This anniversary year of the official settlement of Bermuda by the Virginia Company of London 400 years ago also marks the eighth year of this column, which, it is hoped, has indicated to many on this isolated pile of rocks in the middle of the western North Atlantic that our heritage matters. If you think the articles on ‘Heritage Matters' have been of value, then thanks are due to Sheila Nicoll, a trustee of the National Museum of Bermuda, whose suggestions for interaction with you, the public, led to the beginning of the column in February, 2005 in the now-defunct Mid-Ocean News (this is article number 340).The newspaper was headed by a brilliant Editor, Tim Hodgson, who once had the pleasure of describing me in an editorial as being ‘as huggable as a prickly pear': so give thanks and a hug to that bear of a man when next your cross his path.Now being eradicated as a pest, the prickly pear, so named by early shipwrecked mariners, some of whom tied their hats around their feet to traverse the needled forests of the plant that festooned on the coasts of Bermuda, is a useful item for those in need of sustenance, for its red ‘pear' is a good fruit once peeled. Perhaps an endangered species, we have planted the ‘pest' at the National Museum as a security measure, to deter young boys and foolish men from going where we want ‘no man has gone before'. In the nineteenth century, the British military coated the approaches to the ditches of forts like Cunningham, Victoria, or St. Catherine's with a solid mass of the plant, to inflict as many pricks as possible on the invading American forces, against whom all the fortifications erected at Bermuda between 1782 and 1907 were constructed.The purpose of those forts was not to protect local inhabitants in the slightest, but to hold Bermuda against an American conquest of the Dockyard, the kingpin in British military defence of its interests in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean in the 1800s. Many today would have been delighted if the United States had conquered Bermuda, for there would be no customs duty to impend our national obsession of late years to ‘shop until we drop'. Now our ‘security' is threatened by forces greater than the military might of America, China or the old USS of R, and by our passion for spending more than we earn. So we may all have to do with less, because there won't be any ‘more'.I continue in this eighth year of writing ‘Heritage Matters' because I want my fellow Bermudians, residents and visiting guests to know, as much as I am able to write, about the wonderful history and legacies that have accrued to our island home over the past 500 years, that is to say since the first humans came upon the place, ultimately largely displacing the first inhabitants of the Cahow, palmetto, cedar and other endemics, as well as natives like the prickly pear. While this is somewhat of a weekly albatross around one's neck, it is a treadmill that I hope to continue into the future as I believe most Bermudians are fascinated by, and love, their heritage, which must be taught to each new generation. That heritage is much of what gives us identity and ‘sense of place', and we literally destroy it at our economic and spiritual peril.From time to time, readers of ‘Heritage Matters' kindly suggest topics of interest. In this column, I thank Mr Edward Welch, proud descendant of a Native American and Bermudian heritage, who wanted people to know about the ship Harvest Queen. I also extend my thanks to Greg and Pat Haycock, who have several artifacts of that vessel, whose first master and commander was his great-grandfather, Captain Henry Hilgrove Hollis, but a young man of 22 when he took the helm of the ship.The Harvest Queen was one of the products of one of the last harvests of Bermuda cedars for the construction of ocean going vessels, in this case a brigantine, square-rigged towards the bow and fore-and-aft rigged towards the stern. Launched on March 8, 1860 at Joyce's Dock, now on the Grotto Bay Hotel property, the Harvest Queen was built by the closely-knit community around Bailey's Bay in response to the high costs of freighting on vessels owned by merchants of the other parishes, not to suggest that the 40 at Hamilton were usurious in a general sense. The Harvest Queen was committed to canvas soon after launch, probably by Edward James, although the image reproduced here is not signed. In recent times, the late eminent marine artist, Deryck Foster, executed a modern painting of the iconic vessel.The Harvest Queen weighed in at around 130 tons, was 83 feet long and had a beam of 24.5 feet, largely built in cedar, one mast of pine taken from another vessel. The owners were families of the district, in the persons of Nicholas Claude McCallan, Jeremiah William Peniston, Benjamin Outerbridge and Henry Hilgrove Hollis, with Stephen Righton Wilkinson also being the designer of the vessel. Perhaps helping the caulk the relationship between two of those mariners, Hollis married Wilkinson's daughter, Louisa Jane, and they resided at ‘Hilgrove', which some will remember stood for many years overgrown opposite the Perfume Factory. Louisa accompanied Henry on a number of voyages on the Harvest Queen, including one to Mexico to pick up a cargo of cotton for New York. On the way north, they chanced upon bales of cotton thrown overboard by block runners and Louisa ‘stood by the wheel all day as the rest of us were busy picking up the…21 bales', which were sold at New York ‘at a good price'.Her maiden voyage, with a crew of seven, was to New York on April 19, 1860, carrying a cargo of potatoes, tomatoes, arrowroot and cotton, among other items ‘too numerous to particularize', as was said of a later voyage inbound from London. On a later voyage to New York after 1868, a compass was purchased for the Harvest Queen from the Water Street firm of T.S. & J.D Negus, ‘probably the most prolific American chronometer manufacturer', and which remains in working order. The firm, which made a number of instruments for navigation, survived into the early 1960s.On the cold and snowy night of January 11, 1870, the Harvest Queen was struck by a ‘Sound Steamer' as she was making port at New York, creating damage that caused the vessel to anchor in a sheltered position. However, in the early afternoon of the 13th, the wind changed direction and in the early hours of the next morning, the sea breached over the Harvest Queen, soon adding a great weight of ice to the dangerous mix. The cables parted and the once proud Bermuda cedar ship ended up on “the beach at Oak Neck, Long Island, where she now lies bilged and decks stove in, with forward house and boat washed away'. The vessel had carried her last harvests from Bermuda, coming to such ‘a sadly undignified end for a Queen who for ten years had stoutly served the community which had built her”.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480.