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CConvicted criminals are very welldocumented and often a detailedaccount of the convict’s life canbe reconstructed from the

various court and Home Office records.In the case of convicts transported toAustralia, the records are relatively wellknown to historians. What is little knownis that some were sent instead to work inBermuda, Gibraltar, the Cape of GoodHope and Mauritius.

We may think of the islands as being asub-tropical paradise, but records at TheNational Archives, show just how difficult lifecould be for the prisoners there.

Between 1823 and 1863 more than 9,000convicts arrived in Bermuda to build the RoyalNaval Dockyard. In the early years of theconvict station, most served nearly all theirsentence there. Later however, Bermuda wasusually used as a preliminary holding placebefore the prisoner was sent to Australia.

After the loss of the American colonies in1776, there was no port to protect RoyalNavy ships in the mid-Atlantic. After

numerous skirmishes with Americanprivateers, the government decided that anaval base was needed. Midway betweencolonies in Canada and the West Indies,Bermuda was the obvious choice. In 1809,work began on the construction of the RoyalNaval Dockyard; it was a huge task anddemanded a substantial workforce.

Initially the work was done by slaves, but asthere were few slaves on Bermuda andshipping slaves in from other colonies wasexpensive, progress was slow.

An Act of Parliament was passed in 1823authorising convicts to be employed in hardlabour in any colony designated by the King.And after requests from the Master Generaland Board of Ordnance in Bermuda, RobertPeel, the Home Secretary, agreed that convictsshould be used to complete the project.

However, there was nowhere on the islandto accommodate the men, so Peel decided touse hulks. Initially introduced in the 1780shulks were decommissioned naval ships whichheld convicts in often squalid conditions beforethey were transported.

The Antelope was fitted out to accommodate300 convicts and 200 Royal Marine guards. Shesailed from Spithead on 5 January 1824arriving in Bermuda on 8 February.

Records show that nearly all the convicts on

PRISONERSin paradiseBrenda Mortimer reveals the forgotten story ofthe convicts transported to Bermuda

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The Naval Yard atIreland Island in 1848.

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board were young men in good health who hadbeen chosen especially for the work. They hadbeen convicted of minor offences andsentenced to seven years’ transportation.William Ball, for example, had been foundguilty at the Old Bailey on 14 May 1823 ofpick-pocketing. He was 25 years old, a watchmaker, unmarried and in good health.

Few had any experience of manual labour orof working in hot and humid conditions andyet with the most basic of implements, theywere expected to hack out of hard limestone a

naval dockyard capable of sustaining the RoyalNavy’s presence in the Atlantic.

According to records, the first men wereemployed “in boring and blowing rocks andmaking a breakwater and on other publicworks in HM Dockyard at Ireland Island underthe direction of the Naval Commissioner andother officers of the convict establishment.”

Dockyard authorities soon realised thatmany more workers were needed if the projectwas to be completed quickly and requestedthat 300 more convicts be despatched. In1826, the ship Dromedary arrived followed bythe Coromandel in 1827 and the Weymouthin 1828. Now over 1,000 men worked on theproject at any one time.

Transportation to Bermuda was considereda much worse punishment than being sent toAustralia. Although the voyage itself took a lotless time, once there, the convicts were housedin dark, dirty hulks and no ticket of leave (orparole) system operated.

In Australia, convicts who kept out oftrouble were allowed to apply for a ticket ofleave after serving about half of theirsentence, or eight years if they had been

A map from the mid-19thcentury of Bermuda.

This register from theAntelope shows theyoung ages of the men(often only in their lateteens or earlytwenties), transportedto Bermuda for fairlyminor crimes such aspoaching or stealingfowl. One interestingentry is for AlexanderAitken, aged 37, asurgeon, who got 14years for causing anabortion.

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transported for life. This allowed the convictto spend time working for himself so he couldacquire money to buy goods and even land.The system was seen as an incentive to theconvicts to behave well and make somethingof their lives in Australia.

Even on prison hulks in England, mostconvicts only served half of their sentencebefore being eligible for remission.

Bermudan convicts did not leave the islanduntil they were well into the final year of theterm; early release was only granted inexceptional circumstances. There were

mutinies and riots since there was no incentiveor encouragement to behave well.

Because conditions were harsh andBermudan convicts had to serve the whole oftheir sentence, relatives and even the menthemselves regularly petitioned the HomeSecretary for mercy and asked for theirsentences to be remitted.

