Introduction:
I grew up in Bermuda. I lived in Somerset at
the extreme western end of the island. My dad was Irish and
moved to Bermuda to help a relation manage some properties there.
I went to school at Sandys Grammer School in Somerset Parish
and later at Warwick Academy in Paget Parish. It was in many
ways an idyllic place to grow up. As a child I was not cognizant
of just how small an island Bermuda is (20 miles long and about
two miles wide at the widest point). It seemed big to me. Our
house was situated only a few hundred yards from a beautiful
beach on Long Bay, and being in the Gulf Stream the weather
was temperate with mild winters and lovely summers. I spent
long days exploring beach vegetation, whatever was brought ashore
by the waves, and the many tidepools amongst the coral rocks
that were filled with fascinating marine life. After my family
left to move to the United States, it was fifty years before
I once again set foot on Bermuda soil in August, 2007. This
was the house I grew up in. It's now part of Cambridge Beaches,
one of the most prestigious resort hotels on the island.
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History:
The year was 1609. The Jamestown Colony was struggling
for survival. A fleet was launched by the Virginia Company in
England commanded by Admiral Sir George Somers that was intended
to resupply the colony with desperately needed food and other
provisions. The Admiral was in the flagship, the Sea Venture.
Near the little known island of Bermuda, the fleet was battered
by a hurricane, and the Sea Venture was separated from
its companions. After battling the storm for days, the 300-ton
ship was deliberately put onto the rocks in order to save it.
All aboard were able to successfully make it ashore, where for
the next year they lived on the abundance of food, birds and
eggs, fruits, fish, turtles, and wild hogs left by previous
Spanish visitors. They stripped the Sea Venture of everything
usable and constructed two smaller vessels of Bermuda cedarwood,
and the entire ship's company, minus several sailors of a different
mind, departed and continued on to Virginia. Sir George Somers
returned to Bermuda for more supplies but died there late in
1610. Two years later the first official colonists arrived from
England, and Bermuda became a part of the British Empire.
Although it is frequently stated to be the case, the British
mariners from the Sea Venture were not the first to set
foot on Bermuda. The fact
that there was a thriving population of hogs on the island when
they arrived seems definite proof that Spanish
or other European sailors had preceded
them. It was however the British who first claimed Bermuda,
as they claimed so much else. Before
1609 the frequency of rains and thunderstorms, hidden reefs,
and the loud raucous screaming of the hundreds of thousands
of Bermuda petrels, known locally as cahows, caused Bermuda
to be referred to as the "Isle of Devils," and avoided
by many mariners. It had little in the way of natural treasures
and thus was not of great interest to the conquistadors. At
least 100 years before the Sea Venture wrecked off the
eastern end of Bermuda, around 1505, the Spanish seafarer Juan
de Bermudez had discovered Bermuda, probably by accident, and
gave it its name. As far as we know, Bermuda
first appeared on a map in 1511, and Spanish and Portuguese
castaways did find their way ashore from time to time during
the 1500's. It was described in a chronicle by the Spaniard
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in 1514 as
being a place where fish and bird life was abundant, and increasingly
over the next century came to be a naviga-
tional point along the Atlantic routes.
The Royal Naval Dockyard in Somerset was built by the British
as a repair and resupply facility for their large men-of-war
in the western Atlantic and operated as such until 1951. In
the 1970's and 1980's it was converted into a highly successful
tourist area with shops, galleries and restaurants, and a cruise
ship dock. Gibbs Hill Lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in
the Western Hemisphere, and Somerset Bridge is the smallest
drawbridge in the world. The shallow waters around the coastline
of Bermuda are the final resting place for dozens of shipwrecked
vessels, providing numerous opportunities for snorkeling and
scuba diving, while the deeper waters farther out harbor the
big fish which attract so many fishermen. It was in fact off
the coast of Nonsuch Island in Bermuda that William Beebe and
Otis Barton in 1934 went down in the Bathysphere to a world-record
depth of 3,028 feet.
