At the Eastern extremity of Ireland Island where the Naval Establishment is now forming, there is round the point good anchorage for large vessels, to about a mile from the shore. The situation is commanded by a hill 750 yards from the point, and distant about 1100 yards from the one to the westward (Maria Hill), on which the Battery is placed. Upon this (former) hill I propose to erect a (Martello) tower, and by an entrenchment across the Island in the alignment of the tower and defended by carronades in the windows (secure the Dockyard's southern flank).

¿ Captain Thomas Cunningham, Royal Engineers, Bermuda Defence Report, 1811

A few days before Bermuda Day 2008, or as schoolchildren once sang out, "The 24th of May is the Queen's Birthday and if we don't get a holiday, we'll all run away," a team of volunteers from XL Insurance's 'Global Day of Giving' appropriately discovered a major piece of local heritage, buried in the lower yard of the Casemate Barracks complex.

The feature proved to be a tunnel large enough for two soldiers to walk abreast in and runs underneath an existing building and courtyard for some 60 feet. Open at the southern end (after the accidental removal of concrete slabs covering an entryway), the tunnel is blocked with brickwork at its northern extremity. Its roof is close to the surface at that end, as the cell phone still worked, and it is surprising that it was not broken into during the demolition of the visitors' centre of Casemates prison times (1963-September 24, 1994).

The discovery is part of an ongoing project by the Maritime Museum to return the buildings and fortifications of the Casemate Barracks complex, as much as possible by hand, to its historical 19th-century arrangement. Instead of going to the gym for an aerobic sweat, a small team of volunteers enters the old prison on Saturday mornings to do something useful for the community and heritage, while getting a good physical workout.

While the prison period is part of the history of the site, the decade or so of lack of maintenance and exposure to the elements and vandals negatively impacted what heritage might have been preserved from the use of the barrack and ordnance buildings as a place of civil confinement.

The project began with the authorisation of Lt. Col. David Burch, when chairman of the West End Development Corporation and later Minister of Works. As a military man, he seemed to appreciate the true nature of the Casemates heritage, which perhaps evaded other civilian ministers of the realm. As the project evolved, the idea arose that the Casemates area should be connected, as it was of old, with the "Keep", where the Maritime Museum is located. The Museum would thus encompass all of the fortifications of the Dockyard and the historic buildings of the Keep and the Casemate Barracks complex. It would be one of the most unusual and stunning museums worldwide and it is hoped that the concept might eventually find favour with the Cabinet and the parliament. That is for the future, but for now back to the past and the puzzle of the tunnel to somewhere, noting immediately that it was not an escape hatch for those under correction in the prison times.

The tunnel was extremely well built in both types of Bermuda stone, the soft of house construction and the hard rock, used at the Dockyard, some of the forts and in wharves in early times.

It was clearly meant for people to transit and contained three vent holes in the roof. Such ventilators in that type of construction are usually associated with passages under the ditches of fortifications; the holes would vent the tunnel to the open air in the floor of the ditch.

Two of the ventilators are cleared, but have the floor of the 1845 Casemated Ordnance Stores blocking them at the top, and the third, to the north, is corked with concrete from the construction of the visitors' centre. Through all of the ventilators, an attempt was made to fill up the tunnel with soil, sand and rubble, probably in the early 1840s, before the building of the Ordnances Stores.

The answer to the puzzle may be that the tunnel is all that is left of the original defence plan for the southern end of the Dockyard, as laid out by Captain Thomas Cunningham RE in his 1811 report. His concept of a central Martello Tower and ditch appears on a plan of the early Dockyard of 1818, preserved in the Hydrographic Office in Britain. Cunningham (for whom the fort on Paget Island is named) stated that:

I have determined to recommend the erection of one of the large Towers, mounting three 24 pdrs, such as are now building on the Coast of Essex¿These Towers I know only by description, having never seen a plan, and must therefore, if the idea is approved of, beg to have it sent to me. The whole of Ireland Island has been purchased by the Navy Board, and the hill, as well as the situation of the work on the point (the Keep), is covered with cedar trees, which it will be necessary to cut down.

A hint that the Martello Tower may have been built is seen in the sketch of 1828, wherein a crenellated building is shown at the top of the hill on the southern edge of the Dockyard. It is therefore possible that the XL tunnel was under the original ditch also shown in that painting and that the Tower stood where the Casemate Barracks now stands.

The present ditch, constructed in the 1830s, is some fifty feet to the south of the supposed line of the original one and thus today the structure discovered by the XL team is in fact a tunnel to nowhere.

A final twist in this projected tale is that the Martello Tower at Ferry Point National Park, recently well restored by the Government and mounting a cannon, may in fact be the displaced tower from the original southern defences of the Dockyard, erected there after the plan for the Dockyard defences was changed to give us the monumental works that survive in great part on Ireland Island to this very day.

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. This article represents his opinions and not necessarily those of persons associated with the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 332-5480.