A bicycle section was formed with six men from each company, and C Company gained a ready-made band when the civilian Somerset Band enlisted en masse.
The Corps was initially armed with single-shot Martinis, but these were replaced by 1897 with the bolt-actioned Lee-Metford, holding ten .303" calibre rounds in a box magazine. Succesive marks of the Lee-Metford/Lee-Enfield would be used until the 1960s. In 1899 a Maxim machine-gun was rolled out of the Regular armoury at Prospect Camp and handed over to the Volunteers.
The three companies took on three areas of responsibility with very particular tasks in each of them. At the East End, they guarded the Cable & Wireless facility on Saint David's Island, and supported the Regulars of the Saint George's garrison, defending the artillery forts and batteries, maintaining patrols of the eastern islands and, preventing landings.
At the West End, the primary task was the defence of the dockyard, although this was firstly envisioned as halting the advancement of any force that succeeded in landing to the South to attack the Dockyard overland. Light infantry tactics therefore had a place, though they also defended the forts and batteries at the West end, including Fort Scaur, a frotified trench which cut Somersetfrom coast to coast as a barrier to the advancement of ground forces. With the withdrawal of the Navy's own Royal Marines detachment, the BVRC also became the only guard the Dockyard had should any military attacker succeed in passing all the other layers of defence.
In the central parishes, the BVRC worked closely with the Regular infantry soldiers of Prospect Camp, providing a mobile force that could mount patrols, defend the South Shore beaches from any landing, and engage with any force that succeeded in making a landing. Defending the forts of the Royal Artillery was again a role, and in the worst case scenario all military forces could be pulled into fortified positions to hold out while a relieving force was awaited.
These duties would remain largelly unchanged 'til the end of the Second World War.
Both the BVRC and the BMA would send detachments to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the BVRC sending another to the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. Otherwise, it concerned itself entirely with training until the Second Boer War, when many of its members volunteered to go to South Africa as a unit.
It was initially intended to send them to Halifax, NS, to join a larger Canadian deployment, but this had already departed and it was decided that it wasn't sufficiently economical to despatch such a snall unit so far on its own. Three riflemen, however, Tommy Gilbert , Clifford Penniston, and Nestor Escobel, re-enlisted in other units, going to South Africa where thet each saw active service. This was to be the last opportunity the unit had for overseas deployment until the Great War.
In 1904, in an attempt to maintain falling manpower, a reserve was created composed of men with three years Volunteer service under their belts. They were issued with uniforms, but with rifles only for their musketry training. Their only requirements were to complete the annual course of musketry for Volunteers, and to attend one battalion parade annually. This reserve was not a great success. It did, however, prove notable in marking the beginning of the Colonial government's assuming the cost of maintaining local forces as it provided most of the budget to pay for the reserve.. In a further attempt to maintain manpower, this time by increasing intake rather than attempting to stem the outflow of trained men, a Cadet Corps was created in 1907. Saltus Grammar School had actually maintained its own Cadet Corps since 1901, loosely affiliated with the BVRC. This was now extended to other schools creating a body of 202 other ranks and three officers. This Corps was associatted with schools for White students and was meant to boost the recruitment of the BVRC, specifically (and was not mirrored by the creation of a BMA-affiliated Cadet Corps for Black students).
When the Volunteer Army in Great Britain was reorganized in 1908 to create the Territorial Army, the changes were not reflected in Bermuda.
THE GREAT WAR, AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE REGIMENT
With the declaration of War in August of 1914, Martial Law was declared and the Volunteer units embodied. Because of the small size of the civil population, this actually could not mean taking volunteers from their civil jobs, but adding the duties of a full-time soldier on top of them. Many soldiers would work a full day before standing guard all night, squeezing in a meal and sleep wherever they could. Despite this shorthandedness, the volunteers almost immediately turned their gaze upon the Western Front.
The onset of War had found the 2 Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment on Garrison, though they left for France soon after. Already trying to attract new recruits to meet its wartime obligations to the Garrison, the BVRC announced before the year was out that it had formed a detached company which it was intended to send to join the 2 Lincolns at the Front.
Embodied at Warwick Camp, the Garrison's primary riflery ranges, which did not normally have its own unit, in January, this contingent was made up of a mixture of seasoned riflemen and NCOs, together with new recruits who had enlisted specifically for the Front (including one young Englishman who had come, at his own expense, all the way from the West Indies where he had been working). The final number of men would be 88.
The Officer Commanding the Contingent - its only commissioned officer- was Captain R.J. Tucker. Due to a shortage of officers, the Colony's Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Major General Sir George Bullock, took upon himself the duties of Adjutant to the Contingent - a position normally filled by a Captain! For this reason, the contingent would be popularly known as Bullock's Boys.
Training through the Winter, the Contingent at last boarded ship for Halifax. There they spent some time thrilling the local citizenry with their drilling as they awaited the departure of a large Canadian deployment with which they were to cross the Atlantic. They reached England in May and were marched to Grimsby to join the 2 Lincolns. Arriving there, however, they found that the 2 Battalion had already departed for the front. There was some debate at the Regimental Depot as to what to do with them. The Regimental HQ wanted to break the contingent apart, re-badge the men as Lincolns and post them as reinforcements. However, Cartain Tucker was in possession of a letter from the War Office directing that they remain together as a unit and so they were attached, instead, as an extra company to the 1st. Battalion, still wearing their own badge and black buttons. Posted to France the following month, they were moved immediately to the Front, the first Colonial unit to reach the Front during the Great War.
Over the next year, this First Contingent would acquit itself well. Several men would earn decorations, and 16 would be commissioned. At least two would transfer to the Royal Flying Corps as combat pilots (A.R. Spurling, DFC, and H.J. Watlington).
They would also suffer heavy casualties. By the following Summer they had lost too many men to remain as a company. Rather than finally absorb its remaining manpower directly into the Lincolns, it was desired to maintain the 'Bermudas' as a distinct unit. A Second Contingent, 34 men and one officer, trained as Vickers machine-gunners fortuitously arrived. Although the Vickers guns they brought with them had been payed for by the Colonial government ( at 200 pounds a-piece - shortly after, Vickers was accused of war profiteering and forced to drastically reduce the cost of its guns,) there had been a reorganization of the Army's Vickers guns, due to shortages, pooling all of them into the hands of a new unit, the Machine Gun Corps (in which a Bermudian officer was serving). The infantry battalions had received the new Lewis light machine-gun in its place. Consequently, the 2 Contingent was stripped of its Vickers guns and merged with the survivors of the 1 Contingent, the lot being retrained as Lewis gunners and providing a dozen gun teams to 1 Lincolns Headquarters.
At the War's end, the HQ Company of the 1 Lincolns was posted to Ireland where a war of seccession was being waged, taking some Bemudians with them. The bulk of the company returned to the island, though, in dribbles and drabs.
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