Bermuda has the oldest continuously-operating
parliament in the British Commonwealth, and today, after having
rejected a break with England in 1995, maintains its ties with
the mother country. Bermuda also passed the first conservation
laws in the New World as early as 1616 to protect the cahow
(Pterodroma cahow) and other birds. Soon thereafter turtles
were brought under the protection of these laws as well. Despite
this protection, the cahow was thought to have gone extinct
in the mid-1600's and it was not until 1951 that 18 breeding
pairs were discovered on an island off the East End, and there
are now several hundred in existence.
The population of Bermuda is around 63,000. The highest point
on the island is 259'.
| Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, oldest in the Western
Hemisphere, and the view across the Great Sound to the city of Hamilton. |
Location:
Most people think that Bermuda is in the Caribbean.
This is a reasonable assumption since it does share with the
West Indies a tropical character. However in actuality it is
located about 590 miles almost due east of Cape Hatteras, North
Carolina, and is almost as close to Nova Scotia as it is to
any place in the Caribbean. Bermuda
is not a single island, but an
archipelago of approximately
180 islands, islets and rocky outcrops, hence its antique name
of The Bermudas is not an inappropriate one. Only about twenty
of these islands are inhabited, with the seven major ones being
connected by cause-
ways or bridges. Bermuda is a coral
limestone cap on the summit of an extinct steep-sided submarine
volcano which ascends 12,000'
from the ocean floor that first
erupted around 110 million years ago and then again around 33
mya and which was created by volcanic activity along the mid-Atlantic
Ridge. Bermuda thus has the distinction of being the most northerly
coral reef in the world. The land area of Bermuda is roughly
20 square miles, and it is surrounded by a shallow reef platform
approximately 290 square miles in area.
Climate:
Bermuda's climate is mild and agreeable because
of the warming effects of the Gulf Stream. The average annual
high temp-erature is around 80°F (27°C), while the average
annual low is 65°F (18°C), with temperatures occasionally
reaching 90° and 50°. Humidity is high year round (ranging
from 71% to 81%) and rainfall is evenly distributed, with no
identifiable wet season. August is the hottest and most humid
month. Sunshine is very strong and should be protected against.
Water temp-eratures range from the mid 60's in the wintertime
(when Bermudians definitely do not swim) to around 82 in July
and August. August being the most humid month means that it
is also the rainiest month, and of course August to October
is hurricane season although Bermuda is seldom affected in a
major way by such storms. Bermuda receives on average over 50"
of rain a year. It is from the sky that most Bermudians receive
their water supply. There are no streams or rivers on the island,
and although underneath about 20% of the land there is a shallow
lens of freshwater which supports wells, all houses collect
rainwater on their roofs and channel it to cisterns below.
Flora:
As is not surprising for such a small island,
there is very little native or endemic vegetation on Bermuda.
15-17 species are considered to be endemic, that is, they grow
nowhere else. 150-165 species are considered native, that is,
they came to Bermuda by natural (non-human) means, by water,
winds, birds etc. Everything else was introduced by people and
has either become naturalized and living on its own or exists
as part of and dependent upon a horticultural situation. Nathaniel
Lord Britton's Flora of Bermuda, published in 1904, listed
61 endemic species and an additional 95 species for a total
of 156 considered to be native.
Since Bermuda is for all intents and purposes a warm tropical
island, and is blessed botanically speaking by a combination
of lots of sunlight, high humidity and ample rainfall, plants
from tropical, subtropical and warm temperate areas all over
the world have been brought here and thrive here. In addition
to protected areas such as Nonsuch Island, Devonshire Marsh,
Spittal and Walsingham Ponds, Paget Marsh and Nature Preserve,
Warwick Pond and other parks and preserves, there are numerous
gardens all over the island from which many exotic species have
escaped to live life on their own. In point of fact, Bermuda
is like one large botanical garden twenty miles long showcasing
many hundreds of species from other parts of the world.
