Royal Air Force, Bermuda (1939–45)
The Royal Air Force operated from two locations in Bermuda during the Second World War. Bermuda's location had made it an important naval station since US independence, with the advent of the aeroplane, had made it as important to trans-Atlantic aviation in the decades before the Jet Age; the limited, hilly land mass had prevented the construction of an airfield, with most large airliners in the 1930s being flying boats, this was not a limitation. The government-owned Imperial Airways built a flying-boat station on Darrell's Island that served as an airport for passengers flying to and from Bermuda, as well as on trans-Atlantic flights staging through the Island.. With the commencement of hostilities in 1939, Darrell's Island was taken over as a Royal Air Force station, with two commands operating on it. RAF Transport Command operated large, multi-engined flying boats, carrying freight and passengers between Europe and the Americas. RAF Ferry Command was responsible for delivering aircraft from manufacturers to operational units.
As the requirements of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm could not be filled by the output of British factories, the Air Ministry placed orders with manufacturers in the neutral USA for all manner of aircraft. These included flying boats, like the PBY Catalina, designed for long-range maritime patrols, were capable of being flown across the Atlantic, albeit in stages. Imperial Airways, which had become the British Overseas Airways Corporation, continued to operate in Bermuda throughout the War, as well, though in a war-role, with its new Boeing flying boats painted in camouflage, its flying boats landed trans-Atlantic mail at Darrell's to be cleared by the British counter-intelligence censors at the Princess Hotel. In January, 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Bermuda on his return to Britain, following December 1941 meetings in Washington D. C. with US President Franklin Roosevelt, in the weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill flew into Darrell's Island on a BOAC Boeing 314.
Although it had been planned to continue the journey by ship, he made an impulsive decision to complete it by a direct flight from Bermuda to England, marking the first trans-Atlantic air crossing by a national leader. The first Bermudian killed in the Second World War was Flying Officer Grant Ede, an RAF Gladiator pilot who took part in the 1940 Battle of Norway, before dying along with everyone else aboard HMS Glorious when it was sunk during the evacuation from Norway. In 1940, the Bermuda Flying School was established on Darrell's Island with the goal of training pilots for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy; the school trained volunteers from the local territorial units using Luscombe seaplanes. Those who passed their training were sent to the Air Ministry to be assigned to the RAF or the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm; the Commanding Officer of the school was Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, DFC, the commander of the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers. He had left the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps to become one of at least eighteen Bermudian aviators of the Great War.
The school trained eighty pilots before an excess of trained pilots led to its closure in 1942. The body administrating it was adapted to become a recruiting organisation for the Royal Canadian Air Force, sending sixty aircrew candidates, twenty-two female candidates for ground-based roles, to that service before the War's end. With so many Bermudians entering the air services, the Air Training Corps was established in Bermuda during the war to train school-aged cadets. In addition to the BFS graduates and BFC candidates, other Bermudians entered the air services during the war; these included at least two other Great War aviators who returned to service, Squadron Leaders Rowe Spurling and Bernard Logier Wilkinson, who served with RAF Transport Command and the RCAF, respectively. An officer of the BVE, Richard Gorham, transferred to the Royal Artillery, attaching to the RAF as an Air Observation Post pilot, directing artillery fire from the air, he played a decisive role in the Battle of Monte Cassino.
In 1941, the USA was given 99-year free base rights in Bermuda, began construction of a Naval Air Station, the Naval Operating Base, for flying boats, an airfield for landplanes. The terms of the agreement were that the US-built airfield, on British territory, would be a joint US Army/Royal Air Force base; when the airfield became operational in 1943, RAF Transport Command relocated to it, taking over the West end of the base in Castle Harbour. With the entry of the USA into the War, at the end of 1941, the US Navy began operating air-patrols from the Island. Bermuda was a forming-up point, for convoys numbering hundreds of ships. Despite the importance of guarding against Axis submarines and surface raiders operating in the area, the RAF had not posted a Coastal Command detachment to maintain air cover; the Fleet Air Arm operated ad hoc patrols from its base RNAS Boaz Island on Boaz Island. This was a repair facility, it operated its patrols using pilots from ships at the Dockyard on Ireland Island, RAF and Bermuda Flying School pilots from Darrell's Island.
