Bernews.com » History

Lyme Regis Dignitaries Visit St. George’s

Bernews — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:58:40 +0000

The mayor of Lyme Regis — birthplace of Sir George Somers — led an eight-man delegation to Bermuda recently for the annual Peppercorn Ceremony held in St, George’s, the historic English coastal community’s twin town.

Mayor Sally Holman and other Lyme Regis dignitaries spent a week on the island to mark the historical and cultural ties between the two towns.

Founded in 1612, St. George’s name is a tribute to both the English patron saint and Admiral Sir George Somers who drove his storm-battered ship “Sea Venture” onto a reef off the eastern end of Bermuda in 1609 after it was separated from a relief fleet en route to the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.

The “Sea Venture” wreck led to the permanent settlement of Bermuda three years later.

Lyme Regis mayor Sally Holman and town crier Alan Vian at the Peppercorn Ceremony

Sir George, a one-time mayor of Lyme Regis, died in Bermuda in 1610 and while his body was returned to England for interment his heart was buried in Bermuda in the area now known as Somers Garden.

As well as being presented to Governor George Fergusson at the Peppercorn Ceremony, Ms Holman visited the mayor of Hamilton at City Hall, and renewed friendships with Ed Christopher, town crier of Hamilton and One Bermuda Alliance MP Kenneth Bascombe, a former mayor of St George’s.

“These civic links are very important to the Bermudians,” the Lyme Regis mayor told the UK’s BridportNEWS website on Monday [May 13]. “They appreciate our visits and the cultural, economic and friendship connections we continue to make …”

The Bermuda activities were arranged by former St. George’s mayor Mariea Casey, who heads the East End town’s twinning committee.

A delegation from Bermuda will make a reciprocal visit to Lyme Regis for the annual Sir George Somers Day parade on July 31.

The towns were officially twinned in 1996.

– Photograph courtesy of BridportNEWS

2013 African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference

Bernews — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:43:10 +0000

Minister of Community and Cultural Development Wayne Scott and the Minister of Tourism and Transport Shawn Crockwell held a joint press conference today [May 13] to make an announcement regarding the upcoming 2013 African Diaspora Heritage Trail [ADHT] Conference.

Minister Scott said, “The ADHT conference has become far more than was originally envisioned and is now becoming the central forum for people of the African Diaspora worldwide to connect and share their stories.

“The Trail is an important part of Bermuda’s history and we have a cornucopia of ADHT sites in every parish in Bermuda.

“What makes this year’s conference particularly special is the fact that the African Diaspora Heritage Trail conference is being held for the first time in the United States in Lafayette, Louisiana.

“The African Diaspora was one of the largest diasporas in history, much of which took place as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade, which saw the displacement of black Africans all over the world – including Bermuda and the United States.

“So it appears poetic justice that one of the largest destinations for the African diaspora will now be hosting the African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference this year.”

Minister Scott’s full statement follows below:

Good afternoon,
The late Honourable David H. Allen, J.P. M.P. had a vision as Minister of Tourism to bequeath an enduring legacy, the flame of which would burn brightly long after he departed – namely the development of the African Diaspora Heritage Trail (ADHT).
The ADHT conference has become far more than was originally envisioned and is now becoming the central forum for people of the African Diaspora worldwide to connect and share their stories. It is linking countries around the world through heritage, arts, culture, history and the slave trade.
It is reconnecting the descendants of millions of enslaved Africans that were sent across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean, by creating links to their homeland through tourism, pilgrimage and shared history.
As the Minister of Community and Cultural Development it is incumbent on me to preserve and promote our cultural heritage.
The Trail is an important part of Bermuda’s history and we have a cornucopia of ADHT sites in every parish in Bermuda, including a number of gems such as Tucker House Museum in St. George, Pilot House in St. David’s and Commissioners House, at the Royal Naval Dockyard, to name but a few.
Also, aspects of the history, customs, culture and experiences of slaves and their descendants in Bermuda have been officially designated by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as part of the Slave Route Project and therefore must be preserved.
There is a lot that can be gleaned from learning about our roots and celebrating where we came from – and I truly believe this contributes to who we are as a people.
What makes this year’s conference particularly special is the fact that the African Diaspora Heritage Trail conference is being held for the first time in the United States in Lafayette, Louisiana.
The African Diaspora was one of the largest diasporas in history, much of which took place as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade, which saw the displacement of black Africans all over the world – including Bermuda and the United States. So it appears poetic justice that one of the largest destinations for the African diaspora will now be hosting the African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference this year!
I am quite sure our former Minister of Tourism – David Allen, who had a vision for the world to have an appreciation for the heritage of Africa and the African diaspora, would be quite thrilled at the prospect that the ADHT Bermuda Foundation would be held at place where a vibrant culture, much like our own, is often celebrated.
It should be noted that Louisiana Creole culture is both black and French in heritage and that Creoles are among a rich cultural heritage of people and the word Creole had its origin in Africa, including Senegal and Mali. This mixed lineage resembles our own diverse, rich blend of cultures. And it is fitting then that the theme for this year’s Conference is “The Journey of the Creole: Seeking Their Promised Land.”
I am very pleased to note that the African Diaspora Heritage Trail has grown in stature and significance internationally and that so far ADHT conferences have been held in Africa, the Caribbean and Canada.
In conclusion, it is my hope and expectation, that the ADHT conference in Louisiana will be a great success and just as importantly, an opportunity for people to explore their connections to the African Diaspora.
Thank you.

“Mystery Airship” Which Panicked Bermuda

Bernews — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:55:00 +0000

A quite literal unidentified flying object panicked Bermuda when it crossed over the island in 1885 in a mysterious episode which remains unexplained to this day.

On August 27, 1885, at about 8:30 a. m., Mrs. Adelina D. Bassett observed “a strange object in the clouds, coming from the north.”

A contemporary report reads: “She called the attention of Mrs. L. Lowell to it, and they were both somewhat alarmed. However, they continued to watch the object steadily for some time.

“It drew nearer. It was of triangular shape, and seemed to be about the size of a pilot-boat mainsail, with chains attached to the bottom of it. While crossing the land it had appeared to descend, but, as it went out to sea, it ascended, and continued to ascend, until it was lost to sight high in the clouds.”

The London “Times” published a short account of the incident on September 29, 1885 accompanied by a comment from former Bermuda Governor Henry Lefroy suggesting the object might have been a stray balloon sent up in England or France. He accounted for the triangular form by deflation — “a shapeless bag, barely able to float.”

This was followed by a letter from Charles Harding, a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, commenting on the “extreme improbability of a balloon crossing the Atlantic, and even adding that “a little practical experience in ballooning suggests it to be thoroughly impossible.”

In fact, the Atlantic wasn’t successfully crossed by a helium-filled balloon until 1978 — the 14th such attempt in a hundred years.

According to researcher Jerome Clark, airship reports were made worldwide from the 1880s to 1890s. What have been called “mystery airship” reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern extraterrestrial-piloted flying saucer-style claims.

Crime & Punishment In Early Bermuda

Bernews — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:35:41 +0000

The stocks, pillory and ducking stool in King’s Square in St. George are baroque tourist attractions now but few people realise what a gamble it was to live in the days of the Puritan ascendency in Bermuda in the mid-17th century.

As historian Elaine Forman Crane has said, if Bermuda was a “moderate Puritan colony in its youth, by the 1640s … [clerics] were unwavering in their dedication” to the religious faction’s zealous ideals concerning morality purity.

Bermuda’s secular leaders in attempts to placate the radical clerics and their congregations, began to interpret the island’s laws in an increasingly harsh manner during this period — and even for a number of years after the majority of local Puritans were exiled to the Bahamian island of Eleuthera in 1650.

Historical accounts indicate that sentences handed down in Bermuda during this period include:

John Wood was hanged for telling the congregation in church just exactly what he thought of the Governor.

Martin Wetherall received 60 lashes on his bare back for having an affair with his 15-year-old maidservant; but as the maid continued to go about her work “according to her accustomed manner, “merry and pleasant”, she also received 40 lashes.

Paul Dean was hanged for stealing a cheese valued at 20 pennies.

William Hinson was somewhat luckier; found guilty of stealing two-and-a-half loaves of bread, a small quantity of butter and some cheese was lucky the Governor “inclining to mercy saved his life, and commanded him to be burned in the hand, which was performed on the 6th July, 1626.”

Robert Hall had his left ear cut off close to his head for perjury.

Matthew, a slave boy who had broken into a house but took nothing and later escaped from jail, was executed in August, 1664, and “his hedd, by the Governor’s order, [was] severed from his bodie and fixed upon a pole’s end” at Stoke’s Point to deter others.

A black servant named Black Moll was condemned to death for stealing some safety pins. At the same assizes, William Worth was sentenced to be hanged for falling in love with a pig, but “the country being destitute of an executioner Governor Josiah Forester thought fitt to make ‘Black Moll’ the executioner and reprieved her …” Her first official duty was to execute the unfortunate William Worth.

Francis Welman was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to stand in the pillory with his offense written on paper in capital letters and pinned over his head. He was indeed lucky, because there was much discussion in the court as to whether it would not be better to brand the letter “B” [for blasphemer] on his forehead, have his tongue cut out or preferably have a two-pound weight hung by a hole through his tongue.

But as author and journalist William Drysdale, writing in “The New York Times” in 1890, observed: ” … These harsh sentences do not [actually] show that the Bermudians of that age were any more savage than the rest of mankind.

“Indeed the balance is a little in their favour: for while they were only ducking and flogging, we Americans were burning witches wholesale.”

National Trust Talk On Bermuda Quarrying

Bernews — Sat, 04 May 2013 11:20:49 +0000

A Bermuda historian once summed up the island’s quarrying tradition as well as anyone when he said “it is a great advantage when you can dig your house out of your own backyard.”

And last Sunday [Apr. 27] the Bermuda National Trust hosted an open air “Trust Talk” at the new Vesey Nature Reserve in Southampton on the subject of one of the island’s oldest building traditions.

Presented by Larry Mills, the dramatic 25-foot tall rock cuts of the Skroggins Quarry provided the perfect setting to explain the history and techniques of quarrying used in Bermuda.

Mr. Mills explained how labour-intensive and skillful the work was between the 17th and early 20th centuries: quarry men [seen below in a photo dating from the early 1900s] had to identity the perfect location for excellent limestone, cut blocks by hand with long chisels and six-foot long saws.

“They were balancing on tall ladders to get to the final cuts, had to endure excessive heat while working, were constantly covered in dust and in danger of being seriously injured by falling rocks and blocks,” said a Trust spokesman.

The presentation was enhanced with facts and anecdotes by Fred Phillips and Robert Simons who both have worked in Bermuda’s quarries before the use of motorised tools and National Museum of Bermuda director Dr. Edward Harris stressed the importance of the quarries for Bermuda’s fortifications.

Kevin Horsfield spoke about his grandfather’s invention of the stone cutting saw and its impact on the quarrying industry.

Bermuda’s stone has been used from the early days of settlement for building, first for forts and public buildings and later for houses.

Larry Mills and Kevin Horsefield at the “Trust Talk” on Bermuda quarrying techniques

“Walls were made of soft stone sawn into building blocks with longiron handsaws,” says an official history of the Bermuda quarrying tradition compiled by the Planning Department. ”Then, it was common for blocks to be obtained from the site where a building was to be erected.

“Part of a sloping hillside was cut away and a house put in the space created, which formed the cellar. Many old properties have quarry “starts” which show that additional quarrying was also done on site.”

To begin the quarrying, stonecutters would try and determine how the stone was bedded. They would select a suitable starting point and chisel and rake out a three inch trough around the first stone to be cut.

