The Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609.

The first was French, as Napoleon battled Britain for military, political, and economic supremacy in Europe, closing continental ports to British trade.

The first successful English colony in the North America, Jamestown, Virginia, which Bermuda was settled as an extension of, was intended to exploit the abundance of timber on that continent.

The British Admiralty was also enraged by the practice of American merchant and naval vessels to poach sailors from the Royal Navy at a time when its manpower was stretched to the limit.

The Royal Navy sought to counter the threat of French privateers in the New World by commissioning its own light vessels, built along the lines of traditional Bermuda sloops.

Over the next fifteen years, the Admiralty would commission a great many more vessels from Bermudian builders, manned by locally recruited officers and crews.

Although the first were intended to counter the privateer menace, Bermudian sloops ultimately became 'advice' vessels, using their speed and handling to evade enemies, and carrying communications and vital freight around the globe.

Very early, it began to buy islands at the West End of the chain, and in the Great Sound, with the view to building a naval base and dockyard.

Unfortunately, at that time, there was no known channel wide and deep enough to allow large naval vessels to gain access to the Great Sound.

A naval hydrographer, Thomas Hurd, spent a dozen years charting the waters around the Colony, and eventually found the Channel through the reefs, which is still used today by vessels travelling to the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour.

With the refusal of the Admiralty to accept continuing responsibility for the Corps, and with the rejection by the Corps of orders given by the government for them to be transferred to the West India Regiments and their subsequent departure in 1816 for settlement in Trinidad, the absence of suitable labour for the continuation of the dockyard works over the following six years led to the decision late in 1822 to use convicts shipped from Britain and Ireland to carry out most of the original phase of building at the base, the first arriving in 1823.

During the War, the British blockade of American ports was orchestrated from Bermuda, and a squadron based in Bermuda was active in the Chesapeake from February 1813 until the end of the War, British forces briefly occupying Kent Island in 1813 and establishing a base on Tangier Island in 1814, where the Royal Navy recruited from among refugee slaves a Corps of Colonial Marines.

Other refugees were first brought to Bermuda in May 1813, where they were employed in the construction of the new Dockyard on Ireland Island in the company of hired artisans, both free and enslaved, and finally to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for resettlement.

[4] After the War the men of the Corps of Colonial Marines were brought to Bermuda to man the garrison and to continue the construction of the Dockyard.

Their last day of pay at Bermuda was 15 July 1816, when they were taken, together with their families, to Trinidad where they were formally disbanded on 20 August and taken to their new settlements to occupy grants of land.

For this, he was ordered to receive punishment (presumably flogging) on Tuesday, 3 July 1849, with the other convicts aboard the hulk assembled behind a rail to witness.

The last convicts were withdrawn in 1863, returned to Britain on the Bermudian merchant clipper, Cedrine (which was wrecked on the Isle of Wight, on its maiden voyage, costing Captain Thomas Melville Dill, grandfather of the parliamentarian and Attorney General of the same name, his Master's certificate).

The Dockyard served as the base for a succession of Royal Naval organisations, including the North America and West Indies Squadron.

During the First World War, the Dockyard and its vessels, intended to dominate the American coastline and the West Indies, found themselves absorbed with the role of protecting Allied merchant shipping the length and breadth of the Atlantic.

The vessels of the North America and West Indies Squadrons were employed to track down German surface raiders, and in escorting the convoys that were assembled at Bermuda before crossing the Atlantic.

The target tugs operated at first from Boaz Island as floatplanes, and from 1943 also from the runway at the United States Army's Kindley Field.

During the Second World War, the United States had been permitted to build a US Naval Operating Base (serving both ships and seaplanes) and a US Army airfield in the colony under free 99-year leases.

With little remaining interest in policing the world's waterways, and with the American bases to guard Bermuda in any potential war with the Warsaw Pact or other enemies, the Royal Navy closed most of the Dockyard facilities in 1958 (a process which had begun with the removal of the large floating drydock, AFD 5, in 1951 (the smaller AFD 48 remained)), with most of the Admiralty's landholdings in Bermuda (along with all of the British Army's properties) being transferred to the local government for £750,000.

[13] Following the withdrawal of the Admiral (the Commander-in-Chief, America and West Indies) in 1956, the Senior Naval Officer West Indies (SNOWI) was also based at Bermuda, with the shore headquarters of SNOWI occupying Moresby House (originally built in the 1899s as the residence of the civilian Officer in Charge, Works) along with the RNO, until the role was abolished in 1976.

[15] Among other difficulties that had beset SNOWI in the role of CBFCA, Bermuda, being over 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) North of the Virgin Islands, had been found to be too remote from the West Indies to be a useful command centre for handling any contingency situation that arose there.

However, after 1969, SNOWI retained responsibility for providing general military advice to Governors, Heads of Missions, and Administrators in the West Indies, with the exception of British Honduras.

The shore establishments included one at the Commissioner's House, at the north of the Keep, and, later, the Royal Naval Air Station on Boaz Island that operated during the Second World War.

Both of these were establishments within the larger active naval base, and the name HMS Malabar never applied to the entirety of the HM Dockyard Bermuda.

[18] To serve these visitors, several former warehouses have been turned into artists shops and a pedestrian mall has opened in the clock tower building.

By An Order in Council dated 27 June 1832 the role of the Resident Commissioner was replaced by either a Captain or Commodore or Admiral Superintendent depending on the size of the yard.