Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda
HMD Bermuda was the principal base of the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War. The Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609. French privateers may have used the islands as a staging place for operations against Spanish galleons in the 16th century. Bermudian privateers certainly played a role in many English and British wars following settlement, with its utility as a base for his privateers leading to the Earl of Warwick, the namesake of Warwick Parish, becoming the most important investor of the Somers Isles Company. Despite this, it was not until the loss of bases on most of the North American Atlantic seaboard threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic that the island assumed great importance as a naval base. In 1818 the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda officially replaced the Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax, as the British headquarters for the North America Station (which would become the North America and West Indies Station after absorbing the Jamaica Station in 1830.
6-inch guns overlook the Great Sound
1848 Woodcut of HMD Bermuda, Ireland Island, Bermuda.
12 August 1815 advertisement by HM Dockyard Bermuda of auction of HMS Cockchafer published 19 August 1815 in The Bermuda Gazette
Keep, Dockyard, Camber, Hulks and Casemates Barracks, 1857
Royal Navy Dockyards were state-owned harbour facilities where ships of the Royal Navy were built, based, repaired and refitted. Until the mid-19th century the Royal Dockyards were the largest industrial complexes in Britain.
Portsmouth Royal Dockyard, founded 1496, still in service as a Naval Base.
Careening wharf and storehouses built by the Royal Navy in the 1760s, Illa Pinto, Port Mahon, Menorca.
18th-century storehouse, 19th-century dry dock and 20th-century warship preserved at Chatham
Barracks accommodation alongside No.5 Basin and the former coaling wharf at Devonport