This first stone, called the head stone or key block, was like the first piece of a pie. Getting it out was the hardest part of the job. The rest of the blocks were much easier to remove. The bottom of the blocks were riven with hardwood wedges or undermined in a wedge shape with chisels, and pried loose.

They were allowed to fall to the ground where they landed on a bed of scrap stones, called “jacks” or “slipes”.

“These absorbed the impact of the fall. The blocks, which were as large as 12 to 15 feet high, were then sawn or riven along the grain into building stones of different sizes,” says the Planning Department history. “Sound stone with a very even grain was reserved for roofing slates. This was selected by eye or by tapping with the knuckles to hear what kind of ring it had. Inferior stone and offcuts were used as slipes or for drystone walls. The sand that was a by-product of sawing stone was also used. There was never any waste.”

Bermuda’s first stonecutters were often slaves or indentured labourers.

After Emancipation, the trade was often in the hands of working immigrants, both West Indian and Portuguese.

In the 19th and 20 centuries, skilled masons with the knowledge to lay newly cut Bermuda stone were mostly members of the black community.

Mortars are used to bond together blocks of stone and to help form a level bed from which to build.

Mortars were based on lime, which may be the single most important element in our traditional building. Lime was easily available in Bermuda though it was costly because of the fuel and the labour it required.

It was made by burning hard stone in a limekiln.

– Photographs courtesy of the Bermuda National Trust

Press Marks Anniversary With Bermuda Book

Bernews — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:51:37 +0000

In May 1964, the University of Virginia Press released its first original publication, “A Voyage to Virginia in 1609, Two Narratives” by William Strachey and Silvester Jourdain, twin accounts of the “Sea Venture” wreck in Bermuda edited by the late Louis B. Wright, who at the time was director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

To commemorate the press’s 50th anniversary, a deluxe new edition of the book is being published this month containing the first-hand reports of the authors who were travelling from England to Jamestown when they were shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda in 1609.

“There are two things about the book that are fascinating and align so well with the history of the press that it made sense for us to do this,” said Mark H. Saunders, interim director of the University Press, said in a recent interview. “This narrative, which is typical of its day, was written to impress a woman in England.

“The narrative fell into the hands of William Shakespeare and he used it as the inspiration for ‘The Tempest.’ The other neat thing about this reissue is that we went looking for somebody who could say what was important about this book today.

“One of our assistant editors found a man [Alden Vaughan] who has written about this narrative, and he wrote a new preface for it. Here’s a perfect example of a book that is important to the press, relevant — and we found the one living person for whom this book is a seminal keystone in his career in some ways.”

Mr. Vaughan is professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, where he taught colonial history for many years. He is one of the preeminent authorities on this subject.

Writing about the “Sea Venture” wreck — which led to the permanent settlement of Bermuda in 1612 — Mr. Vaughan has said: “No humans, European or aboriginal, inhabited the Bermuda archipelago when the ‘Sea Venture’ fortuitously arrived.

“Sea Venture” painting by marine artist Deryck Foster

“During the previous century, ships of many nations had crashed on its reefs, and a few survivors had lived to describe the ‘Isle of Devils’, but the most tangible signs of those accidental visits were the wild hogs whose ancestors swam ashore from shipwrecked vessels. Yet Bermuda was, as the Sea Venture’s passengers quickly realized, an island paradise strategically located for transatlantic commerce or piracy and free for the taking. Instead of the reputed devils and malicious spirits, the English encountered docile and abundant birds, fish, tortoises, and the immigrant hogs; fruits and berries were ubiquitous.

“The story of the ‘Sea Venture’s’ wreck on the Bermuda Islands has often been told [because] it opened Shakespeare’s works to the influences of English colonisation and, perhaps more important, because it undergirds the theory—espoused intermittently since the late nineteenth century — that Shakespeare set ‘The Tempest’ on Bermuda and intended the characters to reflect early American persons and events. Bermuda, to this day, reminds visitors of its reputed Tempest connections …”

The new edition of ”A Voyage to Virginia in 1609, Two Narratives” can be pre-ordered at various online outlets.

World War Two Vet Lamb: “A Bermudian Hero”

Bernews — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:49:51 +0000

Philip Lamb — one of four black Bermudians to serve in the Royal Air Force in World War Two [1939-45] — died yesterday [May 2] at the age of 90.

One of Bermuda’s oldest surviving war veterans, St. David’s resident Mr. Lamb [pictured] reached the rank of leading aircraftsman with the RAF and among other wartime exploits lived through a German bombing raid which left him hospitalised with serious injuries.

The other black Bermudians who volunteered for the RAF during the Second World War were the late Randolph Richardson, Reuben Alias and Melvin Chesterfield Raynor.

Mr. Lamb spent the first three years of the war on the island with the Bermuda Militia Artillery before volunteering to serve overseas.

He completed his RAF training in Moncton, New Brunswick with other servicemen from Bermuda and the Caribbean before shipping out to England.

“The BMA camp was down in the St. David’s area, the Battery, and we were there for three years [doing] nothing but exercising, over and over — the same thing every day,” Mr. Lamb said in a 2004 interview included in the new book “Bermuda’s Military Rarities Revisited” released by the Bermuda Historical Society.

“When they asked for volunteers, I believe I was the first who put my name down, and luckily I was accepted because at that time I was like a peacock — I was proud then. We wanted to get in the fight.”

Mr. Lamb arrived in the English port city of Liverpool during the Christmas season in 1944.

“It was rough over there, it was something else,” Mr. Lamb said. “Bombs were flying everywhere and I asked myself, ‘Hi. momma, why did I come over here?’

“You can’t imagine, Coventry and London were bombed flat — they took a beating. The Germans were using those V1 [flying bombs] and they were sending them over from the coast of France … When the fuel ran out they would dip and then come down — bomp! — and somebody had to die.”

Damage caused by a V1 flying bomb in London in 1944

Mr. Lamb lived through a number of Luftwaffe air raids on London and the air fields where he was stationed and was injured in an attack in March, 1945 — just weeks before the Nazis unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces then overrunning Germany.

“It was one of the last raids that we had in England,” he said. “I happened to be in a camouflaged building on the airfield and the Germans were using dive-bombers and they never touched the target they wanted to hit.

“But we were near the exits and that’s when I got myself hurt.”

Mr. Lamb ended up in hospital for 10 days with a German Prisoner of War in the bed next to him.

“I couldn’t speak German and he was speaking a little broken English,” said the Bermudian war veteran. “I was a little intimidated but neither of us could move.”

Mr. Lamb said he never really recovered from the emotional trauma of seeing so many young lives abruptly cut short during the war.

“The loss of other young men was one of the toughest things to deal with,” he said. “I had a buddy from Canada … He must have been 23, 24 years old …

World War Two newsreel on Caribbean and Bermudian servicemen in the United Kingdom

“After they made that raid on us [in March, 1945] I got the news that Keith was shot down and killed. I took it hard. He was like a brother …”

Mr. Lamb returned to Bermuda in 1947. After spending some time in Canada where he studied diesel engineering, he worked in various jobs in Bermuda including at Her Majesty’s Customs and the Public Transportation Department.

The Bermuda Historical Society’s Andrew Bermingham — a close friend of Mr. Lamb’s — told Bernews last night that the St. David’s Islander was a genuine Bermudian hero, one of the last of the island’s “greatest generation” who fought the fascist Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan not for individual glory or recognition but because it was the right thing to do.

“To borrow something General George Patton said during World War Two, we should not mourn that such men died — we should thank God that such men lived,” said Mr. Bermingham.

Philip Lamb, standing on the far right, with fellow RAF servicemen during World War Two

– Philip Lamb photograph courtesy of the Bermuda Historical Society

Archaeologists Confirm Jamestown Cannibalism

Bernews — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:08:06 +0000

Archaeologists have confirmed Jamestown’s colonists resorted to cannibalism during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10 prior to the arrival of two provision-laden ships built in Bermuda by the “Sea Venture” castaways.

In a presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, archaeologist Doug Owsley presented the reconstructed skull of a 14-year-old English girl “Jane” discovered at the site of the Virginia fort bearing the marks of butchery.

The starving time was a period in which as many as 80 percent of the early settlers died. It has long been suspected by historians that the desperate colonists engaged in cannibalism but such speculation had never before been confirmed.

Dr. Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, reported on the forensic analysis of 17th century human remains, including part of a human skull and tibia. They had been excavated by Jamestown archaeologists in 2012 as part of a 20-year excavation of James Fort.

A statement on the findings says Dr. Owsley and his “Jamestown Rediscovery Project” research team identified a number of features on the skull and tibia that indicated the individual was cannibalised.

“Four shallow chops to the forehead represent a failed first attempt to open the skull. The back of the head was then struck by a series of deep, forceful chops from a small hatchet or cleaver. The final blow split the cranium open. Sharp cuts and punctures mark the sides and bottom of the mandible, reflecting efforts to remove tissue from the face and throat using a knife,” the statement says.

George Percy, one of Jamestown’s early leaders, in about 1625 provided what is probably the best-known and most gruesome account of the “starving time.”

He described hunger-crazed colonists digging up the dead, and one man who supposedly killed, “salted” and carved up his pregnant wife for food. By March, 1610, more than half — by some accounts, 80 percent — of the Virginia settlers had died.

Facial reconstruction of cannibal victim “Jane” for the Smithsonian’s “Jamestown Rediscovery Project”

In July, 1609 while en route to Jamestown — England’s earliest permanent settlement in America — the “Sea Venture” was separated from the rest of a relief fleet during a hurricane and was deliberately driven on to Bermuda’s reefs by Admiral Sir George Somers in order to prevent the ship from foundering. This allowed all 150 people aboard, and one dog, to be landed safely ashore.

The “Sea Venture” party was stranded on Bermuda for approximately nine months. During that time, they built two new ships, the pinnaces “Deliverance” [the modern reproduction in St. George's is pictured at top] and “Patience”, from Bermuda cedar and parts salvaged from the “Sea Venture”, especially her rigging.

The Bermuda-built ships arrived in Jamestown on May 23, 1610 to find only 60 survivors of the 500 settlers who had preceded them. Many of these survivors were themselves near death, and Jamestown was judged to be unviable.

Everyone was boarded onto the “Deliverance” and “Patience”, which set sail for England. However, on June 10, 1610, the timely arrival of another relief fleet, bearing Governor Baron De La Warre — who would eventually give his name to the colony of Delaware — which met the two ships as they descended the James River, granting Jamestown a reprieve..

American historian Lorri Glover — co-author of “The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America” — recently spoke about the accidental settlement of Bermuda in 1609 and the role its survivors played in the eventual rescue of the failing Jamestown colony at Kentucky’s McConnell Center.

In the 2008 book, Dr. Glover and co-author Daniel Blake Smith made a forceful case that the “Sea Venture” bears no small part in the ultimate survival of English colonisation in America in their account of shipwreck, courage, mutiny and deliverance .

Dr. Glover teaches American history at Saint Louis University.

Dr. Glover’s McConnell Center Lecture “Faith, Fortune and the Founding of English America”

Bond Girl: From Bermuda, With Star Quality

Bernews — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:28:39 +0000

Three years before Sean Connery’s James Bond was smitten by her, British model Tania Mallet was stopping traffic in Bermuda — literally — during a “Vogue” photo shoot.

Ms Mallet — who played Tilly Masterson in “Goldfinger”, a sexually ambiguous character who became the first Bond Girl to rebuff secret agent 007′s supposedly irresistible charms — was photographed in Bermuda by celebrated French lensman Eugene Vernier for a 1961 fashion lay-out.

Monsieur Vernier shot Ms Mallet — his favourite model — at various scenic spots around the island but a playful photograph he took of her standing on the wall leading into Flatts Village along with a young Bermudian admirer became instantly iconic and was reproduced in newspapers around the world.

