Bermuda – from shipwreck to one of Britain's oldest overseas territories
Bermuda had no Indigenous population when Europeans first came across it. The islands take their name from the Spanish navigator Juan de Bermúdez, who sighted them in the early sixteenth century. Surrounded by treacherous reefs, they were long feared by sailors as the "Isle of Devils".
Permanent English settlement began after the ship Sea Venture, bound for the Virginia colony, was wrecked on the reefs in 1609 under the command of Admiral Sir George Somers. The survivors built new ships and sailed on, but the reports of the islands led to a settlement a few years later, and St. George's became one of the oldest continuously inhabited English towns in the Americas. Early Bermudians grew tobacco, built ships and made their living at sea. Enslaved Africans and Indigenous people from the Americas were brought to the islands, and slavery lasted until its abolition in the British Empire in 1834.
With its strategic position in the Atlantic, Bermuda became an important base for the Royal Navy, and later also for the United States during the Second World War. In the twentieth century tourism and, later, international business and insurance became the pillars of the economy. Bermuda remains a British Overseas Territory with a long parliamentary tradition and extensive self-government.
Today Bermuda is shaped by its maritime heritage, its colourful towns and a society proud of both its African and European roots.
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