These patrols ceased in 1941 with the arrival of a US Navy patrol squadron, which operated from Darrell's Island until the US NAS became operable. The RAF operated from its two facilities in Bermuda until the end of the War, when both Commands withdrew their detachments. Darrell's Island reverted to its pre-War role as a civil airport, until the replacement of flyi
L.F. Wade International Airport
L. F. Wade International Airport named Bermuda International Airport, is the sole airport serving the British overseas territory of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean, it is 6 NM northeast of Bermuda's capital, Hamilton. In 2016, L. F. Wade International Airport handled about 402,925 passengers, up 5.6% from 2006. It has one passenger terminal, one cargo terminal, eight aircraft stands and can support all aircraft sizes up to and including the Airbus A380. Seven airlines operate seasonal or year-round scheduled services to Bermuda Airport from Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States; the airfield was constructed during World War II for use as Kindley Field, a joint US Army Air Forces /Royal Air Force base. The RAF forces in Bermuda were withdrawn at the end of the War; the local RAF Commander, stayed on, on loan to the Bermuda Government. He converted the RAF facilities into the Civil Air Terminal, operated by the local government; when the pre-war airport, a flying boat facility on Darrell's Island, closed in 1948, Bermuda's air routes were taken over by land planes operating through the airfield.
By it was operated by the United States Air Force, as Kindley Air Force Base. In 1970, the field was transferred to the United States Navy, which operated it as US Naval Air Station, Bermuda until 1995; the US Navy transferred the field to the Bermuda Government. It now operates the airport as part of the Ministry of Transport; the US Navy was not required to meet international civil air standards, despite the operation of civil airlines to the base. The Bermuda Government, was required to meet these standards quickly on assuming control, at some expense; this involved changes to the airfield lighting, erecting new fences, levelling anything over a certain height and within a certain distance of the runway, other changes. The airport is at the west of St. David's Island, to the south of Ferry Reach; this places it in the East End of several miles from the capital, Hamilton. The airfield was built between 1941 and 1943 by levelling Long Bird Island and several smaller islands, filling in the waterways with reclaimed land between them and St. David's Island.
This created a landmass contiguous with St. David's; the airfield is described as being in, or on, St. David's; the field had three runways, but only the longest is still in use. One of the others, most of, on a narrow peninsula jutting into Castle Harbour, has been blocked by munitions bunkers that were built at the harbour end. Additional bunkers are on the west side of the peninsula, which the US Navy had referred to as the Weapons Pier. Airport workers, refer to it as The Finger; the other former runway is today a taxiway to connect aprons one and two to the active runway, the taxiway which parallels it. This was last used as a runway in 1978, it has its own former taxiway paralleling it, which now serves as a dispersal area for visiting aircraft. On 16 April 2007 the airport was renamed as "L. F. Wade International Airport" in honour of L. Frederick Wade, father of L. Frederick Wade, Jr. L. Frederick Wade was a leader of the incumbent governing party when it was in opposition; the name was criticised by the opposition United Bermuda Party for being politically biased.
On 16 March 2017, the Government of Bermuda signed an agreement with the Canadian Commercial Corporation, granting Skyport a 30-year concession to manage and operate the airport. In 2017, the airport handled five hundred thousand passengers. Airline flight arrivals and departures peak June – August summer season, it has received high marks in passenger satisfaction surveys, placing first among North American airports in the "Under 15 million passengers" category in 2003 and fourth worldwide in its size category, according to the global airport monitor report that year. Cited were courtesy of staff and check-in facilities; the former NATO hangar built in the early 1990s is now used for the airport's growing corporate jet traffic. Because of Bermuda's considerable distance from the nearest land mass, the airport's use by General Aviation aircraft is limited to jets and long-range turboprops. Only jet fuel is available; the airport offers US Customs and Immigration preclearance, which means US-bound passengers clear Customs in Bermuda.