The photograph’s world-wide popularity helped to seal Ms Mallet’s standing as one of the top new faces of the early ’60s.

Born of a millionaire father and a Russian mother in 1941, Tania Mallet received her schooling in both France and England.

She joined the Lucy Clayton school of modelling in London and by the early 1960s had become one of Britain’s most famous models, her photographs appearing in such publications as “Vogue” and “Harpers,” on several occasions.

According to Ms Mallet, she got the role of Tilly Masterson in “Goldfinger” when someone sent a photo of her in a bikini to Bond producer Cubby Broccoli.

The character — out to avenge the death of her sister, Jill [Shirley Eaton], murdered by Auric Goldfinger in the film’s opening sequence — was herself killed off when the villainous title character’s henchman Oddjob [Harold Sakata] hurled his steel rimmed hat at her.

Despite the film’s phenomenal success, Ms Mallet did not enjoy acting or the filmmaking process and “Goldfinger” would be her only major big screen appearance.

Ms Mallet currently lives in England with her second husband. She still attends autograph signings at James Bond fan events.

Tania Mallet with Sean Connery in “Goldfinger” [1964]

Exploring Wreck Of Civil War Blockade Runner

Bernews — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:25:48 +0000

Bermuda’s Department of Conservation Services and the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute take viewers on a guided tour of one of the island’s most intriguing shipwrecks in this recently posted video.

An elusive ship of multiple identities, most often operating under the names “Nola”, “Gloria”, “Paramount” and “Montana”, she was a blockade runner during the American Civil War [1861-65] and made trips between England, Bermuda, and North Carolina.

Built in Glasgow, Scotland, this sleek, 236-foot side paddlewheel steamer could run at 15 knots. However, the shallow reefs of Bermuda accomplished what no Union gunboat could do, and she sank in December, 1863. She now lies in 30 feet of water, still partially intact.

The blockade runners were especially designed for speed as well as to avoid detection by Union ships dispatched to cut off all of the Confederacy’s overseas trade during the Civil War.

Designed for speed as well as to avoid detection, they always set sail late at night and usually on moonless nights.

Contemporary illustration of paddle steamer engaged in blockade running during the Civil War [1861-65]

Of the 71 blockade runners which stopped in Bermuda during the war, the Union Navy had captured, sunk or forced the beaching of 43 of them by 1864.

The “Montana” wreck is marked by two steam boilers and two paddlewheel frames lying on their sides. She is adorned with beautiful soft and hard corals.

The wreck was never lost and was always known as a fishing site. She is buoyed as part of the Department of Conservation Services “Bermuda Shipwreck dive sites programme.

The “Montana” sits alongside the “The Constellation” – the World War Two wreck which inspired Peter Benchley’s Bermuda thriller “The Deep” – and with her dramatic paddlewheels is the centre point for the many glass bottom boat, snorkeling and diving tours that visit the area.

This film is part of the Bermuda Shipwrecks Series filmed by Adam Geiger of Sea Light Pictures through a partnership between the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute and the Bermuda Government’s Department of Conservation Services.

1965 Gemini III Shot Of Bermuda From Space

Bernews — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:22:33 +0000

One of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, Virgil [Gus] Grissom was a regular visitor to Bermuda’s National Aeronautics & Space Administration tracking station during the early days of the American manned space programme — but in 1965 he enjoyed a view of the island few have witnessed before or since.

Mr. Grissom [pictured here on a rental moped in Bermuda by a "Life" photographer] — the second American in space and the first American to go into space twice — was commander of the March, 1965 Gemini III mission.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of the experience with his 1961 Mercury flight — when the capsule sank after splashdown — he named the Gemini spacecraft “Molly Brown”, in a playful reference to the Broadway musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

NASA management did not like this name, and asked him to change it. Mr. Grissom replied, “How about the Titanic?”. The managers relented and allowed Grissom to keep “Molly Brown”, but this was the last Gemini flight they allowed the astronauts to name.

During the March 3 orbital flight with John Young, Mr. Grissom and his colleague shared a spectacular astronauts’-eye view of Bermuda which they wanted to photograph for posterity.

“Boy, we really have a beautiful planet,” John Young later told “Life” magazine. “I wish I’d had more time to enjoy it. I said to Gus, ‘Holy smoke, there’s Bermuda. Pitch over and I’ll take a picture of it.’

“Bermuda was glowing like a diamond. But we were going so damned fast that by the time Gus had lined up the spacecraft for my shot, Bermuda was almost gone.”

But Mr. Young managed to capture an image of the island — partially obscured by a thin cloud cover — just before Bermuda was lost from sight.

Bermuda as seen from the Gemini III spacecraft in 1965

Mr. Grissom was killed along with fellow NASA astronauts Roger B. Chaffee and Edward White when a fire swept through their Apollo 1 capsule during a training mission for America’s manned moon-landing project on January 27, 1967.

The school system at the former US Naval Air Station in Bermuda was re-named after Roger B. Chaffee in 1970.

Last week [Apr. 24] Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield tweeted a photo of Bermuda from space and included a “shout out” to his friends the Lavigne family who reside here. He also posted the photo on Facebook and Google+, reaching over a million of his followers.

Commander Hadfield was the the first Canadian to walk in space and the first Canadian to command the International Space Station. After he arrived at the International Space Station in December, 2012, he quickly became an internet sensation by posting photos online showing an inside look at living in space.

Videos: “Queen’s” Launch, Post-War Cruise

Bernews — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:02:24 +0000

Entering Service in February 1933 the “Queen of Bermuda” was one of two luxury liners known as “the Honeymoon Ships” and “the Millionaires Ships.”

Built at the Vickers Armstrong shipyard in Scotland, sister ships “Monarch of Bermuda” and “Queen of Bermuda” were ordered by Furness Bermuda Line in the late 1920s for a weekly service out of New York to Bermuda, and became very popular for the wealthy and newlyweds.

The ships were built of a high standard for the time, with ornate public rooms a large amount of deck space and private facilities in all cabins. The run between New York and Bermuda took 40 hours in each direction and that allowed four days to be spent on the island.

Italian newsreel of the “Queen Of Bermuda’s” launch

At the outbreak of the Second World War [1939-1945] both ships were requisitioned by the British Admiralty for the war effort. The “Queen of Bermuda” served as an armed merchant cruiser and later, like the “Monarch of Bermuda”, as a troop transport.

Both ships survived the war, but “Monarch of Bermuda” was gutted by fire in 1947 while being refitted. “Queen of Bermuda” did return to the Bermuda run after being refurbished in 1948/49. She continued the service until it was terminated in 1966.

Below is footage of a leisurely post-World War Two cruise to the island aboard the “Queen of Bermuda.” The accompanying song is “Bermuda” from a Furness Bermuda Line’s souvenir recording of the ship’s band under the baton of Al Donahue.

Town Salutes Ham Industry’s Bermuda Founder

Bernews — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:07:03 +0000

The Virginia town of Smithfield — synonymous with ham for more than 300 years — is going the whole hog this weekend with a lecture that will explain how a Bermuda seafarer founded its world renowned industry.

Bermuda-born Captain Mallory Todd, who lived in the town beginning in 1767, is credited with creating the first business curing and shipping Smithfield ham.

This Sunday [Apr. 28] Tracey Neikirk, Isle of Wight County Museum curator and registrar, will recount Smithfield’s connection to ham dating from the 18th century.

“I’ve been researching the topic since I started” at the museum in 2007, said Ms Neikirk, who holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.

Captain Todd sided with colonists during the Revolutionary War and used his sailing vessels to bring arms and supplies to the colonies, according to: “Smithfield, A Pictorial History” by Segar Cofer Dashiell.

Mallory Todd’s son, John R. Todd, later took over the pioneering ham business his father founded in 1779. The Isle of Wight County Museum is at 103 Main Street, Smithfield, and the walk-in event is free.

The Virginia town is most famous for the curing and production of the Smithfield ham. The Virginia General Assembly passed a statute defining “Smithfield ham” by law in 1926, with one of the requirements that it be processed within the town limits.

Currently, Smithfield Foods, a Fortune 500 Company that owns Smithfield Packing Company and others, is the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer. The company, based in Smithfield, raises 12 million and processes 20 million hogs annually.

“Vanity Fair” Looks Back At “Holiday” Magazine

Bernews — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:30:04 +0000

In 1946, as transcontinental flights, luxury hotels, vacation packages and colour photography were on the rise, the monthly magazine “Holiday” became Americans’ travel passport, offering readers access to cosmopolitan locales around the globe including Bermuda.

As writer Michael Callahan chronicles in “A Holiday For The Jet Set” in “Vanity Fair’s” May issue, the publication’s urbane editor Ted Patrick and revolutionary art director Frank Zachary recruited a roster of world-class talent, including William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Ian Fleming, Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Capa, to name a few of the many contributing writers, photographers, and artists who filled the magazine’s oversize pages.

At its peak, the magazine had more than one million subscribers but when its circulation began to decline in the 1970s “Holiday” was sold to the publisher of “Travel”, a competing magazine. The two publications merged to form “Travel Holiday.”

Bermuda was regularly featured in the magazine and legendary American photographer Thomas Hollyman [1919-2009] — who went on to work for such publications as “Vanity Fair” and “Town & Country” — launched his career with a “Holiday Magazine” assignment on the island.

“Holiday” magazine 1958 cover story on Bermuda

Honeymooning in Bermuda, his new bride and sometime collaborator Jean found herself stringing together a hard-wire cable necklace of some 40 flashbulbs to light up a seaside cavern for which the exposure was calculated manually.

“We never worked so hard in our lives, “ Mrs. Hollyman later told a Connecticut newspaper. “ We did 30 pages of pictures in two weeks flat.”

After this first “Holiday” assignment the couple went on to work for the magazine for the next five years on an assignments in Europe, Latin America and the US.

Historic Painting Seized In Bermuda Resurfaces

Bernews — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:21:05 +0000

Seized in Bermuda during World War Two [1939-1945] as part of a priceless collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art being shipped to the US to raise money for Nazi espionage activities in North America, a long-lost watercolour by Paul Cézanne has re-surfaced in Canada’s National Gallery in Ottawa.

The painting “Groupe d’arbres” ["Group of Trees"] has been located in a vault in the gallery’s curatorial wing, the last remnant of a vast collection of art including works by Renoir, Gauguin, Degas, Picasso and others which, after being confiscated by the British Secret Intelligence Service in Bermuda, was later sent to Canada to escape the island’s withering humidity

“In October, 1940, the famous Vollard collection of impressionist paintings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was consigned by the Vichy authorities [in German-occupied France -- a Nazi puppet state which maintained diplomatic relations with the US] to a French art expert in New York named Martin Fabiani,” said H. Montgomery Hyde, the British Secret Intelligence Service Military Liaison & Security Officer in Bermuda from 1940 to 1941. “There was reason to believe that Fabiani was acting on German instructions and intended to sell the collection to secure dollar exchange for Hitler.

“The consignment, which consisted of 270 paintings and drawings by Renoir, thirty paintings by Cezanne, twelve by Gauguin, seven by Degas and also some by Manet, Monet and Picasso, had been in various Paris museums, whence the British Ministry of Economic Warfare feared that they had been abstracted.

The paintings were shipped from Lisbon for New York aboard the American Export Lines’ “Excalibur” [pictured at top], which was brought into Bermuda by the wartime British Contraband Control.

“Meanwhile instructions had been received from London to remove the contraband cargo,” said Mr. Hyde. “It fell to the writer of these pages to carry out this operation in defiance of the vessel’s master who refused to open the strong-room where the precious packing cases reposed.

