The Oar, as a symbol of retribution, figures also at the execution of Captain William Kidd, the pirate, in 1701: ". . . conveyed from Newgate to Execution Dock in Wapping by the Officers of the Admiralty and others, carrying the Silver Oar before them, according to the usual Custom on such Occasions".

¿ National Maritime Museum, Oar Maces of Admiralty, HMSO 1966

Almost from the beginning of settlement in 1612, Bermuda made provision for its defence by building fortifications, which were to be manned by local militia requisitioned from its citizenry in time of need.

That home guard became formalised in the 1890s with the creation of a regiment comprising the Bermuda Militia Artillery, for black men, and the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps for white men.

These official forces and their descendant organisations were amalgamated in 1965 into the Bermuda Regiment, the part-time force of which is supplied by conscription of young men. Now there is a discussion as to whether the Bermuda Regiment should be a completely volunteer defence team or continue to conscript young Bermudians of the male gender only for such service.

In the old days of the Royal Navy, the force that made it possible for Britain to "rule the waves", conscription sometimes took the form of being "pressed" into service, a euphemism or polite term for kidnapping.

When sailors were needed due to desertions because of low pay and working conditions, the Press Gang went to town and picked up whichever hapless male citizens got in their way. Without further ado and kissing the wife goodbye, the men were carted off to the docks, bundled aboard His Majesty's Ship Enterprise, or whatever, and pressed into a service for which they may have had no interest, inclination or skills.

The pay was low, your teeth dropped out from scurvy and you had a good chance of getting killed by the French or some other seaborne foe. There was, however, silver, or golden lining to this clothe of imprisonment in the form of prize money.

That would be the equivalent of members of the Bermuda Regiment receiving a bounty in cash for services performed and enemy captured, or Customs Officers getting a slice of the market value of drugs intercepted. Prize money augmented the meager salaries of the day and caused men and officers to fight harder to capture enemy ships.

Prizes were often brought into Bermuda and Bermuda was a prize position one sought as Flag Secretary to the Admiral of the North America and West Indies Station, for he, the Secretary, could do a roaring trade as "Prize Agent". The Prize Agent was responsible for the sale of the captured vessels and the auctioning of the contents and cargo.

The monies raised were then distributed to the officers and men of the captor ship, each in proportion to his position. Naturally, the pressed men and ratings got less than the captain, but in relative terms, the prize could be a substantial bonus over a long career at sea.

One such Prize Agent, during the War of 1812, was George Redmond Hulbert, who became a multi-millionaire in today's money from his commissions on all the transactions under his agency. The paying-out process could be long, as by the time the case was resolved in the Court of Vice Admiralty, crew may have changed ships or otherwise relocated and had to be found to be given their share of the Prize.

Any unclaimed funds, after a period, had to be given to the Greenwich Hospital, which cared for old military sea dogs in infirmity and senility. A present generation of Hulberts received an indirect and belated commission from the War of 1812, when some of ancestor George's Bermuda prize papers were sold to the Americans recently for a "prizely" sum.

Another present-day Bermuda prize of such actions at sea that created activities on land is the Silver Oar of the Court of Vice Admiralty, the body that made legal decisions on maritime matters, such as whether a capture ship could be condemned as a Prize or not. The Silver Oar, or mace of the authority of the Court of Vice Admiralty at Bermuda, was made in London in 1697-8.

It was sent to Bermuda, but Governor Benjamin Bennett, who came out in 1701 to deal with a weak administration and lawlessness "used it in the absence of any other token of legal supremacy and it became the ceremonial mace of the Island Council", later the Legislative Council. Latterly, it became the mace of the Bermuda Supreme Court.

The Oar was used in at least one Prize Court of Vice Admiralty that was held in April 1944 during the Second World War and it was claimed in the newspaper to be the first time it had been so employed for its original purpose in such a court in Bermuda. Now used only for the opening of the Assize Court in January each year, the Silver Oar of Bermuda precedes the Chief Justice in the religious and civic ceremony associated with that judicial proceeding. Otherwise, the Silver Oar is kept at the Maritime Museum, as it is one of Bermuda's most significant artifacts of naval and judicial heritage.

The Bermuda Silver Oar is the oldest such Admiralty Oar in existence for British overseas territories, but later ones have survived at Colombo, Cape Town, New York and Boston. As such it is a Heritage Prize for the island. As a symbol, the oar is thought not to represent a rower's tool, but rather a steering oar, which was the early form of the rudder. As one scholar has noted: "It has been persuasively suggested that here is the gubernaculum (helm or rudder) of Roman ships, a fitting symbol of right governance."

It might have been appropriate to have such a gubernaculum in Bermuda's Coat of Arms, but instead we have a ship crashing onto North Rock. Mind you, with a motto of Quo Fata Ferunt ¿ that is, "Where the Fates Lead Us" ¿ a rudder would perhaps be a symbolically superfluous.

* * *

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 332-5480.