Mark Whittaker writes (April 22, 2008): "I have found an Ormerod, Grierson & Co static steam engine, in a building in Bermuda where I presently live, the building is due for demolition, and I'm uncertain of the steam engine's fate? It would be a shame to see this engine destroyed, can you give me any advice?" – The International Steam Pages, www.internationalsteam.co.uk, 2008

The 1860s were a tumultuous time for Bermuda and for our great and powerful neighbour to the west. Political upheavals on the continent led to the American Civil War in the second year of the decade, the victory of the Union forces over those of the Confederacy resulted in freedom for slaves in the southern states, 31 years after Emancipation at Bermuda and in worldwide British territories.

Some Bermudians benefited much from the War, as St. George's became one of the major transshipment centres, along with Nassau in the Bahamas, for goods destined for the Confederacy from Europe. The presence of the "blockade-runners" in the harbour at the eastern end of Bermuda was recorded in the outstanding paintings of Edward James; many of his images fortunately have survived into modern times.

It is possible that the economic and shipping activity at St. George's was the impetus for local business people to set up the joint-stock "St. George's Marine Slip Company", due to be located on the western edge of the town for the purposes of hauling, repairing and maintaining ships. Its first operation was the slipping of the Norwegian bark Grenmar in March 1866, the year after the Civil War ended.

In addition to being affected by political and social changes in the United States, Bermuda was also in the firing line for a new round of fortifications, as the rapid change of technology in the 1860s demanded new types of forts, ships and guns. The launching of the first iron warship, HMS Warrior, and the invention of breech-loading cannon firing projectiles, rather than round shot, signaled the start of the modern arms race, which is still being run, but on a nuclear track.

HMS Warrior, now one of the world's most significant floating museums and maritime artifacts, visited Bermuda in 1869, when with other Royal Navy vessels, the ship towed the great flocking dock, itself the first completely such metal structure, to the island, to be used in lifting, rather than hauling and slipping, the new warships of the period.

Both Warrior and the floating dock Bermuda, in their ironmongery and steam engines for propulsion and the driving of machinery, such as cranes, are also symbols of the greatest changes in shipping in several thousand years. Those vessels help to mark the revolutionary switch from wooden ships, powered by the winds of the ocean seas, to iron vessels powered by steam. The St. George's Marine Slip Company also marked that change, for its winch for hauling their ship-laden cradle was run by a steam engine.

Those iron and steam instruments of the Industrial Revolution, along with other inventions, also marked the end of Bermuda's long and venerable shipbuilding industry, for the island had not any iron ore deposits to replace its great endemic timber resource of the local cedar trees. While our utterly revolutionary invention, the "Bermuda Rig", would survive and prove enduring, for it is carried by nearly all modern sailing yachts, the sloops, brigs, barks and other wooden vessels built at Bermuda between the 1680s and the Civil War were doomed to sail into history, being driven off the seas by iron-hulled, steam-driven ships.

Now the engine and winch of the St. George's Marine Slip Company are due to steam into history, as the development of the site of the shipyard to the south of the Wellington Oval has dictated their removal, fortunately not to the Airport Dump, but to the National Museum at Dockyard. Operational until a decade or less ago, the mechanisms were housed in a Bermuda stone building, built for the purpose in 1865.

Fortunately, the present owners of the site, MASS Ltd., encouraged the preservation of these last mechanical vestiges of the "Age of Steam" at Bermuda, under a project organised by Dame Jennifer Smith, one of the area MPs, Dr. Philippe Rouja, the Custodian of Wrecks, and the National Museum. The object of the exercise is to have the steam engine and winch on working exhibition within the Museum in due course.

According to an overseas steam enthusiast contacted by Alex Davidson, "the machinery is interesting technically and historically. It is the only surviving example of an Ormerod, Grierson steam engine that I know of, and would be a fitting memorial to this important, but nearly forgotten maker." Ormerod, Grierson and Company was a Manchester firm of the great industrial heartland of northern England.

At the St. George's Marine Slip Company, a boiler produced steam that powered the engine; in later years compressed air was employed. The steam engine then drove the winch through a crankshaft connected to a series of gearwheels, the largest of which is some 16 feet in diameter. The massive chain of the winch then hauled up the cradle on the boat slip.

In mid-August 2010, volunteers and staff of the National Museum, assisted with technical advice from Bill Andrews and Alex Davidson, and in the heavy lifting by men from Island Construction, cleaned up the steam engine and winch and began to disassemble them. It is hoped that in a few years, in a new building at the Museum, that those major maritime artifacts will be working on exhibit, getting the visiting public steamed up, as such engines and their associated mechanisms do in many museums around the globe.

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.