We were called together in an open space between the tents. The Camp Commandant climbed up on a platform and told us, in a few words, that the war had terminated . . . An old greybeard got up on the platform. His farm was destroyed, his livestock driven away¿his wife and two daughters had died in a concentration camp and his only son had been killed in the fighting. Now, old and lonely, he had heard that his homeland was also lost.

¿ A Boer on Burt's Island, June 1, 1902, quoted in Boer Prisoners of War in Bermuda by Colin Benbow, 1994.

Though small geographically and of one of the shortest histories of human settlement on planet Earth, Bermuda has been the scene of three major and "forced migrations" of peoples in its 400 years.

Peoples is, of course, a relative term, for in the first movement, that of slavery from Africa south of the Sahara, men, women and children were included, whereas in the second, only convicted men were dispatched to Bermuda and in the third, males, young and old, but no females, were transported hence.

It is a fact of forced migrations that those being moved usually lose most or all of their worldly possession that would qualify as portable heritage, such as family heirlooms, personal works of art, objects of ritual or religious imports and household items of everyday use. The almost constant depictions of refugees on television illustrate that point, as families and individuals walk away from their homes with only what they can carry on theirs backs, heads, as is often seen in conflicts in Africa.

In the case of Bermuda, our three groups came with little or no material goods of their former lives; in the case of the slaves, they may not even have had their clothes upon their backs. The second group, chronologically, were felons, convicted in the English courts and condemned to transportation to overseas labour camps, in this instance, for the building of the Bermuda Dockyard.

The last group was prisoners, not of the Courts, but of the war between Britain and the Boer states of southernmost Africa. Perhaps needless to say, the worldly goods of heritage and home are usually confiscated from condemned felons and combatants.

Once on the new "station", however, many persons did what people do: they put their hands to making things, sometimes to pass the time and at others as acts of industry. It is perhaps so that some of the surviving early Bermuda cedar furniture and smaller objects were made by slaves, but the lack of signatures on most such heritage makes such an assignment difficult.

More certain of provenance are the objects created by the convicts at the Dockyard between 1823-63, for most were made of the local hardstone and crystal obtained in the progress of works at the dockyard and found in archaeological deposits by Chris Addams and others in recent decades. The Boers are the most certain of all, for many engraved their names on the objects they made, largely for sale to Bermudians and visitors, in cedar, bone and other materials.

Collections of artifacts from the convicts and the Boers have come down to us over the years and to these may be added those made by German prisoners of war at Bermuda in 1914-18 and 1939-45. Some of these objects are now on permanent exhibition in a new setting at the Bermuda Maritime Museum, a display that was promoted over some years by Andrew Bermingham and made possible by the donation of a major collection of Boer artifacts by Mr. and Mrs. James Siddle and by funding by the Hallett and Steinhoff families and individual trustees of the museum.

The setting for these small pieces of art is a powder magazine of the 1870s, which was inserted into the High Cave of the Keep, the great fort of the Dockyard and now the home of the museum.

The High Cave is the last to remain above ground, following the demolition of a number of such geological features, when the hills of Ireland Island North were quarried away for stone for the dockyard buildings. The cave itself has been planted out and a waterfall devised and the whole given by the Hallett family in the memory of the late Dr. A.C. (Archie) Hollis Hallett, former president of University College Toronto and the Bermuda College.

That dedication is singularly apt, as the Hallett branch of that Bermudian family first joined the local scene in the person of Henry Hallett, a stonemason employed at the dockyard from 1843. The original Hallett would perhaps appreciate that an outdoor exhibit on Bermuda stone will be created at the High Cave next year, for the 400th anniversary of the settlement of the island.

The powder storage facility has been named the "Steinhoff Bastion" in honour of the late Patricia Steinhoff by her husband Robert and their sons, Robert, Thomas and Brian. The magazine was protected from vandalism for a number of decades before the museum was established in 1974 and thus its furniture and hardware had survived reasonably intact. It has been restored to a large degree and forms another element of the new exhibit which thus combines geological history in the cave with defence and migration heritage.

The two rooms of the magazine display the artifacts of convict, Boer and German "Prisoners in Paradise" and were funded by the family of the late Dudley Butterfield in concert with the museum trustees. Walter Lister, JP, MP, chairman of the West End Development Corporation, and Sheila Nicoll, chairman of the museum's Board of Trustees, opened the exhibition, with members of the Steinhoff, Hallett and Butterfield families in attendances with several hundred guests on May 16, 2008. The ribbon was cut and the waterfall cascaded and a major piece of Bermuda's heritage of local and international import was made accessible to all.

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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 799-5480.