The Bermuda Garrison had been established in May, 1701, with the arrival in Bermuda of an Independent Company of regular soldiers (Captain Lancelot Sandys, Lieutenant Robert Henly, two sergeants, two corporals, fifty private soldiers, and a drummer) detached from the 2nd Foot of the English Army (along with the new Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Captain Benjamin Bennett) aboard HMS Lincoln.

During the American War of Independence, regular soldiers invalided from continental battlefields as part of the Royal Garrison Battalion had been stationed in Bermuda (again accommodated primarily within St. George's Town, although some personnel lived under canvas, and others in scattered small accommodations in or near forts, such as at Ferry Reach, Fort Paget on Paget Island, and at King's Castle on Castle Island) between 1778 and 1784, but all companies of the Royal Garrison Battalion were gathered in Bermuda and disbanded following the Treaty of Paris which recognised the independence of the thirteen colonies that were to form the United States of America.

The Royal Navy immediately began planning for what was to become the Royal Naval Dockyard, although it was first obliged to spend a dozen years charting Bermuda's barrier reef to locate a channel sufficient to give large ships-of-the-line access to the northern lagoon, the Great Sound, and Hamilton Harbour (where the town of Hamilton was established in Pembroke Parish in 1790.

The Militia and volunteer gunners, who could be embodied in wartime for full-time service, remained vital to the defence of the colony, but as the regular units of the Board of Ordnance (which included the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, as well as commissariat stores, ordnance, transport, and barracks departments) and British Army increased, the colonial Government ceased to fund and maintain the Militia.

[5] Bermuda's importance was due to its location, midway between Nova Scotia and the British West Indies, and 640 miles off the Atlantic seaboard of the new United States.

The naval and military forces based in Bermuda also carried out amphibious operations against targets on or near to the Atlantic coast of the United States during the war.

In August 1814, a force of 2,500 soldiers under Major-General Robert Ross had just arrived in Bermuda aboard HMS Royal Oak, three frigates, three sloops and ten other vessels.

In response to a request by Lieutenant-General Sir George Prévost (the Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the Provinces of Upper-Canada, Lower-Canada, Nova Scotia, and New-Brunswick, and their several Dependencies, Vice-Admiral of the same, Lieutenant-General and Commander of all His Majesty’s Forces in the said Provinces of Lower-Canada and Upper-Canada, Nova Scotia and New-Brunswick, and their several Dependencies, and in the islands of Newfoundland, Prince Edward, Cape Breton and the Bermudas, &c. &c. &c) calling for strikes on the United States coast in retribution for the "wanton destruction of private property along the north shores of Lake Erie" by American forces under Col. John Campbell in May 1814 (the most notable being the Raid on Port Dover).

In the 1840s, however, land was acquired in Devonshire Parish, to the east of the Town of Hamilton, for the construction of Prospect Camp, and, by the 1860s, the Bermuda Garrison headquarters and most of the infantry had relocated there.

Although intended to be embodied only in wartime, or for annual training, to re-inforce the regular gunners, it took on the entire responsibility for manning the batteries in readiness for war, and the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers was raised in 1930 to take on some of the responsibilities of the withdrawn regular engineers (specifically, manning the Defence Electric Lights used to illuminate targets for the coastal artillery).

Although the small sizes of these units meant that only two 6-inch guns at St. David's Battery could be kept ready for war, much of the weekly training took place at St. George's Garrison, where the Bermuda Militia Artillery headquarters was located at Convict Bay.

The decision to close the Bermuda Garrison was quickly reversed by Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill after he hosted United States President Eisenhower and French Premier Laniel at a conference in the Mid-Ocean Club at Tucker's Town in 1953.