Air traffic control service is provided by CI2 Aviation under contract to the Department of Airport Operations. The control tower is located on the north side of the airport and provides service for most of the day and night. Approach, departure and en route traffic control in the surrounding Oceanic Sector is provided by New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, under an agreement between the US Government's Federal Aviation Administration and the United Kingdom; the BDA tower controller and ZNY center controller are always in close contact. Remote radio transmitters and air traffic radar coverage at the airport link Bermuda and New York Center. A modern Doppler Weather radar with a 150 mi. range was built by the DAO in 2005. Navaids at the airport, such as the Instrument Landing System and VOR, are owned by the DAO but maintained by BAS-Serco; the airport was a United States government. It was only able to be used during mid inclination launches; the airport is active in affairs of the Airports Co
The World Factbook
The World Factbook known as the CIA World Factbook, is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available from the Government Printing Office. Other companies—such as Skyhorse Publishing—also print a paper edition; the Factbook is available in the form of a website, updated every week. It is available for download for use off-line, it provides a two- to three-page summary of the demographics, communications, government and military of each of 267 international entities including U. S.-recognized countries and other areas in the world. The World Factbook is prepared by the CIA for the use of U. S. government officials, its style, format and content are designed to meet their requirements. However, it is used as a resource for academic research papers and news articles; as a work of the U. S. government, it is in the public domain in the United States. In researching the Factbook, the CIA uses the sources listed below.
Other public and private sources are consulted. Antarctic Information Program Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center Bureau of the Census Bureau of Labor Statistics Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs Defense Intelligence Agency Department of Energy Department of State Fish and Wildlife Service Maritime Administration National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Naval Facilities Engineering Command Office of Insular Affairs Office of Naval Intelligence Oil & Gas Journal United States Board on Geographic Names United States Transportation Command Because the Factbook is in the public domain, people are free under United States law to redistribute it or parts of it in any way that they like, without permission of the CIA. However, the CIA requests. Copying the official seal of the CIA without permission is prohibited by U. S. federal law—specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. Before November 2001 The World Factbook website was updated yearly. Information available as of January 1 of the current year is used in preparing the Factbook.
The first, edition of Factbook was published in August 1962, the first unclassified version in June 1971. The World Factbook was first available to the public in print in 1975. In 2008 the CIA discontinued printing the Factbook themselves, instead turning printing responsibilities over to the Government Printing Office; this happened due to a CIA decision to "focus Factbook resources" on the online edition. The Factbook has been on the World Wide Web since October 1994; the web version receives an average of 6 million visits per month. The official printed version is sold by the Government Printing Office and National Technical Information Service. In past years, the Factbook was available on CD-ROM, magnetic tape, floppy disk. Many Internet sites use information and images from the CIA World Factbook. Several publishers, including Grand River Books, Potomac Books, Skyhorse Publishing have re-published the Factbook in recent years; as of July 2011, The World Factbook comprises 267 entities, which can be divided into the following categories: Independent countries The CIA defines these as people "politically organized into a sovereign state with a definite territory."
In this category, there are 195 entities. Others Places set apart from the list of independent countries. There are two: Taiwan and the European Union. Dependencies and Areas of Special Sovereignty Places affiliated with another country, they may be subcategorized by affiliated country: Australia: six entities China: two entities Denmark: two entities France: eight entities Netherlands: three entities New Zealand: three entities Norway: three entities United Kingdom: seventeen entities United States: fourteen entitiesMiscellaneous Antarctica and places in dispute. There are six such entities. Other entities The World and the oceans. There are the World. Areas not covered Specific regions within a country or areas in dispute among countries, such as Kashmir, are not covered, but other areas of the world whose status is disputed, such as the Spratly Islands, have entries. Subnational areas of countries are not included in the Factbook. Instead, users looking for information about subnational areas are referred to "a comprehensive encyclopedia" for their reference needs.
