AND CROWN, PRIOR TO FIRST MILITIA ACT OF 1687.
The colony of the Somers Isles (or Bermudas,) was founded in 1609 by what had seemed the unhappy demise on the isle's reefs of the flagship of the Virginia Company, the Sea Venture. Although the majority of the survivors would depart the following year, in two newly-built ships, the Deliverance and the Patience, the Admiral of the Company, Sir George Somers, laid claim to the isles in the name of the Company and of England. Two men remained, the first permanent settlers, to maintain that claim by right of occupation. The two Bermuda-built vessels arrived in Jamestown to complete their original mission to relieve it, but to the depraved state of the few survivors they found there they at first attempted to abandon the american colony altogether. They were stopped from doing this by the arrival of another relief fleet from England, but Somers elected to return with the Patience to the islands which now bore his name to procure desperately needed provisions. He would die in Bermuda, however, and his nephew, and heir, Matthew somers, Captaining the Patience, chose to return to Lyme regis to lay claim to his inheritence rather than fulfilling his duty.
The useful result of this-particularly in light of Jamestown's continued survival despite the failure of the Patience to return - was the earlier notice given to the company, and england, of the survival of the greater part of the Sea ventures crew and passengers, and of the new territorial possession gained in the process. William Shakespeare, an acquaintence of one of one of the Company's members, was so inspired as to base his play 'The Tempest' upon the wrecking of the Sea Venture. The Company was so moved as to gain an extension of their Royal Charter making their possession of the Somers Isles official. A Governor, Richard Moore, duly arrived, together with a number of tenant settlers on the Plough to join those left behind by Somers.
As with Jamestown - which had been intended to take advantage of the dense American forest to begin a lumber industry, as well as to serve as a potential naval base from which privateers might prey more readily on passing spanish vessels - the Somers Isles were intended to be a commercial operation generating great profits for the Company's shareholders. The assumption was that the island might be a useful locale for the growth of tobacco, sugar and other valuable commodities for which England was then largely reliant upon Spain's Caribbean colonies. This was not simply an opportunity to undercut the Spanish suppliers with an English source more than a thousand miles nearer, but also was viewed as an important instrument by which the British Government would adjust the balance of trade with Spain. The Crown had looked with great horror, particularly, at the haemorhaging of the nation's wealth to foreign tobacconists.
More particularly to the subject of this essay, the island gave a natural advantage, sitting aside the easterly Trade Winds, from which English privateers and naval vessels might savage Spanish and other vessels returning, laden, to Europe. The less welcome companion of that fact was the potential Spanish attack this would likely provoke. The Spanish government had, some years earlier, given orders to its Governor in Florida to obliterate the ill-fated English colony on the Chesapeake precisely because they perceived this same threat of an English nest of privateers astride their only route home. That earlier colony had only survived that malicious intent because it had, contrary to plan, been located, not on the Chesapeake, but on the island of Roanoke (thanks to the hostility of their Native neighbours, it would prove a brief respite).
Due to this high potential for Spanish aggression, and the poor likelihood of any useful or timely relief from England in the case of an attack ( and Spain was undeniably still the only power in the New World, then) the concern to arrange for the new colony's defences was of immediate and over-riding concern to the new Governor. This concern was fully shared by the directors of the company who would go so far as to reduce to a 1/4 the payment made from their profits by the tenant colonists who joined the militias that were quickly formed.
the majority of the early settlers were indentured servants, repaying the Company for the cost of their transportation by serving, effectively, as serfs for a fixed period. From them Governor Moore recruited a small militia to man the ring of small fortifications he erected around Saint George's and Castle Harbour's.
Spain, which continued to maintain its claim to both the entirety of North America and to Bermuda, remained the primary threat, but with England engaged in hostilities with various of her neighbours over the next two centuries, there would be many spurts of militia strengthening in response to new dangers. At this early stage, however, the colonist's relied primarily on their reefs for defence. Concerned entirely with artillery, the task of this first militia was not to engage enemy troops on the beaches, but to prevent a landing - or, rather, to discourage it. Even with several forts built and fitted with cannon, it was to be quite some time before they could have mounted a useful defence against any concerted attack. Fortunately, on the only occassion given to the early militia men on which to fire a shot in anger - upon the sudden appearance of a Spanish vessel - they were greatly relieved to watch the Spaniard turn and flee. According to popular lore, they had had enough powder for only that one shot!
Under Governor Butler, the complements of the forts were re-organized to include a trained artilleryman as Captain of each, each in command of several militia men. The parishes - then known as tribes - each raised a company of volunteers. Each parish was required to build a store-house to horde weapons and grain. Every militia man was provided with a sword and a musket. The muskets were required to be of a uniform bore so as to prevent any difficulties of logistics ( this ideal would be forgotten by later generations!)
As this was progressing, the failure of the colony's still-born agricultural industry, together with the similar unprofitability of the Jamestown colony, and the malevolent political machinations at work within both the Company, and the (London) Government, led to the dissolution of the Virginia Company and the revoking of its charter for the continental enterprise. It was reformed, and renamed the Somers Isles Company for the only territory to which its charter still applied. This company was to prove as short-lived as its illustrious predecessor, however, and the colony passed to the Crown. The same system of Government was allowed to remain, with the Crown taking over the assignment of governors to oversee the Colonial Assembly formed under the Virginia Company in 1620 ( the third oldest continuous parliament, after the Isle of Man's Tynwald and Westminister).
The organization and efficiency of the militia progressed as the colony did, but, nonetheless, on arriving to begin his term as Governor in 1687, Sir Robert Robinson, a naval officer, found his predecessor had failed to fulfill orders received in 1683, to ensure the proper maintainece of the fortifications and guns, and to keep them manned day and night. In response to the parlous state of the colony's defences, Sir Robert shepherded through the Colonial Assembly the colony's first Militia Act.
THE MILITIA ACT OF 1687.