THE ISLAND NOBODY WANTED

[Music] This is an island nobody wanted. [Music] Gibbs Hill Lighthouse towers above all else in Bermuda. Built in the 19th century, its beacon all but ruined a major island industry, salvaging wrecked ships from the surrounding jagged reefs. So dangerous because so unexpected was Bermuda that early navigators called it the island of devils. [Music] The Spaniard Juan de Bermudez discovered the island less than 20 years after Columbus sailed for the new world. Not bothering to claim it, he stayed only long enough to leave his name and a few pigs to multiply and feed the victims of future shipwrecks in this wild place. Thereafter, for almost a century, nobody wanted this island. [Music] In6009, a violent storm sent the Virginia bound ship of British Admiral Sir George Summers onto the reefs. He and his men of the Sea Venture came ashore to spend only the year it took them to build two small ships to take them to Jamestown with food for the starving settlers there. Later, however, they returned to settle. Many, naturally enough, became ship builders. [Music] [Applause] Recalling the Spaniard's discovery a 100red years before is Bermuda's first coined money, the so-called hog money, bearing the image of the pigs Bermudez left behind on the island along with his name on this oldest map locating Bermuda. This ancient map was handdrawn by a lone rower who circumnavigated the island. 22 mi long, 1 1/2 m wide, year- round semi-tropical climate. Yet, while the islands of the Caribbean changed hands like cards in a card game, the unwanted Bermuda only once in all her history fired a shot in anger. This was to scare away a Spanish man of war. [Music] A lucky shot indeed because it represented 50% of the cannonballs on hand at the time. [Music] Eventually, Great Britain fortified Bermuda, sometimes calling it the Gibralar of the West. The same reefs that guaranteed a good living from the wrecked ships that founded upon them eventually became a much richer asset. For they protected Bermudeian waters, creating a great calm lagoon within the rugged Atlantic. But the idea of repose from the sea or from the greater world took its time to develop. [Music] It wasn't in fact till 1663 that Bermuda recorded its first tourist, the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth from Massachusetts, one of the numerous other British colonies of the day. A man of both piety and poetry, known in fact as the rhyming divine, he came expecting to die of one or more of his ailments. He stayed 7 months finding on the contrary that the island was a tonic. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The widowed pastor returned home. not only survived his vacation by 40 years, but also managed to marry twice more in the interim and sire a whole flock of children, too. [Music] Much later, a Bermudeian predicted if regular communication could be established, many a h 100red men and women would flock hither like birds that obeying the seasons leave the regions of snows or like Bermuda's own longtails who make this mid-Atlantic island their resting place. The prediction was a good one. In time, people did want this island. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat up here. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] But for many generations, the occasional tourist like the Reverend Mr. Wigglesworth was not enough to sustain the economy of the islands. So the Bermudians turned to ship building, gardening, and agriculture. [Music] They grew tobacco and oranges and potatoes. But above all, the famed Bermuda Onion that soon outnumbered the potatoes 2 to1. Bermuda's age of tourism began inospiciously enough when some of her onion boats returned from the United States carrying people for ballast as it were. One of the early tourists was one Samuel Langghorn Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. His observations on Bermuda, which he visited many times, could guide the visitor today. [Music] [Applause] [Music] The landlocked water was lovely with its glittering belts of blue and green. We steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed only just enough room for the vessel's body. And now before us loomed Hamilton, the capital city, the whitest mass of architecture that exists in the world, perhaps white as marble, white as snow, white as flower, white. Never mind. We'll hit upon a figure by and by that'll describe this peculiar white. [Music] [Music] They built a bridge for us to go ashore. A truly funny sight. We laughed and roared at this barbarous arrangement. [Music] We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature. Nobody offered his services to us or molested us in any way. I said it was like being in heaven. [Music] [Applause] I think a photograph is a most important document. And there's nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever. To the Bermudeians, Mark Twain cut so imposing a figure that they called him the king. Mark Twain, in turn, spoke somewhat more graphically of his Bermudeian friends. There he comes, looking just like Gibbs lighthouse, stiff and tall, turning his lights from side to side. In Bermuda metaphor, the onion stands for perfection. Perfection absolute. To praise somebody, he is an onion. To encourage somebody, be an onion. [Laughter] There was exactly one mahogany tree on the island. I know this to be reliable because I saw a man who said he'd counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white coral or a good many feet where a hill intrudes itself. The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulst way, unfold in pretty surprises at every turn. [Music] [Music] Thank you. [Laughter] Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to loaf in. There are no harassments. The deep peace and quiet sink into one's body and bones and give his conscience a rest. A good many Americans go there until the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at home. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The Bermudians are hoping soon to have telegraphic communication with the world. But even after they shall have acquired this curse, it'll still be a good country, for there are charming little islands scattered about the enclosed sea, where one could live secure from interruption. The telegraph boy would have to come in a boat, and one could easily kill him while he was making his landing. [Music] Take any road you please. You may depend upon it. You will not stay in it half a mile. [Music] Ramble through the old capital city of St. George, which is a quaint one with interesting crooked streets and narrow crooked lanes. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] We never met a man or woman or child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be discontented. We have seen none but honest faces. [Music] [Music] The least little bit of cottage is as white and blemishless as the statiest mansion. It's the whitest white you can conceive of and the blindingest. I know of no other country that has chimneys worthy to be gazed at and gloated over. [Music] It's the tidiest country in the world and very much the tidiest too. Here you sweep blossoms instead of leaves. There is no fall or winter in Bermuda. Mark Twain was among the many who signed a petition to ban motor cars from Bermuda. among other signers Upton Sinclair and Woodro Wilson. After World War II, the automobile finally came to Bermuda. But it had to be small, no more than one to a family, and move no faster than 20 mph. [Music] Off Bermuda's beaches begins the great underwater realm that is 10 times larger than the dry land it surrounds. A translucent wilderness of coral reefs and lagoons. [Music] Still, well into the 19th century, there were maps of the Atlantic that didn't even include Bermuda. There were sea captains bound for the island who swore it couldn't possibly exist. [Music] [Music] The sea remains Bermuda's basic enduring theme. More than a thousand men vy for the opportunity to race to the Mid-Atlantic Island in the International Blue Ribbon Sailing Classic, the Newport Bermuda Yacht Race. Thus, the sea sets its mark upon every aspect of the lives of the 50,000 Bermudians. For a goodly stretch of oceans separates this tiny island from all other places on Earth. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] To this day, the seas traditions are Bermuda's tradition. conditions. Thus, Bermudeians christen their new homes as if they were ships. [Music] The island gave its name to the shorts. Half a century ago, participants in the Newport to Bermuda yacht race liked the shorts worn by the Royal Navy and the British colonial soldiers. A good idea rarely stays local. [Music] [Applause] [Music] In this dramatic reenactment from yestery year, a policeman gravely measures the distance from the shorts to the knees. He finds it excessive. So he issues a warning. Thus was assured the decorum of an age that couldn't imagine our own. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] Heat up here. [Music] had I plantation of this aisle, my lord, no kind of traffic would I admit, no occupation, all men idle, all and women too. [Music] [Applause] Shakespeare who never saw the island immortalized it in the Tempest. The world traveler Mark Twain who did confirmed the vision of the bard. [Music] I think I could live here always and be contented. You go to heaven if you want to. I'd rather stay here. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Yeah. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music]