Bermuda’s convicts

Yesterday I took the family around the Royal Naval Cemetery as planned although my daughter’s curiousness as to “who am I walking on Daddy” meant she soon disappeared with her mother to dip their toes in the ocean, a sensible decision with the humidity in Bermuda yesterday at 98%.

However, it did leave me to explore this fascinating burial site for British military families who lived in Bermuda in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Sadly the recent hurricanes had done quite a lot of obvious damage to many of the tombstones, some left cut in half by the very strong winds in this extremely exposed part of the island.

There were I would say about 200 different graves all of Royal Navy personnel from warships stationed in Bermuda. The majority died from yellow fever that ravaged the British military in Bermuda during the mid-19th century, some men buried alongside their children who died as young as less than a year old.

As you’d expect the cemetery told many stories and I was able to link a few of the headstones and memorials that were purposely close to each other. There were headstones that dated back to colonialism, the American Revolution War and I think the most recent was the World War II era.

The grounds contains 34 Commonwealth burials of the First World War and 41 from the Second World War, although I don’t think I saw that many.

As I walked further I did unearth a little secret. There was a small cemetery discreetly hidden behind a row of houses with a sign up saying ‘Convicts Cemetery.’ It was small, and I counted only 13 marked graves, but it intrigued me and when I got home I looked it up.

These men, rather than being executed in the UK, were sent to colonies such as Bermuda between 1824 to 1863 to serve as laborers on the many British Army and Royal Navy fortifications.

9,000 convicts were sent to Bermuda, 2,000 died and I assume buried on the island, but as I said I only saw 13 marked graves and what happened to the rest is a mystery as is also whether any of the remaining 7,000 convicts actually stayed on the island?

I will certainly look at Australian’s differently from now on.