Watford Island was part of the British Admiralty presence at the west end of Bermuda.
Together with neighbouring Boaz Island it was developed in the 1840s as a prison to house convicts transported to Bermuda to labour on the construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island and other Government works.
Prior to this, convicts had been accommodated in unhealthy conditions aboard prison hulks.
After the last convicts were removed from Bermuda in the 1860s, Boaz and Watford Islands were transferred from the Admiralty to the War Department, which used them as a British Army base, replacing the bridge that had linked them with a man-made isthmus, effectively turning the two islands into one and the channel between into a camber.
The buildings became derelict, and many have since been demolished, though one on Watford was converted by the local Government to Police barracks in 1956 (no longer serving that function).