"ONCE the initial shock of climatization wore off and we became accustomed to drinking the cement-flavoured rainwater upon which the Islands depend and by ingesting lots of salt tablets to diminish our listlessness and aching joints, we were able to concentrate on the primary mission - get on the air and get on with the one-year trial period so we would know whether we were staying or leaving." - Lieut. Michael A. Ruymar, CD (Ret'd.), a 1989 note on the early days of CFS Bermuda at Daniel's Head.

The most extreme northwest points of Bermuda are a small peninsular and island which carry the same name. Apparently named from the second Governor of Bermuda, Daniel Tucker, the founder of several famous Bermudian and American families, Daniel's Island and Daniel's Head are that promontory, which is the nearest point at Bermuda from, say, Manhattan, as the longtail flies. Today, longtails probably nest on Daniel's Island, if the dandruff of casurinas that infests the place has left any room.

On the adjacent headland, there is a new form of nest for other visitors who have flown in; most of these eyries sit atop stilts over the water. Daniel's Head is now home to the eco-hotel, 9 Beaches, where the "dress code simply reads, flip-flops required". This was not always so. For much of its life, Daniel's Head was a country of "spit and polish" military boots, that is, excepting a period when a nearby farmer let his herd run roughshod over the estate: "We actually witnessed one of his cows devouring an empty cement bag in its entirety, blissfully chomping with her eyes half-closed".

The first owner of Daniel's Head, recorded in Richard Norwood's 1617 survey of Bermuda, was John Delbridge, a shareholder of the Bermuda Company in England and an absentee landlord. Fifty years later, it appears to have passed to a Bermudian owner, a Mr. Bassett, but occupied by Robert Burch. There is a suggestion that land in the area was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1809, when it acquired Ireland Island for the dockyard, but by the 1870s, it seems again to be in Bermudian hands.

In the meantime, probably in the 1750s, a small fort was built on Daniel's Island, to guard Hogfish Cut Channel from the open sea, up past Wreck Hill and Ely's Harbour. Archaeologists from the Bermuda Maritime Museum and the College of William and Mary investigated the fort in the 1990s. The structure was abandoned in the early 1800s and the island was never subsequently rearmed.

At the beginning of the First World War, the British War Department started to buy up the peninsula, first acquiring the land that is now Westover Farm. This was followed by the purchase of the properties to the northwest, owned by Walter Barker and C.A.V. Frith. The purpose of those acquisitions was to add "ears" to Daniel's Head, for the new and revolutionary age of "wireless" transmission of information, via radio and Morse Code, had matured into the activities of war. Great masts for the reception of Allied data and the interception of enemy transmissions were erected.

Four Bermudians, all members of the Bermuda Militia Artillery and Royal Garrison Artillery, were killed on duty in an accident involving a mast at Daniel's Head on 17 September 1917, when a section of the structure gave way. They were Sergeant William James Fowler and Gunners Richard Thomas Ambrose Alick, Joseph William Wilson Butterfield and Clarence Wentworth Dill.

According to research by Mrs. A.C. Hollis Hallett: "All four men were buried on February 18, with full military honours, with Union flags covering their coffins and the band of the Bermuda Militia Artillery preceding them. At least twenty carriages followed, containing relatives and friends of the deceased. Fowler was buried in St. George's, but the other three were laid to rest in "the new military cemetery on Somerset Island, which lies close to the seashore". Their deaths were considered to have been in the execution of their duties just as much as if they had died at the Front. His Excellency the Governor was in attendance, along with contingents of the army and navy, and hundreds of spectators lined the road to the cemetery." The BMA/RGA men are memorialized in a stained glass window of the Cathedral in Hamilton, along with other Bermudians killed in action.

During the Second World War, the listening station at Daniel's Head worked with those at Halifax, Canada and Derby in England, to cover the North Atlantic in the interception of radio messages from submarines of the German Navy. An additional piece of land just south of the site was purchased at that time, or earlier, for recreation use as the Daniel's Head Tennis Club and is now a cow pasture. Also during the Second World War, the American Army erected a Base-End Station at the site, one of thirteen around Bermuda for the control of coastal gunnery. After the conflict, Daniel's Head was let out for farming.

In the mid-1960s, the site was leased to the Canadian Forces and reverted to its original military use as a radio station for the next 30 years as CFS Bermuda. Over the period, the station grew to a complement of over 220 personnel, with considerable economic implications for Sandys Parish and the west end of Bermuda. Without the input from the Canadian Government, for example, it is unlikely that Boaz Island Village would have been built, as CFS Bermuda took half the units to house their staff.

A shocking announcement was made in February 1992 that CFS Bermuda would be closed by 31 December the following year, thus ending the occupation of Daniel's Head as a military site. Within two years of the departure of the Canadian Forces, the Royal Navy left Bermuda after 200 years and the United States forces also took their leave, after a presence of 54 years.

Those departures marked the end of the extended Cold War and the termination, perhaps for all time, of Bermuda's long role as the premier naval base of the western North Atlantic.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.