'It remained for William (later Sir William) Armstrong, one of the foremost gun designers of the late 1850s, to produce a rifled breech-loader which included so many novel features in its construction as to be considered revolutionary. – Col. Roger Willock, "Bulwark of Empire, Bermuda's fortified naval base, 1860-1920".

Living on a small but interesting geological mound out in the middle of an ocean of nowhere, Bermudians were once upon some times more philosophically related to our cousins in the northeast of continental America. We operated more in a New England mode of thrift and recycling, be it clothes to hand onto the next youngest child or the saving of bits and pieces that might one day come in handy, like a nail found in the road, or perhaps an old cannon for a boat mooring weight. Before the days of modern plenty, little went to waste, although we managed over the centuries to fill up many of the island's primeval wetlands, as we "took de trash to de pond".

At the same time, it was uneconomic to return many objects, such as cannon, to a land of origin, as the cost of shipping usually far outweighed the value of the things as scrap metal.

That was unfortunately not true in the 1950s, when a scrap merchant from the United States was allowed to take away a number of guns and iron carriages, to the considerable loss of Bermuda's military heritage. Nonetheless, we have managed to retain over 150 cannon, guns, and some carriages to comprise one of the best collections of historic artillery in this hemisphere.

One of the rarest types of gun in that collection is the 40-pounder Rifled Breech Loader (RBL) of the 1860s, of which, one understands, only one barrel is to be found in Great Britain, where they were manufactured as a revolutionary piece of weaponry, breaking the three hundred-year straight run of the smooth-bore cannon. The RBL gun started the modern arms race, which proceeds apace into this very day, with armourers finding new ways to kill people and destroy property.

As Bermuda's new Director of Conservation Services, Andrew Pettit, wrote when engaged with fortifications as a Park Planner for government: "Designed by Sir William Armstrong, the RBL was a breakthrough in design and would become the forefather of all modern artillery", with twice the range of the older cannon.

As important and revolutionary as the 40-pounder RBL was, the gun has serious deficiencies as it was made of wrought iron, with critical points of weakness in the sides of the hole for the removable vent block. The back, or breech, of the gun could break off under the pressure of firing, causing considerable damage to the gun crew, rather than the enemy. The guns were thus only manufactured for four years and relegated to field service in British possessions overseas, including Bermuda. The invention of gun steel in 1882 would see a permanent return to the breech loader gun.

Eight RBLs were sent to Bermuda and for some years were held in reserve at Fort Prospect for use as mobile batteries, particularly on the south coast of the island. Mounted on wooden carriages, a trail with two wheels would be attached for transporting the guns by horse to battery positions on the south shore, such as the one that has survived on the grounds of the Coral Beach Club. It was apparently at this period that long stretches of the South, or Military Road, were planted on the sea side with oleanders, so as to obscure the movement of the guns from the enemy, at that time as history records, the Americans.

The guns ended their military lives as a Saluting Battery at Fort Victoria, of which only one image exists, a photograph taken by Roger Willock as a young man in the late 1920s. As Colonel, US Marine Corps, Willock published the first book on the garrisons and fortifications of Bermuda in 1962.

Collin Carpenter pointed out the value of the Rifled Breech Loader when he carried out a survey of Bermuda's hjistoric artillery in the 1980s and efforts were then made to recover such guns on the island.

The first to be reclaimed from the scrapheap of history is at Fort St. Catherine. The second was donated to the National Museum by the present owners of the site of Bailey's Bay Battery, where it may have been left by the military or taken there from Fort Victoria as a trophy when Charles Blair McDonald, designer of the Mid Ocean Golf Course, built a house in the 1920s at "Old Battery". That gun may be the only one in existence for which parts of its original carriage have survived: it was restored and is now on permanent display in the Bermuda Regiment and military exhibit at Commissioner's House at the National Museum.

The third and fourth RBLs were found as bollards on Penno's Wharf, where the Parks Department dug them out of the dock several years ago. They are now proudly mounted on new iron carriage outside the World Heritage Centre at the St. George's Foundation. World Heritage weapons they are! The fifth RBL was found on the coastline of the St. George's home of Richard and Jane Spurling, where it had been concreted in to serve as a bollard, and has been donated by the Spurlings to the National Museum. In order to translate the bollard back to a military role as a cannon, albeit as an historic artefact, volunteers had to jackhammer out some five feet of concrete, in order to free the gun from the ground.

The lift had to be done by a crane on a barge, as it was impossible to get machinery into position on land, and Charles Crisson and his team completed that manoeuvre with military precision.

A date on the concrete indicates that the gun became a bollard on 26 June 1936. According to the markings on the right trunnion, the barrel was made at the Royal Gun Factory in 1864 and was a Mark I of the type, serial number No. 280 G. It is thus one of the last RBLs ever to be made.

The whereabouts of the other three barrels of the original RBL octet at Fort Prospect remain on the "missing in action" list: if you know of their location as a bollard or other usage, call my lost artefacts hotline without delay.

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.