The Great War in Colour

[aodhdubh]

On 19/11/2022 at 12:55, FROGSMILE said:

It’s such an interesting story of strategy and the part played by geography when it comes to the use of islands as bases.  It’s what seems to be China’s contemporary policy in the Pacific at the moment.  You should write a book about as you explain it very well, but to make it commercially appealing I think you’d need to cover the whole of the original North America Station too.  Nevertheless, Bermuda could be the linchpin and with plenty of illustrations I’m sure it would find a market.

China is starting to venture into the Atlantic, also, and the US Navy, which never desired to close its bases in Bermuda at the end of the Cold War but was obliged to do so by its political masters as part of the "peace dividend" (the Royal Navy was obliged also in 1995 to close HM Naval Base Bermuda "HMS Malabar", the remnant of the Royal Naval Dockyard, on its 200th anniversary, and the Canadian Forces CFS Bermuda, which had been a Royal Navy wireless station where the Bermuda Militia Artillery suffered its first deaths in an accident during the First World War, and was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy after the Second World War), has been showing increased interest in Bermuda, again...though it's 99 year leases were rescinded. Bermuda is British territory, of course, but the British Government's continued defence cutbacks indicate that it will continue to rely on the US to secure the region under the NATO alliance. It is, at least, showing more interest in the local-service units in British Overseas Territories, but probably only as a further attempt to cheap out on its obligations to defend them....something it has a long history of doing.

 

https://www.royalgazette.com/news/article/20201118/us-navy-sub-hunters-to-be-based-in-bermuda-25-years-after-the-nas-shut-down/

 

Regarding writing a book, I'll send you a private message.

Edited 25 November , 2022 by aodhdubh

[aodhdubh]

2/4th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment personnel at Bermuda. They must have been short of the cotton "summer dress" as a couple in the rear appear to be wearing serge. An ornamental Japanese oleander hedge behind (the conifers beyond that are endemic Bermuda cedars...actually junipers).

Edited 25 November , 2022 by aodhdubh

[aodhdubh]

I have not been able, as yet, to find an explanatory account of whatever theatrics this photograph records, but it is of the 2nd Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment in Bermuda in 1914. The battalion was removed that autumn, less than a year into a three year stint of garrison duty, and replaced by a succession of Canadian battalions, then the 2/4th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment.

[toofatfortakeoff]

At least they had a little fun by looks of things. They went to trenches in December 1914 I think. 

[16thBNCanScotJim]

On 16/11/2022 at 18:56, aodhdubh said:

Still working on this one..probably 2/4th Bn East Yorkshire Regiment at a victory celebration on Front Street, near Heyl's Corner, City of Hamilton, Bermuda. https://www.google.com/maps/@32.2921745,-64.7856357,3a,60y,285.67h,92.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbAPe5M8dKZSjzvudqjrg2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

Hello All,

Great Pics, and great job colorizing!  This is about #39 Front street in Hamilton, Bermuda.  I have attached a screenshot of the exact location as it appears today from Google Street view. I have used the building to confirm the location noting point such as; balcony height difference in right side of photos between the two parts of what is now the HSBC building, the number of pillars on the balcony of the HSBC building, the same for the building in the back ground, and all hemming in the two peeked buildings in the middle. 
 

I was fortunate enough to visit Bermuda in June-July 1991, representing Canada as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, hosted by the Royal Bermuda Regiment Artillery and Cadets at Warwick Camp.  I recall marching down the same area of Front Street (although the other direction). 
 

Jim

[aodhdubh]

On 16/01/2023 at 06:33, 16thBNCanScotJim said:

Hello All,

Great Pics, and great job colorizing!  This is about #39 Front street in Hamilton, Bermuda.  I have attached a screenshot of the exact location as it appears today from Google Street view. I have used the building to confirm the location noting point such as; balcony height difference in right side of photos between the two parts of what is now the HSBC building, the number of pillars on the balcony of the HSBC building, the same for the building in the back ground, and all hemming in the two peeked buildings in the middle. 
 

I was fortunate enough to visit Bermuda in June-July 1991, representing Canada as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, hosted by the Royal Bermuda Regiment Artillery and Cadets at Warwick Camp.  I recall marching down the same area of Front Street (although the other direction). 
 

Jim

Possibly you marched right past me as I that sounds as though you marched in the Queen's Birthday Parade, and I usually attended as a spectator for the various public ceremonial duties...actually, I recollect marching in the 1992 Queen's Birthday Parade. Unfortunately, the HSBC building is new. The Trimingham Brothers department store, established in the 1840s as I recollect, was located there in 1991. Tourism had already been stagnating in Bermuda for some years by that point and Trimingham's, though keeping itself afloat, had built up quite a bit of debt that the Bank of Bermuda was carrying. The Bank of Bermuda (like the Bank of NT Butterfield) had a substantial amount of international banking business due to Bermuda's role as the global re-insurance headquarters, and HSBC wanted that business, not the savings accounts of local pensioners. The law in Bermuda, at the time, still required any business operating in Bermuda (as opposed to exempted companies which operated from Bermuda, but not in Bermuda...notably the many re-insurers) to be majority locally-owned. HSBC was able to have the law amended to allow it to takeover the Bank of Bermuda, now branded HSBC Bermuda, in about 2004/2005, to the chagrin of many. HSBC's directors were not happy with the Bank of Bermuda's existing headquarters building at Albouy's Point and called in Trimingham's debt, I gather taking their building and the ground it stood on in lieu of cash, levelled the department store, and built the current eye-sore monstrosity.

 

This is a photograph from about 1940 from the opposite side of Heyl's Corner, with the buildings more or less as they were in 1919.

[aodhdubh]

Actually...it seems I have a scan of another photograph taken moments earlier of the same parade.