BEAUTY—AND UTILITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 65, 20 September 1940, Page 13

BEAUTY—AND UTILITY

The Islands Of Bermuda (Condensed from talks by George Bagley from 3YA and by "Coranto" from 2YA)

news just now is Bermuda. Britain has agreed to lease to the United States strategic points in her American possessions for use as military and naval bases for the defence of the Western Hemisphere. One of the most important of these is the group of two or three hundred small islands lying about 600 miles off the American coast, which go by the Spanish name of Bermudas, though the whole history of human life on them has been thoroughly and exclusively English. The islands get their name from a Spanish seafarer named Juan Bermudez, who sighted them in 1527-while on his way to the Spanish Main, I suppose. But beyond dubbing a Spanish name on the islands, the gay marineros of Seville and Cadiz took no further interest in them. About a century later the islands were again sighted, this time by the English, and this time again purely by accident. Sir John Somers, an Elizabethan capitalist, shortly after the death of the Virgin Queen, chartered a ship and was on his way to the new American colony of Virginia to go into the tobacco business, when his ship was wrecked, and he and his companions found themselves cast ashore on a lovely island, which appeared to them like a garden rising out of the ocean. As they looked about them they saw literally A PLACE very much in the

hundreds of other little islands stretching into the distance as far as the eye could see, and the pounding white surf of the Atlantic fringed each with a delicate ruff of white lace. Tobacco and Gin On this particular island the castaways found the vegetation was prolific, the

most common tree Deing tne juniper, or Bermudan cedar. So Sir John and his company then and there abandoned their scheme of a tobacco enterprise, christened the islands the Somers Islands, and-I presume -though history books are strongly silent on this point -they threw themselves heart and soul into the gin distilling business. Anyway, this little English settlement prospered. It spread over the 15 or 16 inhabitable islands, and the settlers by tilling of the soilwhich was really not a very hard job of work-remained a self-contained and self-support-ing community. In more recent years the growth of huge cities on the American mainland opened up a new livelihood to the Bermudan settlers, and they developed a flourishing trade in garden produce with the United States and Canada. Britain, too, awoke to the value of these islands, not as a market garden, but as a naval base on the threshold of the New World, and Hamilton, the capi-

tal and chief town, became the headquarters of the West Indies Station of the Royal Navy. More recently the Bermudas have become a recognised stop-ping-place and refuelling point for the Atlantic Ocean air mail service. And now the Bermudas, having received an assurance that no change in their British status is involved, will shortly be offering hospitality to American warships and troops, as part of the great defence partnership of Britain and America in the Western Hemisphere. Motor-Cars Forbidden Shakespeare knew about the islands. He refers to the "vexed Bermudas" in his play, "The Tempest." The islands represent the northern limit of the coral

system. This is very handy because all you’ve got to do when you wish to build a house in the Bermudas is to dig out your building material, the coral rock, from your section. This gives Bermudan architecture a charm of its own. There is a distinct Bermudan style of architecture, and some of the houses are centuries old, and filled with period furniture are extremely attractive. Another interesting point is that motor-cars are not allowed on the islands. There are one or two motor-lorries for Government work, but no other motor vehicles, and it was reported a few years ago that even the Governor was refused permission by the legislature’ to import a motor-car.