'In 1647 a group that called themselves the 'Eleutherian Adventurers' left Bermuda to find a place where they could practise religious freedom. They encountered a storm and the ship they were sailing in ran onto rocks, which were later called the Devils Back Bone north of Spanish Wells. The Adventurers led by William Sayles found their way to shore and took refuge in what was later called Preacher's Cave. A religious service was held in Preacher's Cave every year for the next 100 years on the anniversary of the day that God led the adventurers to safety in what they believed to be the promised land. – www.eleuthera.com

For some 19 months, from late 1610 or early 1611 until July 1612, Bermuda was "settled" by a murderer and two companions of dubious reputation, left behind as Sir George Somers' nephew took his body to England in one of the two boats built on the island after the shipwreck of the Sea Venture in July, 1609.

There is an assertion that those three men were deliberated left behind to claim Bermuda for the English, but it seems likely that they would have departed the place, on a boat or otherwise, had not the Virginia Company sent out a shipload of designated settlers, 50 in number, on the Plough, arriving in late July, 1612.

Thus began the permanent settlement of Bermuda, one of a number of unique islands that were not settled until people from Europe began to sail the ocean seas, starting in the 15th Century.

Given the occasional and somewhat xenophobic views of some modern islanders, the question sometimes arises as to what constitutes a 'Bermudian'. Until a few decades ago, for example, Bermudian women married to foreign men were discriminated against in not being able to confer "Bermuda Status" on their children. Unlike many other countries, being born in Bermuda does not automatically make a child Bermudian, that is to say possessing Bermuda Status.

Some may suggest that people who obtain Bermuda status, by marriage or otherwise, are unfortunately treated by some as second-class "paper" Bermudians, although legally, apparently, the only way one can prove that one is Bermudian is to apply for one's paper that confirms one's Bermuda Status.

We are all, it seems, "paper Bermudians".

That is some of the status of the matter today, but the question also arises in relation to the settlement of the island from 1612 onwards. Under immigration rules operative in some western countries today, legal immigrants may qualify to become citizens after five years, or a child of the same may acquire such status at birth, as is the situation in the United States or Britain.

If such a rule were applied in Bermuda in 1612, the original, say indigenous, Bermudians would be the first children born here after that date. By 1617 or so, the settlers who arrived on the Plough in 1612 would thus be the first adult Bermudians.

At any rate, even by some draconian immigration rules, by the mid-1620s, it would have to be accepted that there were upwards of 2,000 persons that could be claimed as the first generation of "Bermudians", or at least it is so stated for the purposes of what follows.

As it is today, when some Bermudians across the social spectrum are xenophobic towards West Indians and other groups on the island, intolerance in Bermuda was a virus that probably arrived with the Plough and one that has continued to find fertile hosts ever since.

One of the prejudices in the early decades was against those who preferred to differ from the state Church of England religion, persons who thought that in escaping the dampening atmosphere of the old country, that they would be able to practice their alternate beliefs freely in Bermuda.

Not so said "Mr. Trimingham" or "Mr. Trott", or whomever it was that ruled the roost in the early decades in Bermuda.

Thus in 1648, a group of "Bermudians" sought exile and emigrated to the Bahamas chain to the south, eventually establishing "freedom" on Eleuthera Island, the first permanent European settlement of that archipelago, the native peoples having been extinguished by the actions of passersby in the years following the arrival of Columbus in the Americas in late 1492.

One of the emigrant ships ended up on the reefs off the north end of Eleuthera and for a time, the survivors lived in the commodious "Preacher's Cave", now being studied archaeologically. Churches in Boston heard of the plight of the religious exiles from Bermuda and raised "a fat sum" that was translated into provisions that arrived at Eleuthera on June 17, 1650.

The exiles in thanks sent ten tons of "brasiletto", or brazil wood, from the Bahamas to Boston, with the provision that the proceeds of its sale are used to the benefit of Harvard University, the first such institution in the English Americas.

Thus did displaced "Bermudians" underwrite the purchase of one of the earliest properties of the Harvard campus, the timber being in effect the largest bequest following the establishment of the University. Assuming the timber came from the Bahamas, the Bermudian settlers also by the gift probably contributed to the ecological disaster that denuded much of the British West Indies of its aboriginal trees.

The gift apparently took 306 years to be gratefully acknowledged, when in 1956 the "Harvard Friends of Eleuthera" presented a plaque to the public library on that island, said to have been lost in a recent hurricane.

A return commemorative plaque has also been lost, perhaps to a storm of bureaucratic proportions.

"In 1980, a schooner from the Abacos arrived in Boston to represent the Bahamas in a Tall Ships celebration and carried aboard a plaque recalling the gift of brazil wood to Harvard.

"A photograph in the Harvard Gazette of May 30 shows the Bahamian ambassador to the United States handing the plaque to the executive director of the Harvard Alumni Association. Primus has yet to discover its present whereabouts."

Thus like the fate of many ships, the emblems of benefactions sometimes sink beneath the waves of memory, as natural or manmade "disasters", or indifference, consign such mementos to the deep.

Perhaps in 2050, on the 400th anniversary of the wooden gift, Harvard University will appropriately mark Bermuda's indirect role in one of its earliest capital acquisitions.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.