And it is in these petitions, now found inseries HO 17 at The National Archives, that thestories of the convicts’ lives emerge. InSeptember 1830, for example, the mother ofSamuel and Thomas Bleakie petitioned theHome Secretary asking for Thomas to bepardoned and to be allowed to return home tohis sorrowing wife and helpless children. TheBleakie brothers had been convicted at theGlasgow circuit court in Spring 1827 ofpassing two forged banknotes, and had bothbeen sentenced to seven years’ transportation.They had been sent to Bermuda in late 1827and Samuel died there in August 1829.

The petition states that this was their firstoffence and that before the commission of thecrime, they were honest and industrious men.The petition ends with the mother’s plea thatshe hopes that she might see her son again asshe has “not long for this world.”

On the back sheet of the petition the gaoler’sreport states that their characters were badbefore and after the trial and so, unsurprisingly,the plea was refused and Thomas was requiredto serve his full sentence in Bermuda.

Another concern was what happened to theconvicts as they neared the end of theirsentences. No time-expired convict wasallowed to be released into the community.Indeed the Bermudan legislature passed an Actin 1830 authorising magistrates to apprehendany convict who had been discharged andfound at large in the islands.

As they could not remain in Bermuda, theywere sent back to England to serve out anyremaining time on the hulks.

In May 1838, the mother of Charles MorganSalkeld petitioned the Home Office asking whyher son had not been freed. He had beenconvicted of sheep stealing in December 1831

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This sketch from theIllustrated LondonNews in 1848 showingthe the convict hulksMedway, Coromandeland Dromedary.

This entry from a medical journal of Bermuda RoyalNaval Hospital shows an entry for Edward Butler, whoreceived a fracture to the jaw “while in the act offighting”. Tensions often ran high in the stressfulcircumstances.

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and his death sentence had been commuted toseven years’ transportation. He had spent nearlyall the time in Bermuda but was returned to theLeviathan hulk in Portsmouth in January 1838and was awaiting release. His mother wasanxious to see him as, like Mrs Bleakie, she wasnot expected to live for very long as she had “anexposed artery that is expected very shortly tocause a sudden dissolution.”

She concluded her petition with the plea:“The strong desire I have to see my child hasinfluenced me to beg your Lordship’sintercession for his liberty.”

The petition was answered on 1 June andmarked “Nil” on the ground that Salkeld’sconduct was very bad on board the Antelopein Bermuda and he had been in solitaryconfinement several times. So Salkeld had nooption but serve out the remaining six monthsof his sentence on board the Leviathan.

Home Office records also show that convictsfrom other British colonies were sent toBermuda. In September 1826, Morall Magoonhad been convicted of forgery in the HighCourt in Montreal and sentenced totransportation for life. In 1831 he petitionedthe Home Office, asking to be allowed to returnto Canada to his wife, six young children andaged parents. With his petition, he enclosed aletter from the judges of the High Court statingthat they had read affidavits confirmingMagoon’s innocence and recommending him tomercy. Even this was not enough to persuadethe Home Secretary to grant him a pardon asthe petition is marked “Nil”.

Later records are scarce and it can bedifficult to trace exactly where convicts weresent after serving a period in Bermuda. Somewent to Western Australia, Van Diemen’s Landand the Cape of Good Hope, although by the1850s objections were raised by settlers to thearrival of such men.

The Times reported in April 1850 that theAnti-Convict Association of the Cape hadresolved that the convicts from Bermuda onboard the Neptune should not be allowed todisembark in the Cape and had asked theColonial Office to change the ship’sdestination. After much correspondence, theColonial Secretary agreed that the ship shouldcontinue to Van Diemen’s Land and theconvicts complete their sentences there.

Burial records of convicts are virtuallynon-existent before 1839 and there are veryfew marked graves in Bermuda. Death rateswere high because of the poor living conditionsin the hulks and the nature of the work.

Admiralty records give a detailed account of

the work undertaken in the Dockyard. Theywere ferried each morning from the hulks inchains, and made to perform the work of“horses” – dragging wagons loaded with stoneto make the breakwater. Each evening theywere taken back to the dark dirty hulks withlittle chance of any free time. They earned 3da day, part of which was kept to pay for theirfood and the balance was given to them whenthey were released.

They were entitled to 12oz of fresh beef and8oz of vegetables every Sunday, Tuesday andThursday which may have been more than theywere accustomed to at home.

However, the accounts for the convictstation for the three months from 1 January to31 March 1825 seem to show that insufficientfood was imported to feed all the inhabitantsin the station in that period. The list includes160lbs of bread, 140lbs potatoes, 3lb 121/4 oztea and 91/2 bottles of gin.

