Azorean Eduardo Medeiros calls his new book about the Portuguese in Bermuda “a study from the raízes (roots) up”.

After two years of interviews, research and writing, 175 years of Portuguese in Bermuda is ready for launch.

The Sao Miguel resident will give a special presentation on the book, and answer questions, this evening at 6pm at the Vasco da Gama Club on Reid Street in Hamilton.

He has already delivered an advance copy to David Burt, the Premier.

“Next month, I will be bringing 400 copies with me on a flight from the Azores,” Mr Medeiros said.

The Portuguese-language version is already available. The English translation was supposed to be ready earlier this month, but encountered some hold-ups.

175 Years of Portuguese in Bermuda contains many fascinating stories such as that of Azorean Manuel Amaral Mendonça who worked in Bermuda in the 1930s and 1940s, managing the El-Morocco hotel and the Colonial Opera House.

In his spare time, Mr Amaral Mendonça assisted the Portuguese immigrant community, interpreting, organising Portuguese-language films, and acting as a foreign correspondent for Portuguese-language newspapers around the world. He was also Vasco president.

After years of working here, he went back to the Azores hoping to start a business. Halfway home his ship sank. He survived, but his savings went to the briny deep.

He spent a year in Sao Miguel, then came back to Bermuda to start again. He eventually opened a string of cinemas in the Azores.

“Some of the stories in the book can give us hope,” Mr Medeiros said. “Life is not easy; it is always hard. You have to keep pushing forward.”

November 4 marked the 175th anniversary of the brigantine Golden Rule’s arrival in Bermuda with 58 Madeirans, the beginning of significant Portuguese presence in Bermuda.

Researching in Madeira, Mr Medeiros was a little disappointed to find no information about the first immigration to Bermuda.

“I talked with a historian there, and asked to see if there was any reference to the Golden Rule being in Madeira,” Mr Medeiros said.

He was excited when they found the exact date the Golden Rule docked in Madeira captained by Bermudian B.W. Watlington — October 2, 1849. That meant that previous calculations that the ship spent 38 days travelling across the Atlantic from Bermuda to Madeira were incorrect.

“It was actually 31 days,” Mr Medeiros said.

The hardest chapter for him to write was about the Portuguese in Bermuda in the Sixties and Seventies.

“That was difficult, because there was more information to get down,” Mr Madeiros said. “It was also a period of great change.”

In 1962, Azorean priest and Portuguese vice-consul Filipe de Paiva Macedo began advocating for the rights of the Portuguese in Bermuda. In 1968, thanks to his work, male Portuguese workers were allowed to bring their wives to Bermuda for the first time in decades. This created more of a settled family atmosphere among the Portuguese community in Bermuda.

“Bermuda started to have the celebration of Santo Cristo,” Mr Medeiros said. “The Portuguese Association was formed in 1970 as well. Bermuda started to have a Portuguese community more similar to those in the United States, with more institutions, associations and celebrations.”

So far, the feedback to the book has been positive.

“People have been very impressed with the amount of work I did,” he said. “In addition to interviews and archival research, I also looked at legislation, statistics and press reports.”

The book is the third he has written for the Association of Azorean Emigrants. His other books were about the Portuguese in the United States and Canada. In 2022, Rui Faria, former president of the AAE, asked him to write a book about Bermuda also. Honorary Portuguese Consul Andrea Moniz De Sousa suggested it be done to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the Golden Rule in Bermuda.

Knowing what a big task it would be, Mr Medeiros was a little nervous, at first.

“This one was way harder to write,” he said. “For the other books, I used mainly secondary sources.”

The result is a book almost 700 pages long. One of the biggest challenges for Mr Medeiros was just editing it.

“I had to cut a lot of it down,” he said. “Otherwise, it would have been more than 1,000 pages. As a historian it is important to filter information.”

One of the stories he left out was about the Portuguese naval training ship Sagres, a regular visitor to Bermuda in the 1960s and 1970s. On July 3, 1972, 200 bystanders had to take cover when the Sagres’s mast became entangled in the rigging of the flagpole on Front Street, thanks to a sudden gust of wind. The tall ship was being towed away from the dock by a tug, while a crowd watched it leave. Splinters flew and there was an ominous snapping sound as the wooden flagpole broke.

“The Portuguese Government had to pay for a new flagpole,” Mr Medeiros said.

He says he is a historian, not a genealogist, but there are resources in the book for those interested in their family tree. These include a list of the original 58 Golden Rule passengers, and also a QR code that takes readers to all passport records for people who immigrated from the Azores to Bermuda between 1880 and 1973.

Spaces for the presentation are limited to 100 people. Those wishing to reserve a spot must fill out an electronic form.

The book will be available for $45 at Music Box on Reid Street on December 11. People can reserve their copies now.