Paul Cézanne’s “Groupe d’arbres”, seized in Bermuda in 1940, has resurfaced in Canada

“This was eventually accomplished by blasting a way in with oxy-acetylene flame burners, and the pictures were removed. So as to avoid the effects of the Bermuda climate, they were sent to Ottawa, where they were kept for the duration of the war in the Canadian National Gallery, having in the meantime been condemned as prize [of war].”

For the next eight and a half years, the Vollard Collection sat in storage inside the Victoria Museum Building on McLeod Street, then home to Canada’s National Gallery.

In February 1948, Mr. Fabiani — who had been arrested and fined by French authorities at the end of World War Two for collaborating with the enemy and dealing in Nazi-looting art — applied to Canada to have the collection released to him.

On April 29, 1949, the High Court of Justice of Great Britain Admiralty Division endorsed the earlier ruling of a French court and ordered the collection in Ottawa be divided and returned, with one-quarter going to the sisters of dealer and collector Ambroise Vollard — who had amassed the collection — and three-quarters to Mr. Fabiani. It is not clear whether the ruling was intended to punish Mr. Fabiani for his wartime association with the Germans.

“But the Cézanne landscape, circa 1890, was somehow left behind,” reports the “Ottawa Citizen” newspaper today [Apr. 20]. “Over the years, it slipped into a deep curatorial void. The authoritative 1983 catalogue raisonné of Cézanne’s watercolours says its whereabouts is ‘unknown’.”

Marc Mayer, gallery director and CEO of Canada’s National Gallery, told the newspaper: “I have no idea why it was orphaned, but we’re kind of left with this mystery to resolve …

“It’s a very, very, very complicated file. This is probably the most mysterious of all the files that we have of things that are here [but] who we don’t know the owner of. We have never pretended to own it and we don’t pretend to own it. Until a rightful owner emerges, we just take care of it.”

French post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne [1839–1906] laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century.

He can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne “is the father of us all.”

Another Cézanne watercolour not seen in public for 53 years re-emerged from a private collection in Texas last year and sold at auction for $19.1 million.

RMS “Aquitania” On 1935 Cruise To Bermuda

Bernews — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:02:40 +0000

To mark the arrival of the first ships of the 2013 cruise season at Dockyard, the Bermuda National Museum this week posted a vintage film of a 1935 visit to the island by one of the most majestic liners of the 20th century at its Facebook page.

“There’s a cruise ship in Dockyard, the ferries are on their summer schedule, and we have a lot of visitors at the Museum,” said a Museum spokesperson.”Tourist season is finally here!

“To celebrate, check out this video of a 1935 cruise to Bermuda on board the ‘Aquitania’. In the aftermath of the ‘Titanic’ — which sank 101 years ago today [Apr. 15] — the Aquitania was one of the first ships to be equipped with lifeboats for all passengers and crew.

RMS “Aquitania” was a Cunard Line ocean liner launched on April 21, 1913 and sailed on her maiden voyage to New York on 30 May 1914. The ship was the third in Cunard Line’s “grand trio” of express liners, preceded by the RMS “Mauretania” and RMS “Lusitania”, and was the last surviving four-funnelled ocean liner.

Widely considered one of the most attractive ships of her time, “Aquitania” earned the nickname “Ship Beautiful.”

In her 36 years of service, “Aquitania” survived military duty in both world wars and was returned to passenger service after each conflict. She paid occasional visits to Bermuda in the 1930s — a period actor David Niven described in his bestselling 1971 autobiography “The Moon’s A Balloon” as a time “that must have been that island’s golden era.”

“I spent several blissful weeks on that spectacular island,” said the future Academy Award winner. “… No cars, no motorcycles, just bicycles or horsedrawn carriages … Smiling, happy faces and music everywhere.”

The “Aquitania” was retired and scrapped in 1950 in Scotland, thus ending an illustrious career which included steaming three million miles during the course of 450 voyages. “Aquitania” carried 1.2 million passengers over a career that spanned nearly 36 years, making her one of the longest-serving liners of the 20th century.

Minister Receives Piece Of Prospect History

Deb — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:31:13 +0000

Last week, the Minister of Education Nalton Brangman was formally presented with a copy of the recently released Fond Recollections of Prospect Secondary School for Girls, written by Mrs. Pat Hall.

From L to R: Betty Raynor [PSG Alumnus] , Freida Dowling [PSG Alumnus], Minister of Education, Nalton Brangman, Pat Hall [Author & PSG Alumnus], Jeannie Isaacs [PSG Alumnus], Joanne Brangman, Head Librarian and Viola Robins [PSG Alumnus]:

Mrs. Hall will be holding a book launch for her new publication this Thursday, April 18, at the Bermuda National Library from 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. and members of the public are encouraged to attend and support the works of this local author.

The hardcover book offers a full display of photographs of the school, the students, and teachers and is currently on sale for $60.

Also on hand at the Bermuda National Library to receive a copy of the book was Head Librarian Joanne Brangman. Included in the presentation were former Prospect for Girls students, and Mr. David Wellman who was responsible for the layout and design of the book.

Missing was Mr. Bob Croft of Total Print Solutions, who was responsible for the printing.

Anniversary Of WWII Bermuda Talks Marked

Bernews — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:30:28 +0000

Scholars of the Second World War [1939-1945] and the state-sponsored extermination programme launched against Jews and other peoples deemed “sub-human” by German dictator Adolf Hitler’s genocidal Nazi regime are marking a grim anniversary this month — the 70th anniversary of the laggardly and deliberately inconclusive Anglo-US Bermuda Conference.

The first confirmed reports of Jews being methodically murdered at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland had reached outside world in November, 1942 and in December of that year the Allies issued a statement condemning “in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.”

Held on the island from April 19 through April 30, 1943, the Bermuda talks between the United Kingdom and the United States were convened as a direct consequence of the Auschwitz reports. The sole topic on the agenda at the Bermuda discussions was the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and those who still remained enslaved in Nazi-occupied Europe.

But the Bermuda parlay is regarded by many historians as a squandered opportunity for persecuted Jews given the Allies opted not to take any concerted military action against the Nazis’ vast network of forced labour camps and death camps. Throughout the final two years of the war, British and American officials maintained that bombing Auschwitz and other concentration camps would divert Allied air power from “decisive operations elsewhere.”

The American delegation to Bermuda was headed by Harold Willis Dodds, president of Princeton University; the British delegation, by Richard Law, parliamentary undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. The only agreement made was that the war must be won against the Nazis. US immigration quotas were not raised nor was the UK’s prohibition on Jewish refugees seeking refuge in British Mandatory Palestine — which became the state of Israel in 1948 — lifted.

A week after the conclusion of the conference, the American Zionist Committee for a Jewish Army ran an advertisement in the ”New York Times” condemning the United States efforts at Bermuda for being a mockery of past promises to the Jewish people and of Jewish suffering under Nazi occupation.

Szmul Zygielbojm, a member of the Jewish advisory body to the Polish government-in-exile, committed suicide to protest the foot-dragging Bermuda talks.

Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the World War Two, approximately two-thirds were killed by the Nazis.

Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.

A network of thousands of facilities in Germany and German-occupied European territory were used to concentrate, hold, and kill Jews and other victims.

The full extent of the Nazi extermination programme did not become evident until after Adolf Hitler’s suicide and the subsequent unconditional surrender of Germany to the World War Two Allies on May 7, 1945.

Recent estimates based on figures obtained since the fall of the Soviet Union suggest some 10 to 11 million civilians and prisoners of war were intentionally murdered by the Nazi regime including Gypsies, people with disabilities and homosexuals.

At Yad Vashem — Israel’s official Holocaust memorial — the 1943 Bermuda Conference is remembered with this somber account:

“The purpose of the conference, supposedly, was to deal with the issue of wartime refugees. The real reason the conference was called, however, was to shush the growing public outcries for the rescue of European Jewry without actually having to find any solutions to the problem.
“By the end of 1942, reports confirmed that the Nazis intended to exterminate all of European Jewry. Both in the United States and Britain, Jewish groups demanded that their governments take a stand against the atrocities. The two governments then planned the conference to quiet public opinion, but arranged it so that they would not have to actually make a serious effort to save any Jews. They chose inaccessible Bermuda as the conference’s venue in order to control the number of reporters and private representatives attending. Members of the Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress were not permitted to attend.
“The organizers also severely limited the issues that could be discussed.
“They insisted that the Jewish aspect of the problem not be mentioned, and neither government was willing to discuss the ‘Final Solution’. Furthermore, the Americans refused to consider changing their strict immigration quotas to let in more Jewish refugees, while the British refused to consider Palestine as a safe haven for Jewish refugees. They would not even discuss sending food packages to concentration camp prisoners. The Americans also betrayed their lack of seriousness by not sending a high-ranking delegation with the authority to make decisions.
“At the conference itself, the attendees spent much time talking about renewing the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, which had been created at the 1938 Evian Conference for the purpose of negotiating with the Germans about refugees. However, the point was moot because, as negotiating with the Nazis was no longer an option, no one was willing to fund the committee. No other solution suggested was deemed acceptable by the two governments, either. Thus, nothing was accomplished, and the Bermuda Conference did not save one Jew.”

Photos: Remembering Kings Pilot James Darrell

Bernews — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:05:02 +0000

[Updated with video] The Annual Commemorative Service for King’s Pilot James ‘Jemmy’ Darrell was held today [Apr 13] in St. George’s, celebrating the life of the freed slave who become the first black man to own a home in Bermuda.

Lead by Rev. David Raths and Rev. Dr Erksine Simmons the service was held at St Peter’s Church graveyard, with Bermuda Sea Cadets performing ceremonial duties.

In May 1795, James Darrell piloted Admiral George Murray’s ship — the 74-gun HMS Resolution — into St. George’s. The Admiral was so impressed with Mr. Darrell’s skill that he recommended that he be granted his freedom. Governor James Craufurd granted this request, and released Mr. Darrell from his enslavement on March 1, 1796.

Shortly after being freed he purchased a house in St. Georges on what is now Pilot Darrell’s Square. On May 23 1796 he was made a Kings Pilot – elite pilots whose main responsibility was to guide British naval ships through the Bermuda reefs. For the remainder of his life, Mr. Darrell fought against discrimination and for equal rights for black people. He died on April 12, 1815 at age 66.

Click to enlarge photos:

National Museum Salutes BIFF Opening Day

Bernews — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:39:00 +0000

To salute the opening day of the 2013 Bermuda International Film Festival [BIFF], the Bermuda National Museum yesterday [Apr.12] uploaded a gallery of rare production sketches and storyboards from the locally produced 1977 blockbuster “The Deep” at its Facebook page.

Based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley and shot primarily in Bermuda in the summer of 1976, ”The Deep” starred the late Robert Shaw as St. David’s treasure diver Romer Treece — a character modelled on the real Bermudian maritime explorer and historian Teddy Tucker.

Co-starring Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr., Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte, the film’s production crew was based at Dockyard.

Full-scale interior sets of Romer Treece’s lighthouse home were constructed in empty Royal Navy warehouses at Dockyard which served as vast ersatz sound stages for the production crew.

The National Museum itself [then the Bermuda Maritime Museum] stood in for the Hamilton Library in scenes involving Ms Bisset and Mr. Nolte’s characters researching the graves of ships wrecked on Bermuda’s reefs.

“At a mere 22 miles long and an average of one mile wide, water is almost everywhere you look in Bermuda,” said “The Deep’s” producer Peter Guber in an account of the making of the film. “The South Shore is one gorgeous pink beach after another, all overlooking that vast turquoise sea.

“… Bermuda looks like a gorgeous botanical garden gone mad. And the rainbow-coloured Bermudian houses fit right into this picture postcard of a landscape, nestling cozily amid the greenery like Easter eggs in a bed of moss.

