“S.W. Smith was sent out to Bermuda by Edward Holl, the Surveyor of Buildings for the Navy Board, in May 1823, bringing with him the plans for the Commissioner's House which Holl had designed. He was to be responsible not only for the building of Commissioner's House, but also all of the quarrying and levelling of the dockyard site, the construction of the breakwater and the great wharf walls, and all the other buildings which constituted ‘The Works'.”- Rohan (“Old Man”) Sturdy, manuscript on S.W. Smith, 1984.As the first decade of the new millenium draws to a close, amid howling gales and icy rains particularly in the west of Bermuda at the exposed Dockyard site, a time of reflection is traditionally called for, after the excesses of Christmas in some quarters. E-mails arrive from the newspapers soliciting one's views and wishes for 2011 for quotable nuggets of good intentions and perhaps goodwill towards men and women, to say nothing of the long suffering other sectors of the animal kingdom. Another 30 million or so sharks will be slaughted in 2011, mostly but to remove their fins for soup, not of the soup-kitchen variety for the down and out, one slurps to advise. No New Year resolutions by the United Nations to stop that marine genocide are expected as the new decade commences; in fact shark fin soup could well be on the menu in the cafeterias at 38th Street on Manhattan's East Side.My resolutions for the New Year? Well you may ask, but I am not sure you are ready for the earful I have prepared as an iPhone App. Naturally, I wish to continue the doctor-mandated loss of weight, so that an advanced age I can be as svelte as I may have been at 21 not to say maturity, as that seems to elude me.What I (and perhaps a majority of Bermudians) want is equal time for Bermuda Heritage in 2011.I want protection under the law for archaeology on land, while there is still some land not destroyed in the condominiumization of the Island. I want all the rest of the fortifications of Bermuda, Gibbs Hill Lighthouse and the Dockyard added to the inventory of our World Heritage Site. I want a major reforestation of Bermuda cedars and palmettoes to take place on the several hundred acres of National Parks, so named by the Legislature in 1987, but as yet still much inhabitated by invasive casuarinas and junk plants.As a nation, I want us to return more fully to our courteous ways towards visitors, starting at the airport, for they have and likely always will be, the mainstay of our economy and the bankrollers of our life on the “second most remotest place” on Earth.As you know from my goings-on these past six years in The Mid-Ocean News and now in The Royal Gazette, I could go on with a master list of requirements for Bermuda's heritage, but lastly I would like investment in heritage to be at a level commensurate with the sums it has raised for Bermuda over the last 60 years. As you all well know, the discerning visitor goes to a place because of what it is. Bermuda is no different in that regard, for what makes Bermuda Bermuda is what is of interest to those travellers and that interest is its heritage and its people. So “reality check”, whoever is interested: Heritage is our number 1 asset in the economy of this place; oil wells, gold mines and the other non-tourism international businesses notwithstanding.Also at this time of year, some reflect on those who will not make the New Year celebrations, for their time with us has ended by fair means or foul. To some a memorial is erected thereafter, while others leave works which commemorate their New Years in this world, either consciously or not. In that I reflected on my late friend and master mariner, Michael Dolding, once a mainstay at Marine and Ports department of government. His daughter and only child, Tamsyn, has written publicly about Mike and noted that the family had set up a memorial foundation in his honour, related to prostate cancer.There is another memorial to Michael, which was the result of our project to “put the hogfish back on the beacon” on a reef between Spanish Point and the Dockyard in 1984. The beacon itself is also one of the memorials to the remarkable Clerk of Works at the Dockyard from 1823 to 1838, Samuel Wade Smith. Aside from the Hogfish Beacon, which is emblazoned with his signature, as it were, S.W. Smith supervised the building of Commissioner's House, the breakwater (now “King's Wharf”), the thousand-foot run of the Great Wharf that forms the northwestern side of the harbour created by his breakwater, and the massive fortifications that surround the Dockyard to the east, north and west. These memorials were augmented some years ago by one of words, when we assisted the descendant Gardner Family of England to compile a small history on Samuel, who also designed the tower of St. Mary's Church in Warwick, as yet stands.One would like to think, however, that the memorial that Mr. Smith liked the most was his Beacon, perhaps the earliest permanent navigational marker in this waters, and that he would have been delighted that Michael Dolding and his team at Marine and Ports put back the hogfish weather vane in 1984, much as it would have looked upon completion in 1832.As 2011 opens, it will have been two decades since the departure of Rohan Stanford Sturdy and Margaret Mees Sturdy, long resident at “Seaforth”, looking out over Ely's Harbour. It was their generosity of time and funding, much anonymous in the early days, that laid the foundations for the preservation and restoration of S.W. Smith's Commissioner's House, now part of the National Museum of Bermuda. It has weathered yet another hurricane and is an outstanding memorial to “Old Man” and “Ma” and stands as one of Bermuda's most important pieces of local and international architectural heritage.So to those four people associated with the world heritage of the Bermuda Dockyard, one in reflection can but repeat the words on the memorial to Sir Christopher Wren at St. Paul's Cathedral, London (“his greatest work”): Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice. In Bermudian and pluralised: “Reader, if you seek their memorials look around you.” Best wishes to all and for our heritage in 2011 and beyond.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.