By Dr Edward HarrisHeritage MattersA little over nine hundred miles to the south of Bermuda lies the great archipelago of the Bahamas, a group of hundreds of islands and cays associated with Bermuda since the inception of its settlement by Europeans. There are other associations, some of which date to many millennia beyond the antiquity of man, such as the presence of the fast-flowing Gulf Stream, which affects the climate of both places, perhaps more to the benefit of Bermuda in its more northerly latitude due east of North Carolina or due west of the Strait of Gibraltar or Jerusalem, depending upon your leanings, nautical or religious. Longtails nest in both places, or at least at the very geological south end of the archipelago in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Many marine species now present at Bermuda may have one day in prehistory come north from the Bahamas to colonise the place, but we sent the first recent human species there to settle, a century or so after the place was denuded of its indigenous inhabitants though slavery and disease.The geological association with the Bahamas is of interest for the nature of stoneworking in those islands and in Bermuda, for some of the rock is quite similar. The limestone of Bermuda sits on a mountain of basalt, the result of millions of years of undersea eruptions, whereas the upper formations of the Bahamas rest on beds of marine limestone of considerable thickness, as the weight of new coralline deposits forced the subsidence of earlier rock. The upper Bahamas stone, on the contrary, was formed in the air from the parent material of the ingredients of sand dunes. Walking through the defile above the capital town of Nassau to ascend the ‘Queen’s Steps’, one could be forgiven in thinking one was walking through the old Khyber Pass or the famous cutting below Government House created in part by the Regiment of the Black Watch, for the stone looks the same.While none of that stone appears to be cut today in the Bahamas for building blocks, old photographs of quarries and existing historic buildings suggest that masons would have been using almost the same techniques as in Bermuda for extracting and working such rock. As in Bermuda, the limestone comes in several grades of hardness and was also used in the construction of the fortifications. According to one source, a method of waterproofing the softer stone was to paint it with linseed oil, which turned it yellow, but dried to a brilliant white, a feature of the rock that caused it to be commercially desirable for a period in nearby Florida, from whence, in a reverse stream, came to the Bahamas many of the British Loyalists expelled from the continent after the independence of the United States of America.A century after the arrival of settlers from Bermuda in 1648, with whom the island of Eleuthera and its ‘Preacher’s Cave’ will always be associated, a renewed defence plan of the main town of the Bahamas began in earnest by the military engineer, Peter Henry Bruce, in the mid-1700s. He repaired the original Fort Nassau, named after the town, itself named for one of the appellations of the reigning British monarch in the late 1600s, King William, who derived from the Netherlands. Fort Nassau was later demolished on what is now the site of the British Colonial Hotel. In 1741, Bruce began the erection of Fort Montagu, named for John, second Duke of Montagu, who perhaps had interests in the Bahamas, but Bruce had to make ‘lime on the spot’ and transport stone by hand, as there were no ‘wheel carriages’ in the place. That fort yet stands on the coast a couple of miles from Nassau on the island of New Providence.Soon after the independence of the United States, Lord Dunmore, the Governor of the Bahamas, began the construction in 1787 of the largest fort in the archipelago, ‘Fort Charlotte’, named for the queen consort of George III, whom he married soon after his accession with instructions ‘not to meddle’ (the arrival of 15 children perhaps made that admonition unnecessary). Shortly thereafter, Fort Fincastle joined Fort Charlotte on the limestone ridge overlooking Nassau, and together they comprised the principle forts of the Bahamas in the nineteenth century. Structural evidence exists that the forts were rearmed at least once, but no modifications were made after the mid-1800s, which means the buildings survive largely as built.There are no large works in Bermuda of the 1790s to compare with the forts of Nassau, so a tour of British fortifications of Bermuda and the West Indies necessitates a visit to the Bahamas, whereas one has to go to Bermuda to see the large works of later times. What is also remarkable about the Bahamas is the exceptional collection of historic artillery of the early to mid-nineteenth century, which includes all three types of cannon, namely, the cannon, howitzer and mortar. One mortar and two howitzers survive with their original carriages, and there are two sets of cannon in the forts, one from the Napoleonic period, and the other, larger group from the 1840s and 1850s, being some of the last smoothbore guns ever made and perhaps one of the largest collection thereof.Given the experience of the National Museum of Bermuda with the restoration of the guns and fortifications of the Dockyard, Dr. Keith Tinker, Director of the National Museum of the Bahamas invited me to come and look their fortifications, which was a pleasure to do recently. At the same time, I met with other museum colleagues including the Chief Curator, Kim Outten Stubbs and marine archaeologist, Dr. Michael Pateman, as well as attending a board meeting of the Antiquities, Monument and Museum Corporation at the invitation of its Chairman, Courtney Strachan Jr., to discuss general matters of significance to Museums. The AMMC has overall responsibilities for much of the cultural heritage of the Bahamas, including the fortifications.It was of considerable interest to compare how the Bahamas and Bermuda handle such military heritage, which is of course also international heritage, given the global exigencies that led to their creation, especially after the American Revolutionary War. It is hoped that the value of such heritage will continue to rise in estimation of its value, not only culturally, but for the tourism, which remains the fundamental economy of both countries, and that such an elevation will result in enhanced investment in such irreplaceable military heritage.Dr Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.