“All in all, Bermuda has such a clean, bright almost unnaturally colourful beauty, that it inspired our production designer Tony Masters to sputter bemusedly, on an early location recce, ‘It’s hard to find locations that look real here — this whole place looks like one giant movie set’!”

Anthony Masters’ production sketch from “The Deep”

But Mr. Masters — who won an Academy Award for his work on Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey” — eventually found his locations: a full-scale replica of the St. David’s Lighthouse was constructed at a desolate spot on Coney Island; Marley Beaches and Ariel Sands substituted for Mr. Benchley’s fictional cottage colony, The Orange Grove Club; and the Southampton Arms bar became the hang-out for Treece’s treacherous sidekick, Adam Coffin [played by Eli Wallach].

Louis Gossett Jr. and henchman plot some villainy at Cup Match in “The Deep”

A chase sequence [Mr. Nolte and Ms Bisset being pursued on rental Mobylettes by a forwarding van — quite a comedown for director Peter Yates, who choreographed Steve McQueen’s legendary high-speed pursuit of the villains in “Bullitt”] was staged on Langton Hill and near Mangrove Bay.

And Wellington Oval was cast as itself for the Cup Match sequence.

While underwater footage for the film was shot in the waters off the British Virgin Islands and Australia, most of the diving sequences were filmed in a huge tank constructed at the West End — what was then the largest set of its kind in the world.

Bermuda National Museum sketches and storyboards from “The Deep”

– Drawings courtesy of the Bermuda National Museum

Upcoming: King’s Pilot James Darrell Service

Bernews — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:49:12 +0000

There will be Commemorative Service for King’s Pilot James “Jemmy” Darrell at his grave site in the churchyard of St Peter’s, Their Majesties Chappell in St George’s, Bermuda on Saturday, April 13th 2013 at 5.00 pm.

Born a slave in 1749, Pilot Darrell was instrumental in helping the Royal Navy find the channel into Murray’s anchorage as a result of which he was granted his freedom. He was one of the first King’s Pilots in Bermuda. As a free man of colour, he challenged laws that imposed new restrictions on all blacks, and also petitioned against proposals that would have led to a drop in income for King’s Pilots.

Donations will be received for the restoration and care of the graveyard. A memorial wreath will be taken out to Murray’s Anchorage on the Pilot Boat and placed over board.

Former Bermuda Governor On Thatcher’s Legacy

Bernews — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:02:54 +0000

Former Bermuda Governor Lord Waddington — who served as Home Secretary in the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet — said the “Iron Lady” of UK politics was “not an easy person to work with. On most matters she was convinced she was right; [and] she usually was.”

The longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and the only woman to have held the office, Margaret Thatcher died in London yesterday [Apr.7] at the age of 87.

David Waddington served as a Conservative Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons from 1968 to 1990, and was then made a life peer.

He was the Conservative Chief Whip under Margaret Thatcher from 1986 to 1989, was appointed to her Cabinet as Home Secretary from 1989 to 1990.

He was Leader of the House of Lords from 1990 to 1992 before serving as Governor of Bermuda from 1992 to 1997.

“Margaret Thatcher was tough and did not suffer fools gladly,” Lord Waddington said in his recently published autobiography [pictured here]. “Diplomacy was not her strong point and the word ‘compromise’ did not feature large in her vocabulary …

“Margaret Thatcher had great qualities of leadership which stood the country in good stead in times of crisis, and she was giant on the world stage.

“It was sometimes difficult to describe her without using adjectives more familiar to the reader of ‘Jane’s Fighting Ships’ than the student of political biography — indefatigable, indomitable, intrepid and courageous.”

Lord Waddington told a British newspaper he owed Margaret Thatcher a personal debt because she broke the mould of British politics by becoming the first UK party leader to campaign in a by-election when he won the Ribble Valley constituency in February 1979 – just months before she became Prime Minister.

The 83-year-old statesman said last night: “I remember meeting her on the by-pass near Whalley and we went straight to a mill in Padiham. At first, she got a pretty chilly reception but she won people over with her sheer enthusiasm.

“By the time we got to Clitheroe, the streets were so packed with people you could scarcely move. It was a triumphant visit.

“Her death is very sad. She was an immense political figure. It would be presumptuous to say she was my friend but it was a privilege to know and work with her.”

Margaret Thatcher campaigning with David Waddington in 1979

In his 2012 memoirs, Lord Waddington said Margaret Thatcher’s impact on the Cold War politics of the 1980s and ’90s was immeasurable.

He said the former Prime Minister — who stepped down to avoid further intra-party blood-letting following an attempted 1990 palace coup by Conservative MPs — had helped to end the East-West impasse which dominated post-World War Two geopolitics for more than 40 years.

“Her determination to resist every threat to pace from the Soviet bloc, her willingness to face any amount of unpopularity at home in order to see her country properly defended and the West secure [gave] her the moral authority to speak for the West and made the Soviets realise that they had no hope with their far more limited resources of forever preventing democracy in Eastern Europe, let alone extending their particular brand of tyranny further west,” he said.

Lord Waddington concluded that “the British people owe her an immense debt and history will be kind to her.”

Margaret Thatcher paid two well-publicised visits to the island — the first as Prime Minister for a Good Friday summit meeting with US President George H.W. Bush in 1990, the second in 2001 as a private citizen to address a meeting organised by former Bermuda Premier Sir John Swan.

Tucker’s Town Historical Society Meeting

Bernews — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:07:02 +0000

A public meeting will be held this week to consider the next steps regarding the historic Tucker’s Town graveard issue.

Organised by the Tucker’s Town Historical Society, the meeting will take place at Harrington Workmen’s Club on Harrington Sound Road, Smith’s Parish next to Devil’s Hole on Tuesday [Apr. 9] from 7 pm to 9 pm.

“In particular an invitation is extended to the descendents of those Bermudians who were removed from their land in Tuckers Town in 1920; and who are asked to bring their stories and memories in to the room,” said a spokesperson.

“It is hoped this meeting will provide the community an opportunity to discuss the best way to protect this site of sacredness to the Black community, which is also of historical and national importance to all Bermudians; and in particular how best to honour and celebrate a unique and courageous group of Free Blacks who, despite slavery and segregation, managed to create a safe, proud, idyllic and hardworking community.”

Protestors are objecting to tombstones at the Tucker’s Town graveyard being removed ahead of plans to build a new cemetery memorial on the site.

Activist group CURB is seeking to ensure the Tucker’s Town cemetery is added to the Historic Buildings List to ensure this site is restored and protected for future generations of Bermudians.

“Star Trek” Actor Who Boldly Came To Bermuda

Bernews — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:06:03 +0000

He boldly went where no “Star Trek” actor had gone before — Bermuda.

American actor/director/producer LeVar Burton — who shot to fame in the 1970s with his portrayal of enslaved African Kunta Kinte in the historic ABC mini-series “Roots” and then went on to become best known as Commander Geordi LaForge in the longrunning show “Star Trek: The Next Generation” [1987-1994] — came to the island in 2007 and 2008 to film two commercials for the Bermuda Department of Tourism.

When he was here for the first shoot, Mr. Burton attended the 2007 Bermuda Music Festival along with his wife, make-up artist Stephanie Cozart Burton [he is pictured at that event here].

The Tourism Department commercials he shot in Bermuda were aired on TV in such key US markets as Washington DC, Boston and New York as part of the “Feel The Love” promotional campaign.

In the ads Mr. Burton highlighted Burton highlighted Bermuda’s manicured golf courses and beaches and stunning views as well as such attractions as thee unfinished church in St. George’s.

A longtime advocate of literacy, Mr. Burton was also host and executive producer of “Reading Rainbow” which premiered in 1983 on PBS.

The series ran for 23 seasons, making it one of the longest running children’s programs on the network. Furthermore, the series garnered several awards over its run, including a Peabody Award and 26 Emmy Awards, ten of which were in the “Outstanding Children’s Series” category.

Mr. Burton himself won 12 Emmy awards as host and producer of the show.

After “Reading Rainbow” went off the air in 2006, Mr. Burton and his business partner, Mark Wolfe acquired the global rights to the brand and formed RRKIDZ, a new media company for children.

“Reading Rainbow” was reimagined as an all new app for the iPad in 2012 and was an immediate success, becoming the number one Educational App within 36 hours of its release.

When Bermuda Was “Thurber Country”

Bernews — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:27:21 +0000

Bermuda was humourist James Thurber’s world — and for almost three decades he welcomed readers of “The New Yorker” to it in a series of witty dispatches from the island.

Best known for such stories as “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty”, his much lauded series of fables featuring anthropomorphic animals and fairy tales including “The Thirteen Clocks”, Ohio-born author and illustrator James Thurber [1894-1961] remains one of the most popular and beloved comic writers in the history of American literature.

A longtime fixture at “The New Yorker” magazine — where he celebrated the comic frustrations and eccentricities of ordinary people in his short stories and surrealistic drawings — Thurber began paying annual visits to Bermuda in 1931 [he is pictured above at the Fourways Inn during a 1950 vacation on the island].

“James Thurber’s eye for the ridiculous, the pompous or the bigoted continues to be as keen as ever — and that’s about as keen as a Toledo blade,” said veteran Bermuda journalist Marian Robb when she interviewed the writer for the “Mid-Ocean News” in 1957.

“The tall and easy-mannered gentleman with a ruddy face and thick sheaf of frosty hair has a mind like a dragon-fly — darting, probing, hovering and diving, poised on shimmering wings above some murky depth or weaving impromptu patterns in the startled air.

“No subject it attacks is ever quite the same again.”

Although he and his wife rented homes in various parts of the island during their pilgrimages to the island, Sandys Parish became his favourite haunt.

When he was in residence at the West End, Bermudians jokingly took to referring to Sandys as “Thurber Country” after the title of a benchmark 1949 collection of his satirical writings.

James Thurber with wife Helen on wall at “Felicity Hall”, Somerset, Bermuda

Bermuda began to feature in Thurber’s writing shortly after the New York-based writer made the island his winter retreat.

In a satirical essay entitled “Extinct Animals Of Bermuda”, Thurber conjured with such imaginary creatures as the woan ["scarcely larger than a small blue cream pitcher, the woan had three buttons on the vest of his Sunday suit, and was given to fanning his paws at spindrift"] and Hackett’s Gorm ["a tailless extravertebrate about whom only one fact has survived the centuries: he was discovered by Mr. and Mrs. W. L. Hackett and their daughter Gloria."]

“I made them up,” Thurber told Marian Robb of the fanciful animals in his Bermuda bestiary, “but many people took it seriously.”

He became great friends with West End residents Ronald Williams, wife Jane and their children, even contributing on occasion to “The Bermudian” magazine which his Sandys neighbour founded and edited for many years.

“I didn’t like the last piece I wrote for you very much, but they will improve with the coming of Spring and the ending of our long cycle of disasters,” he wrote to Mr. Williams from his Connecticut home in 1950. “I would like to bring Helen to Bermuda but can’t very well leave her mother, who is likely to collapse again at any minute.

“The first thing we will do, when we can, is to get down there …”

Among other locally flavoured pieces, Thurber once wrote a mordanantly humorous poem inspired by a bee sting he received while on the island entitled “Bermuda I Love You”,

“Hark my child to a tale of disaster
Of yards of gauze and casts of plaster,
Of festering lip and shattered feet,
Of hearts that suddenly cease to beat.
Henry O. Jones was a bike-riding fool
And what was that liquid in that little pool
That turned his socks red
And moistened his head?
Listen my child, it was not milk or mud,
It was not Scotch or rye; it was red, it was blood.
Maribel Smith scratched her hand with a stick.
She didn’t bleed much, and she didn’t feel sick.
There was just a small cut on one of her paws
But in forty-eight hours she could not move her jaws.
In five or six days they were lighting the candles
And they bought her a box with bright silver handles.
Or consider the case of Herbert A. Dewer,
Healthy at noon and by nighttime manure.
Herb would have said you were certainly silly
Had you told him that he would be soil for a lily.
Or list to the tale of Harrison Bundy,
Here on Tuesday, gone on Monday.
And over the grave of Beth Henderson sigh;
She died from the bite of a common house fly.
And here close beside the murmurous sea
Lies a tall nervous writer stung by a bee.
Oh, Bermuda is lovely, Bermuda is bright,
But beware its claws and beware its bite.
Remember H. Dewer, remember H. Mundy,
Remember Sic Transit Gloria Mundy.”