This criterion was invoked in the 2007 and 2011 editions with the decision to drop the entries for French Guiana, Martinique and Reunion. They were dropped because besides being overseas departments, they were now overseas regions, an integral part of France. Kashmir Maps depicting Kashmir have the Indo-Pakistani border drawn at the Line of Control, but the region of Kashmir administered by China drawn in hash marks. Northern Cyprus Northern Cyprus, which the U. S. considers part of the Republic of Cyprus, is not given a separate entry because "territorial occupations/annexations not recognized by the United States Government are not shown on U. S. Government maps."Taiwan/Republic of China The name
Hamilton, Bermuda
Hamilton is the capital of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda. It is a major port and tourist destination, its population of 1,010 is one of the smallest of any capital cities. The history of Hamilton as a British city began in 1790 when the government of Bermuda set aside 145 acres for its future seat incorporated in 1793 by an Act of Parliament, named for Governor Henry Hamilton; the colony's capital relocated to Hamilton from St George's in 1815. The city has been at the political and military heart of Bermuda since. Government buildings include the parliament building, the Government House to the north, the former Admiralty House of the Royal Navy to the west, the British Army garrison headquarters at Prospect Camp to its east; the Town of Hamilton became a city in 1897, ahead of the consecration in 1911 of the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, under construction at the time. A Catholic cathedral, St. Theresa's, was constructed. Today, the city overlooking Hamilton Harbour is a business district, with few structures other than office buildings and shops.
The City of Hamilton has long maintained a building height and view limit, which states that no buildings may obscure the Cathedral. In the 21st century, buildings have been planned and some are under construction that are as high as ten storeys in the area. Bermuda's local newspaper, The Royal Gazette, reports, "If you don't recognise the city, from 15 years ago, we don't blame you as it has changed so much". Hamilton is located on the north side of Hamilton Harbour, is Bermuda's main port. Although there is a parish of the same name, the city of Hamilton is in the parish of Pembroke; the city is named after Sir Henry Hamilton, governor of the territory from 1786 to 1793. Hamilton Parish antedates the city; the administrative capital of Bermuda, has a limited permanent population around 1,010. The only incorporated city in Bermuda, Hamilton is smaller than the historic town of St. George's. A more representative measure of Bermuda's local residential populations tends to be by parish; as the offshore domicile of many foreign companies, Bermuda has a developed international business economy.
Finance and international business constitute the largest sector of Bermuda's economy, all of this business takes place within the borders of Hamilton. Numerous leading international insurance companies are based in Hamilton, as it is a global reinsurance centre. Around 400 internationally owned and operated businesses are physically based in Bermuda, many are represented by the Association of Bermuda International Companies. In total, over 1,500 exempted or international companies are registered with the Registrar of Companies in Bermuda; the city is the registered headquarters of the spirits manufacturer Bacardi, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell Technology, outsourcing company Genpact, telecommunications company Global Crossing, reinsurance company Tokio Millennium Re Ltd. Hamilton is known as the headquarters of international shipping companies, such as DryShips Inc, Frontline Ltd. and Dockwise. Its low corporate tax rate makes it attractive to US companies. In addition, the corporate headquarters of the Bermuda grocery store chain The MarketPlace is located within the chain's Hamilton MarketPlace location, the largest grocery store in Bermuda.
Hamilton was named the city with the highest cost of living index in the world. The coat of arms of the city of Hamilton incorporate a shield featuring a golden sailing ship, representing the Resolution, surrounded by three cinquefoils, two above the ship and one below in gold, all on a plain blue background; this shield is supported by a mermaid and heraldic sea horse, is placed on a mount in front of, a scroll containing the motto "Sparsa Collegit". The shield is topped by a crest featuring a closed helm topped with a torque above which an heraldic seahorse is emerging from the sea holding a flower; the city's full motto is Hamilton sparsa collegit. The city's flag is a banner of arms, featuring the same details as on the shield of the city's coat of arms, but with the flowers in white rather than gold; the city of Hamilton has many parks for its size. The most notable park in the city is Victoria Park; this park was named after Queen Victoria. Other parks in the city are Par La Ville Park, Barr's Park, All Buoy's Point Park, the hidden Cedar Park.
