Most of us take our heritage of sail too much as a matter of course ¿ but perhaps not all. Perhaps some have taken though of those who patiently forged this international language of sailing, developed the hulls, simplified the rigs ¿ to bring yachts and yachting to the universal, practical sport and pastime it is today.

¿ Alain Gliksman, Beken of Cowes I, 1897-1914, 1966

One of the national traits of Bermuda is our capacity to overlook, ignore and deliberately bury some of our cultural and heritage successes and the people associated with them. Deliberate burial comes, of course, when historic buildings and monuments are demolished and particularly, as is the usual case, destroyed without a full record of the structures.

In such instances, Bermuda architecture was an invention of the island and all of its peoples in the later 1600s, for the designers, stonecutters, lime makers, carriage men, labourers and masons came from all sectors of the community. The result was a unique form of vernacular architecture, a lot of which has fortunately survived the ravages of time and some modern architects and developers.

A look at a recent rg magazine, where new houses of the well-to-do are showcased, suggests that we are in a new age of construction where due homage is given to Bermuda architectural traditions.

That is one way in which the achievements of the past, even though we shall never know the names of most individual workmen, can be honoured and remembered. Lovely Bermuda architecture is one major heritage item that all Bermudians have in common: to be a Bermudian is to have a white-washed roof over your head, even if some of roofs nowadays look that way, but have not a solid, stone interior.

For many of our achievements, "national heroes" cannot be isolated from the populace, for their names are lost in the mists of Atlantic time, though their ideas and expressions thereof remain with us. No one can tell us who built the first stone house or the first Bermuda cedar boat, nor can it be told who crafted the first Bermuda sloop or invented the "Bermuda Rig", the last possibly, with architecture, our highest cultural and technological achievement, producing from a population of under 10,000 souls what millions under sail throughout the world of the 17th century failed to accomplish.

The Bermuda Rig is used by nearly every racing and pleasure sailing boat in the world today and we invented it on the turquoise waters at the top of an ancient volcano. For the sailing world, this was a bang as big as any Krakatoa and its eruption on our shores rendered obsolete the longstanding reign of the square-rigger on all other coasts and seas.

We invented the new grammar of the "international language of sail" by developing a new system of propulsion for sailing, generally speaking, the fore-and-aft rig, as compared to the side-to-side square rig, seen for the novice in the film, HMS Bounty, or more fancifully, the Pirates of the Caribbean.

We also developed the hull that became the Bermuda Sloop, which, combined with the Bermuda Rig, was the fastest boat afloat in its day. In the Bermuda instance, however, the Search for Speed under Sail (of the classic book of that name) was not the reason for the invention. It was probably the more practical matter of communicating between Somerset and St. George's that caused the change from square rig to Bermuda Rig, for the latter had the ability to sail very close to the wind.

In simple terms, given the prevailing wind at Bermuda from the southwest to northeast, that is blowing from Somerset straight to St. George's, the Bermuda Rig allowed a boat under sail to traverse the distance almost in a straight line, or with a minimum of tacking, or zigzagging, to catch the wind. As a square-rigger worked primarily with the wind, it would have to have done considerably more tacking to cover the same distance, with many reefs in the way.

Little attention had been paid in detail to the Bermuda Rig until the late Dr. Jack Arnell, the founding chairman of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, wrote a book on Sailing in Bermuda, which was followed by a seminal article by the late Eldon Trimingham, Sr., published in 1990 in the Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History, simply entitled, "The Development of the Bermuda Rig".

At the time of his recent death, Mr. Trimingham had completed a larger version of his treatise in support of the invention of the Rig at Bermuda (which it is intended to be published in the near future), for much of the evidence of this cultural "crime" is circumstantial.

Reproduced here is an image from the Pepys Collection at Cambridge University, possibly not available to Eldon, and recording an early date for the Rig. It shows the "Bermoodes Saile" as one of ten distinct types of rigging around the world in a Treatise on Naval Architecture, probably written about 1674.

The true Bermuda Rig is shown as the middle image in illustration No. 1, where the sail is fully triangular, without the squared-off piece at the top, seen in the left image. The middle image is a painting by John Lynn, about 1834, is described in the prestigious Beken of Cowes volumes as "A Bermudan Schooner: As the name indicates, it was in the waters of Bermuda that our modern rig first made its appearance . . . The astonishing thing is the modern appearance of the rig-and she must be 130 years old or more. The spread of the base of the sailplan gives nothing away to some modern ocean cruisers, while the cut of those loose-footed sails aft of the masts, as well as of the headsail, are perfect. For all that the rigging looks on the light side".

This accolade comes from someone associated with Cowes, where serious ocean yacht racing began in the late 1800s, and produced gems such as Nyria with her Bermuda Rig, illustrated here. A later and delightful class with the Bermuda Rig, on which many Royal Navy personnel trained after World War Two, was the "Windfall Yachts", taken as reparations from Germany after the end of the 1939-45 conflict.

The "Bermudan" schooner, possibly with Port Royal, Jamaica, in the background, carried the rig that would eventually encompass most of the world of sailing, possibly forever, as the best rig in the search for efficiency and speed under sail. Any old dog, or female equivalent, worth their yachting salt uses that rig and it was invented by the sailing community of Bermuda in the 17th century, which included without any doubt, both white and black, slave and freemen in its national crew.

That achievement and use of the Bermuda Rig is perhaps the best and most enduring monument to all those unnamed and unnamable (as unrecorded) Bermudians who came up with a winner in the face of the geographical adversity that was communication on the early Bermuda sea roads.

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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 332-5480.