When the Treaty of Paris was signed on January, 1783, it brought to an end British control over large portions of North America. It also laid the foundations for a competing and ideologically hostile adversary near the important sea lanes to Europe.

The effect on Bermuda can be seen as early as 1782. President of the Governor’s Council Francis Jones reported in Council meeting held that year: “...from the present unhappy disturbances in America we have too much reason to fear that an Attack may be made on these Islands either from that Quarter or from of the European powers now ingaged in War against Our Most Gracious Sovereign”.

The revolutionary spirit would add France to the list of nations from which an attack was feared as attempts by the European monarchies to extinguish the fires of revolutionary France gave birth to the French Revolutionary Wars. These wars would not end until the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. Thus it was seen as very important repairs needed to be made to the many forts scattered around the islands.

Early in the settlement of the colony, the maintenance of the forts was part of the public welfare duty required of settlers by Somers’ Island Company resident governors. It was unpopular as it took time away from tobacco cultivation and other more private pursuits. As enslaved labourers became more prominent in artisan work, the labour problem was somewhat reduced. As artisans, slaves had the type of skills the type of work required at the Islands’ forts (for example, masonry and carpentry). More and more were employed in the building and repair of forts over the course of centuries. A fee was given to the proprietors for their use. Proprietors would then, if they so desired, turned over some of these earnings to their bondspeople. Thus the repair of forts was the at times the work of what were classed as “jobbing slaves”.

Captain Andrew Durnford of the Royal Engineers was commissioned by Lt. Governor, Henry Hamilton, to undertake the repair of the islands forts. As his meticulous papers make clear, he used a mixed labour force of white and black labourers — artisans and others. The overwhelming majority of the black labourers were slaves and the marks and signatures of their owners were clearly visible on sheets enumerating payment of wages. However, the employment of bond and free black labour became more problematic from the government’s point of view by 1792 when another revolution disturbed the peace of the British colonial rule.The bondspeople of Saint Domingue had risen in revolt. Before the end of the decade they would take control of the Island and by the turn of the next century Saint Domingue would become Haiti. With revolution and unrest in the air, Durnford would keep a close watch on these events and record his impressions of them in the same journal he chronicling his fortification refurbishment project. Not surprisingly he noted general black excitement over the events in Saint Domingue that would curtail work by these artisans.

With the establishment of the Royal Naval Dockyard, in 1809, the use of black and enslaved labourers continued in spite of the costs incurred in their deployment. By 1823 they and other black labourers were largely replaced by British transported convicts. Nonetheless, non-Bermudian black labourers were also used over the course of the Dockyard’s early development.

With British expeditions on North America in the wake of the War of 1812, promises were made to enslaved American blacks of freedom in British colonies.The British had occupied the Chesapeake in Virginia in 1814. Many blacks, as during the American revolutionary war, took advantage of the opportunity. The result was a large number of black men and women behind British lines. Called the King’s Blacks or ‘American Refugee Blacks’ many were sent to Bermuda and housed and deployed as artisans at the Royal Naval Dockyard. Due to hostility from local white proprietors, alarmed by the presence of so many free blacks, they were obliged to stay at the Ireland Island Royal Naval Dockyard facility. There they were employed as labourers. As the war finally ended, the group was discharged to Halifax in 1814 and Trinidad in 1816 as Free Blacks. Trinidad had been recently conquered and ceded to the British from Spain.

Nevertheless, their work, and the work of many blacks, bond and free, before them helped to contribute to Bermuda’s defence fortification heritage: the contribution of their brain and brawn power in the defence of British colonial settlement in Bermuda.