Page 419 - The British Big Four

Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria, is credited with putting
Bermuda on the tourist map after paying an extended visit to the is-
lands in 1883. The princess was the wife of the Governor General of
Canada and was keen to escape the long Canadian winter. By the turn
of the century, Bermuda was well on the way to becoming a fashion-
able winter destination for ‘snow birds,’ who flocked aboard steamers
crossing regularly from New York to Hamilton.
Bermuda’s strategic location in the Atlantic secured it a role in Allied
military and intelligence operations in WWII. However, its proxim-
ity to the US mainland made it inevitable that the US take primary
responsibility for developing bases on the island. Much to the locals’
consternation, the British subsequently signed a 99-year lease handing
over substantial portions of Bermuda’s territory to the US military. The
US constructed an air base on St David’s Island, where the internation-
al airport is now located. In the wake of WWII, women were given the
right to vote and, after boycotts, some of the franchise qualifications
restricting the power of black voters were removed. In 1963 the Pro-
gressive Labour Party was introduced, in part to represent the interests
of nonwhite Bermudians in the face of a government almost totally
made up of white landowners. The rest of the parliamentarians united
to form the United Bermuda Party. The two parties worked together
to produce the 1968 constitution which provided for full internal self
government, while leaving security, defense and diplomatic affairs to
the crown.
Although Bermuda had long prided itself on the relative harmony of
its race relations, riots and race antagonism in the 1970s resulted in the seamounts, two to the South-West of Bermuda, forming Argus Banks,
removal of all de facto discrimination and the beginning of talks on
independence from Britain. In the decades that have followed since,
the independence movement became the dominant political issue, but
a referendum in 1995 failed by a two-thirds majority as Bermudians
became apprehensive about the political and economic cost of inde-
pendence. Two weeks later they did, at least, regain control of 10% of
the island’s land mass when post-Cold War military cutbacks resulted
in the closure of the US base on the island. In 1998 the PLP’s Jennifer
Smith was selected as premier, replacing the UBP’s Pamela Gordon,
who was Bermuda’s first female premier and the youngest person ever
to hold the office.
Seen from above the ocean’s surface, the general characteristic of the
islands is that of ridges, running from the North East to the South
West, before turning towards the North. Together with the submerged,
encircling reef, they form the edge of a volcanic caldera, to the south
of which the islands lie. The islands enclose a smaller caldera, which
forms the Great Sound, and another forms Harrington Sound. It is
believed that the volcano was formed on the fault line from which the
Atlantic oceanic tectonic plates expand, pushing the Old and New
Worlds away from each other and forming the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
It has also been theorized that the volcano was formed by a hotspot.
Therefore, the volcanic sea mountain first formed from the mid-Atlan-
tic ridge approximately 100 million years ago. Through the processes
of plate tectonics and sea floor spreading, this volcano moved to the
west of the mid-Atlantic ridge and became extinct.
Bermuda now sits far to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in foothills
that once were the ridge. This is because it is far older than other is-
lands formed on the ridge, which lie much closer to the ridge (includ-
ing Iceland, The Azores, Ascension Island, etc.). There are also three
and Challenger Banks, with a third, the Bowditch Seamount to the
north. None breaks the surface of the ocean, but all support coral reefs
and are popular fishing grounds.