuda's parliament allowed the Bermudian militia to become defunct after the end of the American war in 1815. More profound changes took place, however. The post American independence build up of Royal Navy facilities in Bermuda meant the Admiralty placed less reliance on Bermudian privateers in the area. Combined with the effects of the American law suits, this meant the activity died out in Bermuda until a brief resurgence during the American War of 1812. With the American continental ports having become foreign territory, the Bermudian merchant shipping trade was seriously injured. During the course of American War of 1812, the Americans had developed other sources for salt, and Bermudians salt trade fell upon hard times. Control of the Turks Islands ultimately passed into the hands of Bermuda's sworn enemy, the Bahamas, in 1619. The shipbuilding industry had caused the deforestation of Bermuda's cedar by the start of the 19th Century. As ships became larger, increasingly were built from metal, and with the advent of steam, and with the vastly reduced opportunities Bermudians found for commerce due to US independence and the greater control exerted over their economies by developing territories, Bermuda's shipbuilding industry and maritime trades were slowly strangled.

The chief leg of the Bermudian economy became defence infrastructure. Even after tourism began in the later 19th Century, Bermuda remained, in the eyes of London, a base more than a colony, and this led to a change in the political dynamics within Bermuda as its political and economic ties to Britain were strengthened, and its independence on the world stage was diminished. By the end of the 19th Century, except for the presence of the naval and military facilities, Bermuda was thought of by non-Bermudians and Bermudians alike as a quiet, rustic backwater, completely at odds with the role it had played in the development of the English-speaking Atlantic world, a change that had begun with American independence.