The value of Bermuda is known to both France and America. Therefore it is desirable that no time should be lost in giving adequate security to it, while it is still ours. To secure this great naval station is an object of much national importance.

— Hon. Thomas Grenville, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1806.

GOVERNMENTS are often, in a sense, at war with the people and lands they control or were elected to govern. In one of the extreme forms of power that they exercise, owners can be booted out of the family home and off their private lands, in the name of a greater national good. Such a property goose lays golden eggs for the authorities, but for the citizen, it is the equivalent of cutting open the bird to remove such eggs, which, of course, can be produced no more, as the old saying goes, as the goose is dead.

Nowadays, this process of acquiring private land by the State is known as “compulsory purchase powers”. This is defined as “an important tool for local authorities to use as a means of acquiring land needed to help deliver social and economic change”.

It can occur where the “local authority wishes to carry out a comprehensive redevelopment of an area where there are a number of separate landowners”, or it could be a matter of acquiring land for a new Bermuda bus shelter.

Bermuda has undergone a series of “compulsory purchases” over its four centuries of settlement, with the earliest probably being the acquisition of lands for some of the first fortifications, especially outside the “general lands” of St. George’s Parish.

None of these lands was confiscated, as far as is known, but they were usually paid for, if sometimes not at equitable prices. In addition to many minor acquisitions, the British Government made a number of major purchases, including Ireland Island for the Dockyard and areas of Devonshire and St. George’s for two major military camps, and lands throughout Bermuda for large fortifications of the 1800s.

Several hundred acres were purchased by the US Government in the early 1940s, which one might claim “delivered social change” to prevent the conquering of Bermuda by the Nazis.

Through the channel of legislation, private companies have also acquired land from individuals, by the passage of Acts to that end by the Members of Parliament.

One of these was in the area generally referred to as Tucker’s Town, which was supposed “to deliver economic change” by way of boosting tourism in creating the Castle Harbour Hotel and golf course.

Another, possibly larger, was the appropriation of land, almost from one end of Bermuda to the other, for the Bermuda Railway Company. After a mere 15 years of operation, the railway failed, but the land was not returned to the former owners, but taken over by the Government, as have been all the former military lands.

In 1783, the British lost the eastern seaboard of what became the United States and therefore for the first time took military interest in Bermuda, which was strategically located offshore and halfway between their Canadian and West Indies possessionsBK>By 1795, a channel and major anchorage was found at the east end of the island and a Royal Naval depot was established at St. George’s. In 1808, Vice Admiral Sir John Warren submitted a report that led to the creation of a dockyard at Ireland Island and the acquisition of other land and islands for what was eventually considered “the Gibraltar of the West”.In Richard Norwood’s 1616 survey of Bermuda, the dockyard island was already named apparently after a Mr. Ireland, but the land appears to be general or common. By 1663, Ireland Island had been subdivided by a “Mr. Perinchief” and Norwood’s survey of that year records some 18 plots.

Captain Florentius Seymour owned the easternmost area at Ireland Point, where the Maritime Museum now is. Some years ago, Andrew Trimingham donated a Bermuda cedar chest to the Museum that is said have come from the Seymours.

It is perhaps one of the few artefacts that have come down to us from the 25 families that owned Ireland Island at the time of its purchase by the Royal Navy in 1809-10.

The families who had to leave that place read like a “who’s who” of Somerset. Joseph Seymour presumably owned the museum property, while his neighbours on Ireland Island were Hinson Gilbert, Darrell and Henry Harvey, a number of Fowles and Burrowses, and members of the Dickinson, Young, Morris, Outerbridge, Talbot, Burch, Young, Taylor, Roach, Williams and Evans families.

Others whose names have died out in Bermuda were the Leaycrofts, Bedlows, Gibbses, Woods, Jaunceys and Rightons. Ten of the properties seem to have been owned outright by women. The colour composition of all is not known, but most presumably were white people.

Some 110 acres comprised the compulsory purchases of Ireland Island, while a further 116 acres were taken from inhabitants or owners of land in western Pembroke.

Eighteen islands in the Great Sound, including the larger Hinson’s, Long, Nelly’s and Ports, were possessed by the Royal Navy, along with the Recreation Ground in Somerset, opposite present-day Arnold’s Market.

The moral of this and other similar Bermuda tales is that governments take and people give, often against their wishes. The value of these lands today is many millions more than the $4,800 paid out in 18The<$> British Government sold some of the properties into private hands, but in 1951 and 1995, the Bermuda Government acquired all the remaining Royal Naval lands. None of these properties is to be returned to the families of the original owners, as is the way of most compulsory purchases.For some years, this public gift from private hands was squandered and many historic buildings, such as the Royal Naval Hospital on Ireland Island were ruined and demolished.

However, with the ongoing restoration and development of the Dockyard, it might be possible to say that the compulsory purchases from the few in 1810 are now “helping to deliver social and economic change” for the many, as the area becomes the most visited historic destination in Bermuda.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to arris@logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.