Although located some distance north of the geographic tropics, Hamilton has a warm trade-wind tropical rainforest climate. It is warm enough for coconut palms and other tropical palms to grow, although they may not fruit properly due to the lack of heat or sunshine during the winter months because of latitude. Hamilton has uncharacteristically warm temperatures for its latitude because of the moderating influence of the North Atlantic and nearby Gulf Stream. Hamilton features warm and humid summers and semi-warm "winters"; as temperatures are moderated by the Atlantic Ocean, it gets hot or cold in the city. Precipitation is plentiful throughout the year and Hamilton does not have a dry season month, a month where on average less than 60 mm of precipitation falls. Summer precipitation is from showers and tropical disturbances or tropical cyclones. Meanwhile, winter precipitation is derived from westerly moving extra-tropical cyclones and their associated fronts
Governor of Bermuda
The Governor of Bermuda is the representative of the British monarch in the British overseas territory of Bermuda. The Governor is appointed by the monarch on the advice of the British government; the role of the Governor is to act as the de facto head of state, he or she is responsible for appointing the Premier and the 11 members of the Senate. The Governor is Commander-in-chief of the Royal Bermuda Regiment; the current Governor is John Rankin. The Governor has his own flag in Bermuda, a Union Flag with the territory's coat of arms superimposed. Bermuda's settlement began in 1609, with the wrecking of the flagship of the Virginia Company, the Sea Venture. Although most of the passengers and crew completed their voyage to Virginia, the archipelago was permanently settled from that point, left in the hands of the Virginia Company; the first intentional settlers arrived under the colony's first Governor, Richard Moore. A carpenter by trade, Moore ensured the long-term survival of the colony by concentrating on building fortifications, including the first stone forts in the English New World, developing St. George's Town.
Bermuda was the second permanent English colony established. Bermuda was administered under Royal charters by the Virginia Company, its successor, the Somers Isles Company, which appointed the colony's governors until the Crown revoked the charter and took over administration in 1684; the Crown maintained the system of government established under the company. The Privy Council, made up of the Chief Justice, certain senior civil servants, appointees, was known as the Governor's Council and the Legislative Council; the last company-appointed Governor was reappointed by the Crown. In 1707 the British State was created by the union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland, Bermuda thereby became a British colony. Since the 1783 independence of Virginia, it has been Britain's oldest colony. Following US independence, Bermuda became an important Royal Navy base, with a large military garrison to guard it; as such, the policy of the government until the closure of the Royal Naval dockyard in 1953 had been to appoint retiring Generals or Admirals as Bermuda's Governor and Commander-in-Chief.
On the rare occasions when a civilian was appointed to the role, it was only as Governor – the role of Commander-in-Chief being filled by a serving General or Admiral in Bermuda or Newfoundland. Since the 1950s, those appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief have tended to be prominent career-politicians at the ends of their political lives. Prior to the creation of the lower house of the Parliament of Bermuda, the House of Assembly, in 1620, the Governors ruled supreme, were draconian. Governor Daniel Tucker of Virginia, who arrived in 1616, was notorious for his harshness, having many islanders hanged, maimed, or whipped on the slightest provocation. One Bermudian, John Wood, was hanged for airing his views on the Governor in church. Governor Tucker's personal boat was stolen by five islanders, one named Saunders, who left a note saying they were on their way to England, or Davy Jones' Locker, either place being preferable to Bermuda under Tucker's rule. On reaching England, they complained about the harshness of Tucker's rule, though their complaints fell on deaf ears.
Governor Tucker reportedly, used his oversight of the surveying of Bermuda to enrich himself and future generations of Bermudian Tuckers with prime real estate when he appropriated the overplus land left after Richard Norwood's 1616 survey of the colony. Much of this land, forming an estate known as The Grove, would still be in the hands of his relatives during the American War of Independence. For the remainder of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the real political power in Bermuda lay in the elected parliament and the appointed Council, both dominated by members of Bermuda's wealthy commercial class. By the mid-Seventeenth Century, the Somers Isles Company had ceased sending Governors from overseas, instead appointed Bermudians such as William Sayle from this same local elite. Governors who were too high-handed or injudicious in the exercise of their office fell foul of the local political institutions. Governor Isaac Richier, who arrived in 1691 made himself unpopular with his carousing and criminal behaviour.
Bermudian complaints saw him placed in jail, replaced by Governor Goddard. When Goddard proved worse than Richier, attorney general Samuel Trott had him jailed alongside Richier; the two governors were to be tried before a pair of prominent Bermudians, John Trimmingham and William Butterfield. After Trott called the amateur judges bush lawyers, however, he found himself in St. George's jail alongside the governors. After they confided in him their plan for escape, Trott informed the judges. Richier and Goddard were sent back to England for trial. At the written request of George Washington, during the course of the American War of Independence, 100 barrels of gunpowder were stolen from a magazine in St. George's and provided to the American rebels. No one was prosecuted in relation to this act of treason; the theft had been the result of a conspiracy involving powerful Bermudians, who were motivated as much by Bermuda's desperate plight, denied her primary trading partner and source of food, as by any favourable sentiments they may have had in regard to either
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. 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 played a role in many Imperial wars following settlement. 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 replaced the Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax as the British headquarters for the North America and West Indies Station. In the decades following American independence, Britain was faced with two threats to its maritime supremacy; the first was French, as Napoleon battled Britain for military and economic supremacy in Europe, closing continental ports to British trade.