He also drafted his darkly whimsical children’s classic “The Thirteen Clocks” [1950] on the island, saying in the introduction: “I wrote [this book] in Bermuda, where I had gone to finish another book.

“The shift to this one was an example of escapism and self-indulgence. Unless modern Man wanders down these byways occasionally, I do not see how he can hope to preserve his sanity.”

Described by “Los Angeles Times” critic Sonja Bolle as “an eccentric children’s story that took apart and lovingly reconstructed the fairy tale long before William Steig wrote ‘Shrek’ or William Goldman penned ‘The Princess Bride’ … ‘The Thirteen Clocks’ is the first book I remember loving, and it is one of the few books I managed to wrest from my family’s library and preserve through all the mundane disasters of my life. Everything about it is dear to me …”

And in a recent edition of “The Thirteen Clocks”, children’s author Neil Gaiman says it is “ … probably the best book in the world.”

He goes on to say of the Bermuda-penned children’s novel, “And if it’s not the best book, then it’s still very much like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one’s ever really seen anything like it since.”

Neil Gaiman narrates promotional video for “The Thirteen Clocks”

During the final years of his life, Thurber worked on an on-again, off-again basis on a play called “Welcoming Arms” which was set at a Bermuda house called “Serenity Hall” where vacationing Americans have come to seek peace and quiet.

“Instead, all hell breaks loose,” the writer told Marian Robb.

First announced for the 1956 Broadway season but never produced, Thurber was said to be insistent that the production designers visit Bermuda so “they could see how to make authentic sets.

“For one thing, they must record the night song of the tree-toads.”

Thurber’s health declined precipitously towards the end of his life.

His sight — he had been blinded in one eye as a result of a childhood accident — deteriorated to the point where he had to dictate stories and letters to a secretary rather than write them himself. He had to abandon his idiosyncratic — and instantly recognisable — cartoons altogether.

He died in 1961, at the age of 66, due to complications from pneumonia, which followed upon a stroke suffered at his home.

In 1969-1970 a TV series based on Thurber’s writings and life, entitled “My World and Welcome to It” after a 1942 collection of his work, was broadcast on NBC.

It starred William Windom as the Thurber figure. Featuring animated segments in addition to live actors, the show won a 1970 Emmy Award as the year’s best comedy series.

Mr. Windom won an Emmy as well. He went on to perform Thurber material in a one-man stage show, including at the Bermuda Festival.

Upcoming: St. George’s Peppercorn Ceremony

Bernews — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:59:52 +0000

The pomp and ceremony Bermuda is renowned for will be on full display later this month [Apr.24] when the annual Peppercorn Ceremony takes place in St. George’s.

Held every year since 1816 on Kings Square in the Town of St George, the Peppercorn Ceremony involves the ceremonial payment of the “rent” of one peppercorn for the continued use of the Old State House — Bermuda’s oldest building — in “free and common socage” by the Master of Lodge St. George #200, on the Roll of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

Governor George Fergusson, in all his ceremonial finery, will inspect the band and troops of the Bermuda Regiment whilst the Master, Officers and Brethren of Lodge St. George will parade onto the square in full Masonic regalia.

Pomp and ceremony surrounds the East End’s historic Peppercorn Ceremony

Photos: Grace Kelly’s 1949 Bermuda Trip

Bernews — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:21:20 +0000

She was Hollywood royalty before becoming the genuine article by marrying Monaco’s Prince Rainier in 1956 — but just a few years earlier aspiring actress Grace Kelly was paying her way through drama school by accepting modelling assignments, including one in Bermuda in 1949.

Her fairytale marriage to Prince Rainier was billed as the “Wedding of the Century” by the press and she wore one of the most elegant and best-remembered bridal gowns of all time.

But on her Bermuda shoot — modelling honeymoon fashions for a British Pathé newsreel report — her wardrobe was entirely more modest, consisting of the casual and evening wear a middle class post-World War Two American bride might expect to take with her to the island after her nuptials.

Of Irish and German descent, Grace Kelly [1929-1982] was born in Philadelphia and began modelling with her mother and sisters as a teenager at local fashion events.

Because of low mathematics scores, shey was rejected by Bennington College in July 1947. To the dismay of her parents—her father viewed acting as “a slim cut above streetwalker”— Grace Kelly decided to pursue her dreams of a career in the theatre.

Grace Kelly sailing in the Great Sound

Accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, she lived in Manhattan’s Barbizon Hotel for Women — a prestigious establishment which barred men from entering after 10 pm — and worked as a model to support her studies.

With her blonde hair, porcelain complexion, blue-green eyes, and 5’8” perfect poise, Grace Kelly became one of the highest-paid models in New York City at the time.

After graduation from the Academy in 1949, Grace Kelly appeared in two plays at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and then in her first Broadway play, The Father. Kelly received good reviews for her “essence of freshness.” She retained an agent, Edith Van Cleve, and began acting in television dramas in 1950, including the “Philco Television Playhouse” and the “Kraft Theatre”.

Grace Kelly on a rented bicycle outside the Princess Hotel

She made her film debut in a small role in the 1951 film Fourteen Hours. She was noticed during a visit to the set by Gary Cooper, who subsequently starred with her in High Noon.

The veteran leading man — a frequent visitor to the island who had built a Bermuda-style house in Hollywood — was charmed by Grace Kelly and said that she was “different from all these actresses we’ve been seeing so much of.”

In the autumn of 1952, Grace Kelly tested for the film “Mogambo” [1953], enticed by it being filmed in Africa and starring legendary film star Clark Gable.

After the test, shey was offered the part and a seven-year contract at MGM. The film was nominated for two Oscars: Best Actress for Ava Gardner and Best Supporting Actress for Grace Kelly. Neither actress won, but Grace Kelly did win a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

Grace Kelly cycling along Pitts Bay Road

By the 1950s, director Alfred Hitchcock had made a name for himself in Hollywood making suspenseful motion pictures featuring very cool blondes as his leading ladies

She followed this part with a role in another Hitchcock picture, “Rear Window” [1954] and then made two films back-to-back for MGM – ”The Country Girl”, in which played the wearied wife of an alcoholic, and “Green Fire.”

“Green Fire” was a box-office failure but “The Country Girl” was a critical and box-office success and Grace Kelly won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 1955 she accepted another assignment from Alfred Hitchcock and flew to the French Riviera to star alongside Cary Grant in “To Catch a Thief” [1955].

That spring, while attending the Cannes Film Festival, Grace Kelly was asked to appear in a photo session at the Palace of Monaco with Prince Rainier III. She obliged and met the prince.

Grace Kelly in the back of a Bermuda horse-drawn carriage

They discovered they had a lot in common; both were uncomfortable celebrities, devout Catholics, and desired a family.

A whirlwind romance ensued an the royal wedding of 26-year-old Miss Grace Patricia Kelly to 32-year-old His Serene Highness Prince Rainier III of Monaco was held in that tiny principality on April 19, 1956.

The Prince and Princess of Monaco had three children: Princess Caroline, born 1957; Prince Albert, born in 1958; and Princess Stéphanie, born in 1965.

In addition to motherhood, Princess Grace, as she was known, supervised the renovation of a crumbling medical facility into a first-rate hospital and founded the Princess Grace Foundation in 1964 to help those with special needs. Princess Grace of Monaco became loved and cherished by the people of her adopted homeland.

She and Prince Rainier paid at least one private visit to Bermuda in the 1970s to stay with friends.

Princess Grace began suffering from severe headaches and abnormally high blood pressure in 1982.

Grace Kelly on a Bermuda buggy ride

On September 13 of that year, Princess Grace and 17-year-old Stéphanie were returning to Monaco from their country home, Roc-Agel. Princess Grace, who was driving, blacked out for a second.

When she came to, she accidentally pressed her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake, driving the car over an embankment.

As the women were pulled from the wreckage, it was discovered that Stéphanie had sustained minor injuries but Princess Grace was unresponsive.

She was placed on mechanical life support at the hospital in Monaco. Doctors concluded that she had suffered a massive stroke, which had caused irreversible brain damage.

The day following the accident, Princess Grace’s family made the decision to remove her from the artificial devices that were keeping her heart and lungs going. Grace Kelly died on September 14, 1982, at the age of 52.

Brief footage of Grace Kelly on Bermuda modelling shoot begins at the :57 mark

Masterworks Discovers 1855 Bermuda Photo

Bernews — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:12:27 +0000

The Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art has recently purchased a very rare daguerreotype of St. George’s, which will go on display shortly.

It is, in all likelihood, one of the earliest known photographic images of the island, said a Masterworks spokesman.

“We are confident Henry Whittemore, who was an itinerant American daguerreotypist and travelled throughout North and South America as well as the Caribbean in the mid 1800s, made this daguerreotype in 1855,” said the spokesman.

“We have found a number of [19th century] advertisements and articles such as ‘January 2, 1855-H.Whittemore has returned to Bermuda to solicit the patronage of the Public, and is fully prepared with Stock and Apparatus to take every variety of DAGURREOTYPE and PHOTOGRAPH…. specimens of work. … will be EXHIBITED FREE for a short time in his rooms above Mr. Keanes’s Drug Store’.

“On January 18,1855 an article stated, ‘Mr. Whittemore is now engaged upon a series of PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS of BERMUDA for Subscribers…His Excellency the Governor, the Chief Justice, Officers of the Army and Navy and many inhabitants have already subscribed …’

“We also have a copy of Harper’s Daily, March 21,1857 titled ‘Guide to the Somers Islands’ which printed a lithograph of St Georges taken from our daguerreotype. This was common practice in the early years of photography and enabled images of far-flung places to be available to the public.”

In 1839, photography was invented almost simultaneously by Jacques Daguerre in France and, later that year, by William Fox Talbot in England.

“This find by Masterworks is a view of St. Georges and is one of the earliest known photographs of Bermuda , given the process was only invented 16 years earlier,” said the spokesman for the Botanical Gardens museum. “This is a ‘must-see’ — history has been made!”

J.D. Salinger 1966 Bermuda Letter For Sale

Bernews — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:56:18 +0000

Reclusive author J.D. Salinger remains best known for dissecting the “phony” adult world in “The Catcher In The Rye” and his various short stories — but he also proved himself a dab hand at capturing the minutiae of Bermuda life in a letter he sent to a friend from the island in 1966.

When New York-born Jerome David Salinger [1919-2010] published his novel “The Catcher in the Rye” in 1951 the book was an immediate popular success.

His portrayal of protagonist Holden Caulfied’s adolescent alienation and loss of innocence was hugely influential, especially among younger readers. The novel remains widely read — and widely controversial in conservative quarters — selling around 250,000 copies a year.

The success of “The Catcher in the Rye” led to widespread public attention and intense scrutiny from the media, resulting in the retiring author growing increasingly reclusive.

His last published work, a novella entitled “Hapworth 16, 1924″, appeared in “The New Yorker” on June 19, 1965.

The following year Mr. Salinger was vacationing in Bermuda with his mother, Mary, when he wrote to friend Carrol Roderick in Hampshire, England.

