In the Fay & Geoffrey Elliott Collection, housed at the Bermuda Archives, is a most remarkable painting of the Bermuda Dockyard in 1847.

That painting alone supplies many answers about the periods of construction of the Dockyard that might be found in many disparate documents or plans, should such still exist in overseas archives. That picture is literally worth the proverbial "thousand words", or much more, but in this article, the Editor holds the limit of the proverb. So here, we are going to take this painting apart and see what mysteries it holds, an archaeological exercise on a work of art.

First of course, we have to lay out the general history of the Dockyard, which is now one of the two major tourist destinations in Bermuda, the other being the World Heritage Site of the Old Town of St. George's. For half of Bermuda's history, St. George's was the capital of the island and, excepting the Dockyard, it was the lynchpin of the defence of Bermuda, with most of the fortifications being located in its eponymous parish.

The first presence of the Royal Navy at Bermuda came at St. George's with the establishment of a small base at Convict Bay on the eastern side of the town. After the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which ended the American Revolutionary War, the military significance of Bermuda to the British inexorably rose to the fore, like dross on a pot of boiling lead. Halfway between the Canada Maritimes and the British West Indies, Bermuda was perfect geographically for the setting up of a major naval base, from where the new United States Navy could be monitored and if necessary, controlled, by the British fleet of the North America and West Indies Station, centred at the island.

Towards the end of the first decade of the 19th century, Ireland Island in the westerly Sandys Parish was chosen as the site for the naval base and construction began in 1809, after the compulsory purchase of the lands of Bermudians there, described by one military office as "less than human". Unfortunately for the British military, but fortunately for history, Ireland Island was one of the two places in Bermuda where the much older Walsingham Formation rock existed at the surface. Its quarrying required over 40 years of blasting and creating stone blocks by the ancient sculpting methods of working monumental stone, carried out by British military personnel, local slaves and freemen until Emancipation in 1834 and from 1823 by convicts from Britain, set out to serve their terms under the blazing Bermuda sun, in a miasmic cauldron of malaria and Yellow Fever.

Slowly the Dockyard arose from the quarries of Ireland Island and the great buildings in the hard Bermuda Limestone took their monumental places in the landscape. Fortifications, breakwaters and wharves, along with a couple of administration buildings, were the first structures to be completed. As we now know from recent archaeological discoveries, evidence of the first period of fortifications was almost entirely swept away in the late 1820s, when the Duke of Wellington of Waterloo fame approved the massive array of defence works that yet stand today, with a few exceptions demolished when the Dockyard was expanded in the first decade of the 20th century.

Next came the second Commissioner's House, the flagship of the National Museum today and a building of international significance, so acknowledged by a RICS Award for historic preservation some years ago. Then followed the extraordinary Casemate Barracks and its ancillary Upper and Lower Ordnance Yard buildings, the last of which, we now know, sits on the remains of part of the original fortifications. After that, the picture became somewhat hazy and that is where the Captain Michael Seymour painting from the Elliott Collection, dated "Tuesday, May 7th, 1847" comes into play.

The Seymour image provides what archaeologists call a "terminus ante quem", or "terminus post quem", in this instance a definitive date "before which", or "after which", certain things happened or existed, or did not. Being precisely dated, Captain Seymour's painting gives us a definitive snapshot of what was happening, or not, in the construction of the Bermuda Dockyard at the end of the first week of May 1847. Seymour was then Flag Captain at Bermuda under Admiral Sir Francis Austen, brother of the famous literary Jane, and was a painter of some accomplishment. Fortunately, due to Fay and Geoffrey Elliott, a number of his paintings are now in Bermuda.

So looking at what Seymour had captured in the view "Bermuda Dockyard from Commissioner's House", what had taken place before May 1847? Starting in the foreground, the gunpowder magazine in the Keep had been built and above on its completed ramparts, a "redcoat" patrols between two cannon. In the background, the Casemate Barracks has been finished, replete with flagstaff and soldiers under its porch. Below in the main yard stood the original "clock tower" building with a single tower, alongside the other principal administration building from the earliest period of the Dockyard: those buildings would stand for another ten years. Fronting Grassy Bay, the wharves and breakwaters have been completed, as was the boat slip with two rowboats. Two convict hulks, which were old warships converted into hotels, are moored alongside and near the administration buildings, redcoats march on parade.

The Seymour painting then shows what had not happened by 7th May 1847, firmly dating those happenings to some time after that date. The major building of the upper Ordnance Yard was only half-completed and the Northwest Rampart, connecting the Casemate Barracks area to the Keep, is but a gravel path.

Of greatest significance in the dating of the construction periods of the Dockyard is the total absence of any of the buildings in the main yard that now make up the area. That is to say, the structures of the Victualling Yard, the Mast Stores, the Smitheries (unfortunately demolished in the late 1960s) and the great Western and Eastern Storehouses, with the Sail Loft and two other large buildings in between, did not exist until after May 1847.

So there you have, Mr. Editor, in a little over a thousand words, the extraordinary value of the Seymour painting in the Fay & Geoffrey Elliott Collection to our understanding of the construction phases of the Bermuda Dockyard. Or, as has been attributed to the great military man, Napoleon Bonaparte: "A good sketch is better than a long speech", so I rest my pen, wishing I were good with a brush.

Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The opinions in this column are his own. Comments may be made to drharris@logic.bm or 704-5480.