‘Life in Bermuda took on a note of high gaiety as the blockade runners flocked to the islands. Mrs NormanWalker maintained a perennial open house for the South’s supporters and the Bourne’s “Rose Hill”,overlooking St George’s Harbour, ebbed and flowed tides of Confederate agents and naval officers’.—Frank E. Vandiver, Confederate Blockade Running through Bermuda, 1861-1865.Old photographs are a bonnie source of historical information, but often in looking for what is of interest tothe observer, items of equal or significant value are overlooked. The image of the town of St George’s shotfrom Ordnance Island is a case in point, for while the piles of ordnance on the eponymous island kept one’seyes glued to the foreground, the flag in the heavens above received but a cursor glance.Ordnance Island, by the way, was the private creation of the Ordnance Storekeeper, a wily Scot named Simon Fraser, whosold it to the British Government in 1814 and retired wealthy to Bonnie Scotland.The ordnance in the photograph marks the great change in artillery from smooth-bore cannon, firing thecannonball of old, to the newly-invented rifled guns that shot elongated projectiles, commonly known as‘shells’.The projectile not only gave one a bigger bang for the calibre of the gun (the diameter of themuzzle), but solid shot gave way to shells, the hollow inside of which was stuffed with other militarynasties. Thus injury was added to the insult of being struck when the shell exploded upon impact; so beganthe modern arms race in the late 1850s.On the left, cannonballs are stacked in a pyramid (probably held so by a brass or iron monkey), behindwhich are cast-iron carriages for guns, upended to save space. On the right partly painted white are the newprojectiles, in front of which are larger cannonballs, probably mortar bombs for high-angle bombardment.There was no bridge to the island from the Town Square and thus a sentry hut is on the dockside.Next tothe box, three men and a boy stand at attention, presumably so instructed by the photographer for theduration of the ‘shot’. That order reverberated not across the water, where three men lounge about on apodium under the flagpole.Above the basking men a coloured flag with a white star flutters over the Town Square. Apparently not aBritish or Bermudian pennant, the flag caught the eye of the Registrar at the National Museum, whoidentified it as the ‘Bonnie Blue’, a signal instrument of the first year of the Confederate States of America,which may date the photograph to early 1861.A number of instruments were flown by the Confederates and ‘most famously, the “Bonnie Blue Flag” wasused as an unofficial flag during the early months of 1861. It was flying above the Confederate batteriesthat first opened fire on Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War’ on April 12, 1861. The flag was created in1810 as the national flag of the Republic of West Florida, which was almost immediately gobbled up by theUnited States, making it, at 74 days, perhaps the shortest-lived republic in history. It was used as thesymbol of the secession of the State of Mississippi on January 9, 1861, and thus inspired the song, ‘TheBonnie Blue Flag’, sung by Confederate soldiers.Possibly contrary to protocol, the ‘Bonnie Blue’ was flying over the Town Square of British Bermuda,further evidence, that many on the Island sympathised with the Confederacy, if only because it wasbringing loads of cash into the place.Perhaps also contrary, according to a painting in the Fay and GeoffreyElliott Collection, Bermuda Archives, the flag of the Union, that is to state, the Northern States of America,later flew along the same wharf a few hundred feet to the west, in front of the office of the Union ConsulCharles Maxwell Allen. However, unlike John Tory Bourne and Mrs Norman Walker of the Confederacy,Allen was much disliked in Bermuda and could not fly his flag on US Independence Day in the secondyear of the War.Writing to his wife in New York State on July 15, 1862, Charles noted that ‘I had my flagstaff cut downon 3rd July so could not hoist my flag on the 4th. You complain of loneliness when you are surrounded byfriends; what can you think of me in such a God-forsaken place as this with scarcely one friendly person tospeak to? I have once been attacked in my office and once knocked down in the street within a few days;the general sentiment is: “It’s good enough for him; he’s a damn Yankee”.’During the Civil War, Bermuda prospered greatly, as blockade-runners loaded supplies for theConfederacy. It was a bonnie old time for many on the Island, but was followed by a deep recession at theend of the War in April 1865. At the end of that year, slavery was abolished in the United States, 31years after it had ended in Bermuda. Charles Allen fell in love with the place (and possibly we withhim) and lived at “Wistowe” in Flatts until his death.Of the Civil War, we have two of the most viewable remains of blockade-runners, the Mary Celestia andthe Montana, the former shipwreck recently producing corked bottles of wine and perfume, indicating thatnot everything run through the Union blockade was a necessity for war. We once had a popular‘Confederate Museum’, now renamed and seemingly lost, along with its economic value, in the nowvisitor-unpopular St George’s.Perhaps it is time we returned to stating the facts of history as they are, not burying them in politicalcorrectness and Newspeak. If it takes flying the ‘Bonnie Blue’, or indeed the flags of all our friends or foesto promote cultural tourism and save the Olde Towne, should we not be mature enough to do so? Shouldwe not be fishing where the fish really are (the East Coast, North and South) and selling the true facts ofour heritage and history that sells like bonnie fishcakes, regardless of political affiliations?Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum at Dockyard.Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.