Written in typical deadpan Salinger style, he begins with a list of made up headlines about local goings-on in Bermuda.

The letter opens: ”Dock Strike in Third Day / Mrs. Browne-Evans Calls for Democracy / Flatts Bridge Open / Bank of Bermuda Building a Mere Shell / Six Degrees NISI Granted in Court / New Firehouse to be Ready in 1984 / No Rain in Sight / Parliament Unhappy — Particularly Mrs. Browne-Evans / Burnaby Street Noisier Than Ever / Unnecessary to Blow on Hands While Typing …

“Dear Carrol, If the London ‘Times’ can print news on the front page, I might be permitted headlines at the top of the letter. So how are you? Well and happy I hope.

“… I came down for the purpose of writing you a letter. I find that here I have enough time to do so, and this is such a newsy spot.

The author said the Bermuda trip was “my delayed Christmas present holiday present” to his mother and that the weather on the island was “hot but bearable”; he added “I of course told Mary [his mother] it was too cold.”

Mr. Salinger touches on the topical issue of the Vietnam War, where the American military presence was escalating under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“Last evening we had a Caucasian and English lady to dinner,” he said. “They asked me to justify American policy in Vietnam and were rather shocked when I told them this I could not do because our VN policy stinks. I fear they were greatly disappointed…”

On page two, Salinger provided little stories based around the ”headlines” from the first page, joking that he was providing Ms Roderick with a “six-penny edition” newspaper of Bermuda current events.

For example, expanding upon the ”Dock Strike” headline, he writes: “According to the Bermuda Industrial Union, there is no dock strike. It is a simple case of the men refusing to work…”

And referring to roadworks at Flatts Bridge, he says: “Yes indeedee! It are open! Two years of carefull [sic] work have borne fruit. They plan to remove the construction [debris] by 1968.”

He also dissects a “HA” [House of Assembly] debate on upgrades in the civil service, criticising then Member of Colonial Parliament [MCP] and future Opposition Leader and Attorney General Lois Browne Evans for having her feet “firmly planted in mid-air” on the subject.

Mr. Salinger — who once romanced Bermuda-born Oona O’Neill, the daughter of tragedian Eugene O’Neill and longtime wife of comedian Charles Chaplin — concludes: “If something happens before we leave I will report it to you … It is said that we have the government we deserve. It would appear that the British and Americans have been very naughty indeed to have the governments they currently have.”

The three-page letter is being sold by California auctioneer Nate D. Sanders who specialises in Hollywood memorabilia and autographed collectibles.

He can be contacted at 310-440-2982 or via email at info@natedsanders.com

Historic Video: Bermuda Easter Lily Farm

Bernews — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 15:54:04 +0000

It was once said Bermuda was known as “The Easter Isle” for a million good reasons — that was the estimated size of the island’s annual crop of lilies when the industry was at its peak.

This historic video was shot during the Easter season in the 1920s at the farm of Malcolm Hollis – then one of Bermuda’s most prominent lily growers and exporters.

He was born in November, 1885 the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Aldgate Hollis.

Mr. Hollis farmed extensively in many parts of Bermuda for over 50 years and was active right up until the time he died.

His first farming endeavour was when he and his brother Ross took a dinghy and a barrel of potatoes to Cooper’s Island and rented it for a year or so and transported their crops back and forth to St. George’s and St. David’s by boat.

Scenes of Easter lily farm and other Bermuda sequences begin at the 3:19 mark

During the First World War [1914-18], his farm was situated where the current St. David’s Primary School is located and which before that was well known as Bermuda’s Pilot Station.

During the war years this farm provided victuals for soldiers stationed at the St. David’s Head. It was during this period that Mr. Hollis commenced lily growing.

Following the end of the First World War, the Government of the day decided to compulsorily purchase that farm from Mr. Hollis to turn it into an isolation hospital.

Mr. Hollis then moved to a farm further to the west in St. David’s and known as the Beehive Farm which he farmed again until that property was compulsorily purchased during the Second World War to be leased to the US for the construction of Fort Bell [later Kindley Air Force Base and the US Naval Air Station].

Mr. Hollis then concentrated his farming at his farm in Smith’s Parish between Harrington Sound and Knapton Hill and known as Harrington Harrissii Farm.

Image from the film shot at Malcolm Hollis’ lily farm

Both before and after the Second World War Mr. Hollis exported all types of agricultural produce to the United States and exported lily flowers and bulbs to US, Canada, England, Europe and even Cuba.

In 1954 Mr. Hollis shipped 60 cases of lily bulbs to Robert Tucker & Company in London to be planted in London’s famed Hyde Park.

Commercial production of the bulb began here in the mid-1800s and within a few decades Bermuda was routinely being referred to as “The Easter Lily Island” – or simply ”The Easter Isle” – in American and Canadian newspapers.

Once one of the island’s largest industries, in the 20th century Bermudian lily growers could not hope to compete with American farmers whose landholdings sometimes exceeded the island’s total acreage.

In the late 1920s and early ’30s Bermuda’s agricultural sector began to decline even as the new luxury resort tourism industry started to blossom and by the 1970s the lily industry was all but defunct.

Vintage postcard highlighting Bermuda’s reputation as “The Easter Lily Island”

Video: “Bermuda’s History Through Music”

Bernews — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 14:51:06 +0000

Dread & Baha’s groundbreaking 1997 documentary “The Birth of a Trust: Bermuda’s History Through Music” is now available on line — a sweeping overview of entertainment in Bermuda as seen through the eyes of many of the country’s most notable musicians.

The film documents the evolution of local music scene from the big band era of the 1940s and 1950s, through the popular “Battle of the Groups” at the Rosebank in the late ’60s and ’70s, up to the dancehall clashes of today.

The 45-minute documentary touches on Bermuda’s many musical traditions and the emergence of talented local artists in such diverse fields as reggae, calypso and jazz.

It features local legends like Hubert Smith [pictured], Ghandi Burgess, Lance Hayward and Michael Curtis Clarke and highlights the accomplishments of present day artists like Ras Giorgis and now retired soundsystem “Playboy International”.

The film also looks at how the music reflected the social changes that were taking place at any particular point in our history; from World War II, to the volatile 60′s and 70s with the assesination of the Governor and the riots, and the 1981 general strike.

”The Birth of a Trust: Bermuda’s History Through Music”

The Wonder-Ful Career Of Olive Anne Trott

Bernews — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 13:43:04 +0000

Working from the North Shore restaurant her father founded, Olive Anne Trott brought an array of talent to Bermuda that would have done a seasoned Las Vegas booking agent proud.

Mrs. Trott began promoting shows featuring major international acts a few years prior to launching the Miss Bermuda Pageant in 1965.

“She was the first person I knew to bring overseas promoters to Bermuda,” former associate Wentworth Christopher told a newspaper after her death in 2011 at the age of 88. “She brought in people like Stevie Wonder [pictured], when he was 13 or 14 years old, James Brown, Dizzy Gillespie and Frankie Lymon.

“If I could remember all of it, I still couldn’t do her justice.”

Aside from promoting concerts, Mrs. Trott also persuaded Olympic gold medallist Cassius Clay to take part in a boxing exhibition staged at the National Tennis Stadium in 1965. Her doctor — former Premier Ewart Brown — has said of Mrs. Trott: “It was Olive who introduced me to Muhammad Ali [then Cassius Clay] outside my dad’s bar in Flatts. My friendship with Ali has continued over the years.”

Dr. Brown called her “a special lady with a magnetic personality and a contagious smile.”

Scoring Stevie Wonder for a Bermuda engagement when his star was on the rise in 1964 was one of her earliest coups.

Olive Anne Trott greets “Little” Stevie Wonder as he arrives in Bermuda in March, 1964

One of the most significant and enduring figures in popular music history, Stevie Wonder has been recording music for Motown Records since the age of 12.

Blind since infancy, he developed a fascination and love for instruments at an early age.

Introduced to Motown Records CEO Berry Gordy in 1962, the record label boss was so impressed with the young musician he immediately signed him under the name Little Stevie Wonder.

Stevie Wonder released “Fingertips in 1963, with the musician covering vocals, bongos, and the harmonica.

Featuring a young Marvin Gaye on drums, the song rose to number one on the US charts and put Stevie Wonder on the American music map.

“Little Stevie, the 13-year-old Wonder-boy of the recording and entertaining fields attracted two full houses at the Rosebank Theatre last Friday night,” said a front page report in the “Bermuda Recorder” newspaper. “Stevie was very popular with thousands of local teen agers before he came here and now he has won the hearts of everyone who turned out to see the ‘genius’ as he is often called.

“His popular recording of ‘Fingertips that catapulted him into the top-star bracket was by far his best received item along with another of his special sing-along tunes ‘La La La La La’ …”

“Little” Stevie Wonder performing “Fingertips” in 1964

“The show on the whole was a major success and fans came away highly delighted and semi-delirious from Stevie’s highly captivating stage personality. They were either frozen out of sheer amazement or trapped into the hand-clapping, feet-stamping rhythm that accompanies most of the blind-singers numbers.

“Stevie mastered his various instruments and simply aston ished his audiences as he moved from the microphone with his mouth organ to the organ where lie then to his sparking set of drums where he put over a ballad ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’ …”

The newspaper report continued: “It was difficult to tell which of the two [hits — ‘Fingertips’ or ‘La La La La La’ -= brought the most screams and raves from his highly responsive audiences …”

Bermudian acts appearing on the bill with the rising young American star included the Aldanno Sextette, husband-and-wife team Gene and Pinky Steede, the Keynotes the Dancing High Hats, Elva Simmons and pop band the Appegios.

Stevie Wonder returned to Bermuda a number of times in the ’60s and ’70s to perform and in 1970 spent his honeymoon on the island after marrying Motown singer/songwriter and frequent collaborator Syreeta Wright.

“Little ” Stevie Wonder’s “La La La La La”

“Peter Pan” Star Winged Her Way To Bermuda

Bernews — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 10:19:28 +0000

Broadway star Mary Martin was perhaps best known for soaring over theatre audiences when she played the title role in “Peter Pan” — but off-stage she was renowned for winging to Bermuda every time her schedule allowed.

The Texas-born theatrical sensation first appeared on Broadway in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific”, opening on April 7, 1949 as nurse Nellie Forbush. Her performance was called “memorable…funny and poignant in turns”, and she earned a Tony Award.

Her next major success was in the role of Peter in the Broadway production of “Peter Pan” in October 1954, with Miss Martin winning a second Tony Award.

The one-time nightclub singer opened on Broadway in “The Sound of Music” as Maria on November 16, 1959, and stayed in that phenomenally popular show until October, 1961, scoring a Tony hat-trick when she walked off with a third statuette for Best Actress in a Musical.

In 1966 she appeared on Broadway in the two-person musical “I Do! I Do!” with Robert Preston and was nominated for yet another Tony Award.

The mother of actor Larry Hagman — who earned television immortality for his roles in “I Dream Of Jeannie” and “Dallas” — beginning in the early ’50s Ms Martin and second husband Richard Halliday started to visit the island on a regular basis.

Mary Martin appeared in this Easter-themed Pan Am ad in 1950 with The Talbot Brothers

In 1961 even the normally indefatigable Mary Martin was exhausted after her long run in “The Sound of Music” and needed a complete rest.

The result was one of her more memorable Bermuda vacations.

Her producer husband — who she had married in 1940 — suggested she lease a cottage in Bermuda and ask old friend Bessie Mae Sue Ella Yeagar to meet her there while he prepared a new play.

Biographer Richard L. Davis said: “…Mary and Bessie Mae Sue Ella spent the last three weeks of October in Bermuda. Bessie Mae said, ‘We laughed, we cried, we remembered, we ate, we sunned, and she dyed my hair, turning me into a blonde. We shooped for clothes and did the things that college girls did’ …”

When American reporters discovered she was vacationing in Bermuda after her completing her “Sound Of Music” run, they descended on the cottage and Ms Martin and her friend performed an impromptu duet for them.