The island of Bermuda was originally covered in the main with
dense forests of Bermuda cedar (Juniperus bermudiana),
and this remained the dominant tree until 1946 when two scale
insects were accidentally introduced. Over
the next five years 95% of Bermuda's cedars were killed, by
some counts approximately eight million trees. Casuarinas, tamarisks
and pines were then brought in to create windbreaks, but today
the Bermuda cedar is making a good comeback and has regained
approximately 10% of its original population. The
Bermuda palmetto (Sabal bermudana), Bermuda's only native
palm, was another endemic species that undoubtedly fringed the
shoreline when the first humans arrived, along with the most
northerly mangrove forests in the Atlantic.
Regrettably however many of the other endemic species are gone
forever. Other common native though non-endemic trees in the
pre-settlement Bermuda flora in addition to the red and black
mangrove (Rhizophora mangle and Avicennia germinans)
were the yellow-wood (Zanthoxylum flavum), buttonwood
(Conocarpus erectus) and southern hackberry (Celtis
laevigata), all of which survive. The pressures of human
habitation over four hundred years and the introduction of many
alien species and damaging pests have almost irretrievably affected
the ecosystem, and future sea level rise as a consequence of
global warming will only add to this.
Endemic species:
Adiantum bellum (Bermuda maidenhair fern)
Ascyrum hypericoides [Hypericum hypericoides]
(St. Andrew's cross)
Campylopus bermudiana (Bermuda campylopus) [moss]
Carex bermudiana (Bermuda sedge)
Chiococca bermudiana (Bermuda snowberry)
Ctenitis sloanii (Bermuda cave fern)
Diplazium laffanianum (Governor Laffan's fern)
Elaeodendron laneanum (Bermuda olivewood)
Goniopteris [Dryopteris] bermudiana (Bermuda
shield fern)
Eleocharis bermudiana (Bermuda spike rush) [may be extinct]
Erigeron darrellianus (Darrell's fleabane)
Juniperus bermudiana (Bermuda cedar)
Peperomia septentrionalis (Wild Bermuda pepper)
Phaseolus lignosus (Bermuda bean)
Sabal bermudana (Bermuda palmetto)
Sisyrinchium bermudiana (Bermudiana)
Trichostomum bermudanum (Bermuda trichostomum) [moss]
References:
Print:
Britton, Nathaniel
Lord Flora of Bermuda (1904)
Curtis, Elizabeth Bermuda - A Floral Sampler (1976)
Frommer's Bermuda 2007 (2007)
Garden Club of Bermuda Bermuda: A Gardener's Guide (2002)
Garden Club of Bermuda The Bermuda Garden (1955)
Garden Club of Bermuda The Bermuda Jubilee Garden (1971)
Hannau, Hans and Jeanne Gerrard Flowers of Bermuda (1971)
Hargreaves, Dorothy and Bob Tropical Blossoms of the Caribbean (1960)
Jones, Rosemary Bermuda (Moon Handbooks) (2006)
Lennox, G.W. and S.A. Seddon Flowers of the Caribbean (1978)
Moore, Don Bermuda Flora (2006)
Pertchik, Bernard and Harriet Flowering Trees of the Caribbean (1951)
Procter, D. and L.V. Fleming Biodiversity: The UK Overseas
Territories (1999)
Sterrer, Wolfgang and A. Ralph Cavaliere Bermuda's Seashore
Plants and Seaweeds (1998)
Watlington, Christine
Bermuda's Botanical Wonderland (1996)
Wingate, D.B. & Zuill, C. Native plants. In:
The Bermuda Jubilee Garden, ed. by E.L. Wardman. Bermuda,
The
Garden Club of Bermuda (1971)
Zuill, Kitty and Will Bermuda Trees and Plants (1955)
Internet:
Bermuda's Flora (http://www.bermuda-online.org/flora.htm)
Bermuda Subtropical Conifer Forests ( http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial/na/na0301_full.html)
Juniperus Bermudiana ( http://www.conifers.org/cu/ju/bermudiana.htm)
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