He unleashed a storm of privateers from the French West Indies in an attempt to cripple British trade in the New World. The Royal Navy was hard-pressed in Europe, unable to release adequate forces to counter the menace of the privateers. In any case, multi-decked ships-of-the-line were designed to battle each other in slow-moving, opposing lines; however many guns they might have to bring to bear, they were not able to run down, or outmanoeuvre the small privateers. The second threat was American; the first successful English colony in the North America, Virginia, which Bermuda was settled as an extension of, was intended to exploit the abundance of timber on that continent. This was at a time when Britain, much of Europe, had long been stripped clear of trees. American timber had been one of the enablers of Britain's ascendancy to maritime supremacy, and, by 1776, a significant part of Britain's merchant fleet was made up of American ships. Despite their own, naval dispute with Napoleon, the Americans took full advantage of their neutral position in the wars between Britain and France, the British Government was enraged by what it saw as America's failure to support it in combating a common threat.
The British Admiralty was enraged by the habit of American merchant and naval vessels to poach sailors from the Royal Navy at a time when its manpower was stretched to the limit. The US had its own interest in breaking Britain's supremacy on maritime trade, from the first days of the Republic it has claimed to champion free trade; the Royal Navy sought to counter the threat of French privateers in the New World by commissioning its own light vessels, built along the lines of traditional Bermuda sloops. The first three vessels commissioned from Bermudian shipyards were 200 ton, 12-gun sloops-of-war, ordered in 1795, commissioned as HMS Dasher, HMS Driver and HMS Bermuda. Over the next fifteen years, the Admiralty would commission a great many more vessels from Bermudian builders, manned by locally recruited officers and crews. Although the first were intended to counter the privateer menace, Bermudian sloops became'advice' vessels, using their speed and handling to evade enemies, carrying communications and vital freight around the globe.
They were used for reconnaissance and maintaining pickets. In addition to ships commissioned by the Admiralty, Bermudian merchant vessels were bought-up and commissioned for this purpose; the most famous was undoubtedly HMS Pickle, which carried the news of British victory back from Trafalgar. The Royal Navy began to invest into Bermudian real-estate in 1795. Early, it began to buy islands at the West End of the chain, in the Great Sound, with the view to building a naval base and dockyard. At that time, there was no known channel wide and deep enough to allow large naval vessels to gain access to the Great Sound. A naval hydrographer, Thomas Hurd, spent a dozen years charting the waters around the Colony, found the Channel through the reefs, still used today by vessels travelling to the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour; the Royal Navy bought and developed property in and around the capital of St. George's, at the East End; these included Convict Bay, which became a Royal Canadian Naval Base, HMCS Somers Isles, during the Second World War, the brick building now housing the Carriage House Museum, Restaurant.