“While Bessie sang ‘Rock of Ages’, Mary sang the words to ‘On The Sunny Side Of The Street’, surprising everyone that the two went together,” recounted biographer Mr. Davis.

Miss Martin also commenced work on a set of memoirs which would eventually result in her bestselling autobiography — “My Heart Belongs” — while resting up in Bermuda during that holiday.

“Richard gave me a yellow pad and some pencils as a going away present,” she recalled in a 1976 interview. “It was a different life for me in Bermuda after going to bed at 3 am during the show.

“About midnight I’d try to read and then start writing. I got about a hundred pages written [in Bermuda] … Then I forgot about it again til after Richard died [in 1973].”

Mary Martin died a month before her 77th birthday at her home in Rancho Mirage, California on November 3, 1990.

Kennedy Centre tribute to Mary Martin, 1989

Exploring Bermuda’s Most Famous Shipwreck

Bernews — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:20:07 +0000

She remains the most famous of the hundreds of ships to have come to grief on Bermuda’s reefs — the four-masted, 192-foot long wooden hulled schooner “Constellation” immortalised in Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel “The Deep” and the subsequent 1977 film adaptation.

Built and launched in 1918, in July, 1943 the “Constellation” — renamed the “Goliath” in Mr. Benchley’s book — was bound for Venezuela when she headed for Bermuda for repairs after floundering for several days.

On July 31, while waiting for a local pilot to bring her into port, the “Constellation” [pictured above] was driven by a strong current onto the reef to the north east of the island where she sank in 30 feet of water. The ship was a total loss though some salvage was carried out at the time of her sinking by local sailor and shipwright Albert [Bert] Darrell.

“The ‘Constellation’, a four-masted schooner on her way from New York to Venezuela when she sank in 1943, loaded down with an inventory so diverse that it must have resembled a floating K-Mart,” said Mr. Becnhley. “She carried a cargo of Scotch whiskey [which vanished within about five minutes of its discovery], tennis rackets, cement, radios, cosmetics, yo-yos, cheap glassware, barrels of crockery, crucifixes and medicinal drugs: hundreds of thousands of ampoules of adrenaline, iodine, penicillin, opium in alcohol, morphine and heroin.

“For decades after the sinking, a probing hand could free a cache of ampoules from the sand, and they would float and dance like tiny Tinkerbells in the shallow, sun-dappled water.”

Opening sequence of “The Deep” [1977]

The bestselling author of “Jaws” and other maritime novels continued: “In the mid-1970′s, I used the ‘Constellation’ as a model for an adventure story called ‘The Deep’, and after the film was shot in Bermuda, the ship became a major tourist attraction.

“Divers would find ampoules on the wreck and take them home as souvenirs, a practice that gave customs officials migraines and caused innumerable planes to be delayed, for although the Food and Drug Administration declared that the drugs had long since become inert, United States Customs officials tested the narcotics and found them to be active indeed.”

The “Constellation” sits in 35 feet of water some four miles north northwest from Daniels Head and centres around a massive pile of cement bags with remnants of her general cargo broken and strewn on the bottom.

“Goods from the ship were salvaged at the time of her sinking as were many parts of the ship,” says a report on the wreck posted by Bermuda’s Department of Conservation Services. “A portion of her rigging could be seen until [recently] as part of the flagpole at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and some of her sails were discovered in near perfect condition under Bert Darrell’s Boat Shed on Harbour Road in the 1990s prior to its destruction.

Divers explore the wreck of the “Constellation”

“Anyone riding the Paget ferry can see the 40-foot remains of the lower parts of one of her massive masts resting on the rocks below Harbour Road just prior to the Belmont ferry dock.”

The “Constellation” is extensively dived by the local dive operators and toured by the glass bottom boats. The wreck was surveyed by the Bermuda Maritime Museum in 1996.

This wreck is part of the Bermuda Shipwreck Certificate Program instituted by the Department of Tourism.

It is also buoyed under the Bermuda Dive Sites program established by the Marine Environmental Committee of the Bermuda National Trust in association with the Ministry of the Environment and is a protected site with a 300 metre no fishing limitation.

Bermuda On Show At 1924 London Exhibition

Bernews — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:08:25 +0000

The British Empire Exhibition which opened in 1924 in north London was a huge trade and travel spectacle which included such attractions as an amusement park, a stadium for mass entertainments — and a full-scale reproduction of the Bermuda house “Walsingham”, now the site of Tom Moore’s Tavern.

The idea of a great exhibition to celebrate imperial trade had been conceived as far back as 1913. In 1922, the government provided the funding for it to go ahead. The site chosen was Wembley Park in northwest London. It was criticised by some for being too far out of town, but it had good rail links: over 100 stations in the London area were within 18 minutes’ journey time. A new “motor-omnibus station” was erected, designed to deal with over 100,000 passengers a day.

“Bermuda had one of the smallest pavilions at Wembley: a reproduction of the Walsingham House — a restaurant and pub known and loved by all Bermudians,” says an official history of the British Empire Exhibition. “The original was built in 1651 and served, for a brief time, as [a haven for] the Irish poet Tom Moore. The copy was accurate in every detail, from the Bermudian slate roof to the green jalousies on the windows and even recreated Moore’s room.

Bermuda pavilion at the 1924/1925 British Empire Exhibition

“Bermuda’s history as a naval base could actually be heard in the main hall, where the bell from HMS ‘Shannon’ was rung on the hour. During one of the most famous naval battles of all time, the Shannon captured American ship “Chesapeake” outside Boston harbour during the War of 1812.

“A relief map of the island was the axis for pictures representing scenes from the island’s history, including ‘The Relief of Jamestown’ [In 1610, British ships from Bermuda brought food and supplies to starving colonists in Jamestown, Virginia]; ‘The Blockade of St. George’s Harbour’ [During the US Civil War, Confederate ships loaded with cotton tried to outrun the Union naval blockade and head towards Bermuda and, from there, to Europe] … and The US Naval Base on White’s Island [An important staging area during World War I].

“The garden surrounding the pavilion was landscaped with native flowers including Easter lillies, hibiscus, pallen and oleander.”

Built from scratch on a greenfield site, the exhibition was a showcase for goods and produce from the Empire countries.

Construction began in January 1922 and the first building to be completed was Wembley Stadium. Its first event was the 1923 Football Association Cup.

The site also included hundreds of buildings, an amusement park, ornamental lake, reservoir, outfall sewer, railway lines and roads, all built from a new, modern material — concrete. The first words transmitted over the radio by a British sovereign were spoken at the opening ceremony on 23 April 1924.

At the exhibition’s heart were 16 buildings representing 56 of the British Empire’s 58 countries at that time [only Gambia and Gibraltar did not take part].

These ranged in size from the Australian “palace” to the smaller West Indies British Guiana pavilion, which sold cocktails and displayed exhibits on sugar.

The West African building was a miniature reproduction of the walled city of Zaria in Nigeria; Ceylon was modelled on the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy; Burma reproduced in Burmese teak one of the gates of a famous pagoda at Mandalay.

Hong Kong was represented by a street of Chinese shops, and East Africa by a white walled Arab building. Inside, the countries themselves had organised displays of their goods and products. The Australian pavilion sold seven million apples. The Canadian pavilion promoted butter with a life-size refrigerated butter sculpture of the Prince of Wales in the costume of a Native American chief.

The exhibition ran for two summer seasons and attracted 27 million visitors.

Costing £12 million to stage, it was was the largest exhibition ever staged anywhere in the world up to that time.

Mark Twain: “Our Friends The Bermudians”

Bernews — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:54:47 +0000

Along with such works as Marco Polo’s account of his journey to China, Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad” — among the first publications to introduce Bermuda to Americans as a holiday destination — has been named as one of the top travel books ever written by a Smithsonian Institution writer.

“Smithsonian Magazine” contributor Tony Perrottet this month [Mar. 20] ranked “The Innocents Abroad” — Mark Twain’s account of an 1867 “Great Pleasure Excursion” on board the chartered vessel “Quaker City” through Europe and the Holy Land — as fourth on what he calls a “brazenly opinionated short-list of travel classics .. that have inspired armchair travellers to venture out of their comfort zone and hit the road.”

Bermuda was the last port of call on the five-month “Quaker City” voyage, among the first extended pleasure cruises of its kind ever undertaken.

Mark Twain [1835–1910] — then a journalist and commentator — joined the “Quaker City” cruise with the intentions of sending back dispatches about his travels to various newspapers.

In 1869, “Innocents Abroad: or the New Pilgrims’ Progress” — his full-length account of the journey — was published to great critical and popular acclaim and the book proved to be Mark Twain’s most popular work during his lifetime.

The “Quaker City” which went on a cruise of Europe and the Holy Land in 1867

“Writers of the Gilded Age — a term Mark Twain incidentally coined — produced thousands of earnest and tedious travel books, a tendency that Twain deftly deflated with ‘Innocents Abroad’,” said Mr. Perrottet. “Sent as a journalist on a group cruise tour to see the great sights of Europe and the Holy Land, Twain filed a series of hilarious columns to the Alta California newspaper that he later reworked into this classic work.

“With its timely, self-deprecating humor, it touched a deep chord, lampooning the naïveté of his fellow Americans ['The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad'] and the modest indignities of exploring the sophisticated Old World ['In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.'] …”

When the “Quaker City” put into Bermuda, the future author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” was immediately captivated by the island he later championed as a holiday spot for Americans in a series of 1877 “Atlantic” magazine articles and which would become his second home in the final years of his life ["Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to 'loaf' in," he said in the 'Atlantic'. "There are no harassments; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one's body and bones and give his conscience a rest and chloroform the legion of invisible small devils that are always trying to whitewash his hair ..."].

The “Quaker City” arrived in Bermuda on November 11, 1867 and Mark Twain and his 73 fellow passengers spent four seemingly blissful days exploring the island.

“Days passed — and nights; and then the beautiful Bermudas rose out of the sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed hither and thither among the bright summer islands, and rested at last under the flag of England and were welcome. We were not a nightmare here, where were civilization and intelligence in place of Spanish and Italian superstition, dirt and dread of cholera,” wrote Mark Twain in “Innocents Abroad.”

“A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle walls of brilliant foliage, restored the energies dulled by long drowsing on the ocean, and fitted us for our final cruise—our little run of a thousand miles to New York — America — HOME.”

Illustration from first edition of “The Innocents Abroad”

“We bade good-bye to “our friends the Bermudians,” as our programme hath it—the majority of those we were most intimate with were negroes — and courted the great deep again. I said the majority. We knew more negroes than white people [but] we made some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it will be a pleasant duty to hold long in grateful remembrance.”

Mr. Perrotet — who also included such books as Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic “On The Road” and Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia” on his top 10 list — said “The Innocents Abroad” has had a lasting impact on both travel literature and travel.

“The result [of the book] was to embolden many more of his fellow countrymen to fearlessly cross the pond and immerse themselves in Europe, and, hardly less importantly, to begin a new style of comic travel writing that echoes today through hugely popular modern authors such as Bill Bryson,” he said. “Today, Innocents Abroad is one of the few 19th-century travel books that is still read eagerly for pleasure …”

The steamer “Quaker City” — a converted US Navy warship which helped to impose the Union blockade of Southern ports in the American Civil War — was sold and renamed “Columbia” in 1869, then, after joining the Haitian Navy in the same year, became “Mont Organisé.”

Sold again in February 1871, she was renamed “République” but — in a tragic irony — was lost at sea off Bermuda later that month.

Bernews.com » History

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