"The introduction of Bermuda was a major factor in the establishment of Bermuda as a prime destination for tourists from North America. With Prohibition still in force, the new liner offered wealthy Americans the opportunity to get away for a week or two in the lap of luxury, and enjoy alcoholic drinks without breaking the law. The size and luxury of Bermuda caused a sensation with the American public, and the ship rapidly became extremely popular." – Piers Plowman and Stephen J. Card, Queen of Bermuda and the Furness Bermuda Line, 2002.

Sitting atop an ancient volcano and located in the middle of somewhere all alone in the western North Atlantic, the island of Bermuda relied entirely upon waterborne transportation for 325 years. Despite the advent of air travel initiated by Pan American and Imperial Airways in the late 1930s, upon which the life of the island now greatly depends, sea communications will forever be vital to this place, due to the carrying capacity of ships. People in Bermuda will never be able to live by planes alone, though the mall-shoppers may disagree.

For the first 72 years of settlement under the control of the Bermuda Company, Bermudians were not allowed to build ships, that is to say, ocean-going vessels, as opposed to rowboats and small sloops.

Upon the dissolution of the Company and the assumption of possession of the island by the British government, local shipwrights burst upon the international scene with their fine ships built of Bermuda cedar and powered by the home grown "Bermoodes sayle", or as now known, the "Bermuda Rig".

Used by nearly all modern sailing vessels, the Bermuda Rig was the greatest invention in sailing technology since the making of the European square rigger of the 15th Century, and it was created on the island before 1674.

The Bermuda Sloop, also developed on the island, was the fastest boat afloat in the 1700s and became highly desirably to seaman, particularly those in illegal trades such as piracy, and for privateering and as advice vessels for the Royal Navy.

It was the Bermuda sloop HMS Pickle that raced the news of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson from the scene of the battle to Britain in 1805. Bermudians used their ships for commerce and travel between the island, the Caribbean, the continental Americas and wider afield and they were manned by men from all sectors of the community, free and slave, the latter until Emancipation in 1834.

The importance of those ships, specifically designed for the island, is laid out in great detail in a major new history book by Dr. Michael Jarvis, entitled "In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783".

However, by the middle of the 1800s, the death knell of the Bermuda Sloop was being rung in new industrial shipyards that were producing iron ships powered by steam engines.

The island had also been largely denuded of its cedar groves, sacrificed to the altars of shipbuilders on the North Shore and Shelly Bay.

Thus the shipping of commerce and people to Bermuda gravitated to foreign bottoms in the later 1800s, starting in a dedicated way with the Canima and other vessels of the Quebec Steamship Company from 1874 onwards. On those ships, transiting through Bermuda to the West Indies, tourism was slowly born on the island, encouraged by Princess Louise (of the Hamilton hotel) and other notables. In 1904, the first vessel specifically designed for Bermuda run by an overseas shipping company entered Hamilton Harbour, appropriately named Bermudian.

The Bermudian, as one would expect from the name, served the island faithfully into the Great War of 1914-18 and was then sold to Furness Withy and renamed Fort Hamilton, as the first vessel of the Furness Bermuda Line, entering service in 1919. It was soon joined by Fort Victoria and Fort St. George.

Under the Furness Bermuda flag, a major sea change took place in 1928, with the arrival of the second liner specially built for the Bermuda trade, the even more appropriately named Bermuda. The shakeup came primarily in the design of the vessel, exemplified here with the image of its interior swimming pool, the look of which was based up a Roman bath and would not have been out of place in Pompeii before the volcano.

That and other spaces "all combine with the comfort of furnishings, magnificence of decoration, perfection of construction to make this flagship of the Furness Bermuda Line supreme, new Queen of the Seven Seas, swift and silent, safe and spacious, staunch and steady-the motor ship Bermuda". The ship followed three years of sterling silver service to Bermuda, the precursor of "The Millionaires' Ships", exemplified by the superlative Queen of Bermuda.

Unfortunately while moored at Number One Dock in Hamilton, fire broke out on the Bermuda on the evening of June 16, 1931 and raged throughout the night and into the next day, riveting the attention of local residents. In danger of capsizing due to water pumped onto the fire, Bermuda survived to be able to travel to a shipyard in Britain under her own steam, a temporary bridge being erected for the voyage.

Fate, it seems, had already charted a fixed course for the vessel, for at the end of five months of refitting, the Bermuda was declared a total loss after burning in the shipyard on November 19 and was sold for scrap. Scrap it became, as it broke loose of its tow on the way to the breakers' yard and was smashed to pieces on the northwest coast of Scotland at Badcall Bay.

The Bermuda ushered in a new age of sea travel to the island and set the standard of luxury that was followed by her Furness Line successors, the Monarch of Bermuda (1931), the Ocean Monarch (1951) and the beloved Queen of Bermuda which remained a faithful consort for the island for 33 years from 1933 to 1966, the latter year marking the end of an era in tourism in Bermuda.

Photos of the burning of MS Bermuda were recently donated to the National Museum by Mrs. Ruth White in memory of Captain Hal White.

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 drharris@logic.bm or 704-5480.