Once Hurd's Channel had been discovered, the Royal Navy soon relocated all of its facilities to the West End. Numerous islands at the West End, in the Great Sound were used for various purposes, but the core of the base, the Dockyard, began to take shape on Ireland Island, at the North West extremity of the archipelago. Local labourers, free or enslaved, were sought to carry out the construction. With most working-age Bermudian men being skilled workers, involved in seafaring or shipbuilding, local labour proved scarce and expensive. In view of attitudes found amongst the Bermudian population to manual labour, the labour force for the start of the work was, apart from specialist Bermudian artisans, built up from slaves and ex-slaves from various sources. Alongside hired Bermudian slaves, who led unusually independent lives, finding their own work and bargaining with prospective employers for wages and conditions, t
MAN SE
MAN SE MAN AG, is a German mechanical engineering company and parent company of the MAN Group. It is a subsidiary of automaker Volkswagen AG. MAN SE is based in Munich, its primary output is for the automotive industry heavy trucks. Further activities include the production of diesel engines for various applications, like marine propulsion, turbomachinery. MAN supplies trucks, diesel engines and turbomachinery. In 2016, its 53,824 employees generated annual sales of around €13.6 billion. MAN SE is owned in majority by Volkswagen AG, it is a producer of Commercial Vehicles, through its MAN Truck & Bus and MAN Latin America divisions, participation in the manufacturer Sinotruk. MAN traces its origins back to 1758, when the "St. Antony" ironworks commenced operation in Oberhausen, as the first heavy-industry enterprise in the Ruhr region. In 1808, the three ironworks "St. Antony", "Gute Hoffnung", "Neue Essen" merged, to form the Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, renamed Gute Hoffnungshütte. In 1840, the German engineer Ludwig Sander founded in Augsburg the first predecessing enterprise of MAN in Southern Germany: the "Sander'sche Maschinenfabrik."
It firstly became the "C. Reichenbach'sche Maschinenfabrik", named after the pioneer of printing machines Carl August Reichenbach, on the "Maschinenfabrik Augsburg"; the branch Süddeutsche Brückenbau A. G. was founded when the company in 1859 was awarded the contract for the construction of the railway bridge over the Rhine at Mainz. In 1898, the companies Maschinenbau-AG Nürnberg and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg AG merged to form Vereinigte Maschinenfabrik Augsburg und Maschinenbaugesellschaft Nürnberg A. G. Augsburg. In 1908, the company was renamed Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg AG, or in short, M·A·N. While the focus remained on ore mining and iron production in the Ruhr region, mechanical engineering became the dominating branch of business in Augsburg and Nuremberg. Under the direction of Heinrich von Buz, Maschinenfabrik Augsburg grew from a medium-sized business of 400 employees into a major enterprise with a workforce of 12,000 by the year 1913. Locomotion and steel building were the big topics of this phase.
The early predecessors of MAN were responsible for numerous technological innovations. The success of the early MAN entrepreneurs and engineers like Heinrich Gottfried Gerber, was based on a great openness towards new technologies, they constructed the Wuppertal monorail and the first spectacular steel bridges like the Großhesseloher Brücke in Munich in 1857 and the Müngsten railway bridge between 1893 and 1897. The invention of the rotary printing press allowed the copious printing of books and newspapers and since 1893, Rudolf Diesel puzzled for four years with future MAN engineers in a laboratory in Augsburg until his first Diesel engine was completed and functional. During 1921, the majority of M. A. N. was taken over by Sterkrade. Through well-directed equities and acquisitions of processing industries, e.g. Deutsche Werft, Deggendorfer Werft und Eisenbau, MAN advanced to a nationwide operating enterprise, with a workforce of 52,000 by 1921. MAN produced tractors by the name MAN Ackerdiesel between.
The decision for tractors production was made due to increasing demand from eastern Germany. At the same time the GHH's economic situation worsened; the causes for this were, among others, the reparations after World War I, the occupation of the Ruhr region and the world economic crisis. In only two years the number of MAN employees sank from 14,000 in the year 1929/30 to 7,400 in 1931/32. While the civil business was collapsing, the military business increased with the armament under the National Socialist regime. GHH/MAN enterprises supplied diesel engines for submarines, cylinders for projectiles and artillery of every description. MAN produced gun parts, including Mauser Karabiner 98k rifle bolts, their Waffenamt code was WaA53, ordnance code was "coc". The MAN works in Augsburg, which produced diesel engines for U-boats, the MAN works in Nuremberg, which built 40 percent of Germany's Panther tanks, were the target of massive Allied bombing attacks during World War II. After the end of World War II the allies split up the GHH group.
A vertical integration in which mining and steel production are consolidated was not allowed any more. The "Gutehoffnungshütte", together with the MAN firms of Southern Germany, therefore concentrated on engineering, plant construction, commercial vehicles and printing machines; this process has been supported by strategic dispositions. In 1982/83 the "Gutehoffnungshütte" plunged into a deep corporate crisis; the enterprise suffered from the late effects of a bad economic situation. This was displayed by the dramatic downturn of the commercial vehicles sales figures. Besides e