The poor diet must have been one reasonwhy sickness was rife. Initially, the onlymedical facilities were on board the hulks.Once the convict station became established, ahospital was built on the island staffed bydoctors and medical orderlies. Detailed recordsexist of the treatments given to the prisoners.

In February 1825, four brothers, David,Thomas, William and James Messingham wereconvicted at Winchester Assizes of theft and

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Above, the uniformconvicts were obligedto wear in Bermudaincluded a smockembellished with hisname, number andorigin. The convicts’principal employmentwas to quarry and cutstone for thefortifications.

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sentenced to be transported for seven years.They were all in their early twenties, agriculturalworkers and in good health, and so wereobvious candidates to be sent to Bermuda.

In June 1829, James was taken ill withdyspepsia, chronic diarrhoea and bouts ofepilepsy, and became weak and emaciated. Hewas kept in the naval hospital and thesurgeon, J Kennedy, ordered hot baths,sulphate of quince, arrowroot and smallquantities of wine for the patient. After 26days in the sickbay, James was consideredsufficiently recovered to return to work.

His brother William was also a patient in thenaval hospital at the same time, but he wassuffering from chronic dysentery and eventhough he was treated with “every possibleattention” he died on 16 July. Although norecord exists of where he was buried, the costof his coffin was 20 shillings – a large sum forthe time. The other two brothers completedtheir sentences and returned home in 1831although David offended again and ended hisdays in Australia.

These records show that in the early years,great care was taken of the sick as they were adrain on the establishment’s resources.However, once the Dockyard had beencompleted, conditions deteriorated.

The Bermuda Historical Review includesmemoirs by William Sydes who was confined onthe island between 1838 and 1845. Sydes wrotethat some convicts were so desperate to be senthome that they ground up glass and swallowedit, others blinded themselves or scratched their

legs to cause ulcers. Sick convicts were,sometimes, sent back to England. Generally,they were not released but were treated eitheron the hulks or in a penitentiary and wererequired to complete their sentence.

By the mid 1840s, the Colonial Office andthe officers in charge of the station werediscussing the future of the hulk system inBermuda. An outbreak of yellow fever in 1843was made worse because of the dirty, dark andcrowded conditions on the hulks. A shoreprison was built on Boaz Island, which wascompleted in 1851, and housed 600 convicts.

However another bout of yellow fever in1853 signalled the end of Bermuda as aconvict station, although it was ten yearsbefore all the convicts finally left.

In the 40 years that Bermuda had been aconvict station, over 9,000 men were heldthere, of whom, 2,000 had died.

Brenda Mortimer is a non-practisingsolicitor and a volunteer editor at TheNational Archives. For the last six yearsshe has been a member of The NationalArchives’s Local History ResearchGroup and is currently editing thecriminal petitions in HO 17.

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The transportation of large numbers of convicts toBermuda has been little researched, and because theywere not allowed to settle in Bermuda, their recordsare incomplete. Those who managed to serve out theirsentence in the harsh regime on Bermuda often thendisappear from view. But for family historians who areunable to find their convict forebears in Australia, theHome Office records for Bermudan convicts mayprovide valuable clues. They certainly give an insightinto the lives of the men who helped build thegovernor’s mansion and the naval station which was sovital in maintaining the supremacy of the Royal Navy inthe 19th century. The mansion and the harbour workscan still be seen today from the luxury cruise ships asthey approach the island.

The records you may need to use to research aBermuda convict include Admiralty papers: IrelandIsland baptisms and burials, 1826–1848 [ADM 6/ 434];Convict hospital medical journals, 1824–1848[ADM 101/8-11]. In Home Office papers, the quarterlyreturn of convicts (1824–1863) in series HO 8, should listmen who were in Bermuda and HO 11/16-18 containstransport registers (1850–1863) listing men sent toBermuda with details of their crime. HO 7/3 is a registerof convicts on the Coromandel, Antelope, Dromedary,and Weymouth hulks between 1823 and 1829.

Petitions from prisoners’ families and friends are inseries HO 17, between 1819 and 1839: details areavailable on the online catalogue atwww.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue. There wasan article in issue 59 of Ancestors magazine on theserecords. Another article in issue 40 looked at convict hulks.

TAKING IT FURTHERThis page is taken froma register of baptismsand burials at IrelandIsland between 1824and 1848. On this pagealone, for April andMay 1842, there are sixburials for men of theDromedary hulk.

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