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Ireland Island is the north-westernmost island in the chain which comprisesBermuda. It forms a long finger of land pointing northeastwards from the main island, the last link in a chain which also includesBoaz Island andSomerset Island. It lies withinSandys Parish, and forms the northwestern coast of theGreat Sound. It is regarded as one of the six principal islands of Bermuda, and part of theWest End of the archipelago.
In 1618, aprivateering vessel under the command of a notoriouspirate by the name of Powell ran aground on the main island, and Powell was banished to the island (which at that time was uninhabited) by the colonial governor. Following theAmerican War of Independence, which left Bermuda the only British territory between Nova Scotia and the West Indies, theRoyal Navy bought the island to use for a lighthouse and dockyard.
A dozen years were spent surveying Bermuda's encompassing reef for a channel sufficient to enableships of burthen to reach Ireland Island and the Great Sound. Although the Admiralty had already begun acquiring Ireland Island and other properties around the Great Sound, in 1795 it first established a base at the East End, whereAdmiralty House was first located at Rose Hill, besideSt. George's town with the fleet anchoring atMurray's Anchorage, off the northern shore offSt. George's Island while construction began at Ireland Island. The lighthouse was never built, but thedockyard became a strategically important one for the navy during the wars of 1812–15. It first served as the winter headquarters and base for what was to become theNorth America and West Indies Station (withHalifax, Nova Scotia, filling these roles during the summers), but became the year-round headquarters, main-base and dockyard by the 1820s. The dockyard was expanded at the turn of the century by construction of a new South Yard. From this point, the original fortified yard has been known as the North Yard. Each of the yards has a long breakwater, orarm enclosing a camber. Although the main anchorage for the fleet wasGrassy Bay (with Murray's Anchorage remaining a secondary anchorage), the area of water inside the mouth of the Great Sound between Ireland Island and Spanish Point, there was considerable space within the cambers for vessels as large as cruisers to berth on wharfs or the inner sides of the breakwaters. As Bermuda's porous limestone did not allow for a conventional drydock, a series of floating dry docks were also moored to the wharf inside the cambers from the 1860s.
With control of the western North Atlantic ceded to the alliedUnited States Navy during theSecond World War (when aUnited States Naval Operating Base, serving ships and flyingboats, was built on the Great sound, andUnited States Army Air Forces airbaseKindley Field at the East End) and subsequently under theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Royal Naval Dockyard was reduced to a base in 1951 (with the ships based there required to return to Portsmouth for repairs). Most of Ireland Island, and the other Admiralty and War Office landholdings in Bermuda, were transferred to the colonial government in 1957, but the South Yard and adjacent areas continued to operate as a naval base titledHMS Malabar until the 1980s, when the last vessels based there were withdrawn and HMS Malabar became a supply station. The frigate designated asWest Indies Guardship would visit on its way to the West Indies, and again on returning to Britain. Otherwise, HMS Malabar served as a supply station and berthing area for Royal Navy and NATO vessels transiting or exercising in the area until closing in 1995.
The Commissioner's House at the highest point atop The Keep (a fortress within the fortified North Yard) on the northern point of the island was home to aRoyal Navy Wireless Station from 1939 to 1949 (another had been located since theFirst World War at Daniel's Head on Somerset Island, and was taken over by theRoyal Canadian Navy from the 1960s 'til 1995 asCFS Bermuda, a transmitter location). Since the 1970s, theBermuda Maritime Museum has occupied the Keep, including the Commissioner's House (and, following the end of the Millennium, also took possession of the Casemates Naval Barracks to expand into thenational museum of theBritish Overseas Territory). Other than HMS Malabar and the maritime museum, Ireland Island was largely deserted after the 1950s, and many of the former naval buildings were becoming derelict by the 1980s when the colonial government formed aquango named theWest End Development Company to attempt to draw businesses and visitors to the area.
The steady increase in size of the cruise liners visiting Bermuda during the summer months has meant that, since the start of the Millennium, few can fit through the narrow channels toSt. George's Harbour andHamilton Harbour and have instead berthed at the Royal Naval Dockyard. These liners are too large to enter either of the dockyard's cambers (previously, large liners such as theQueen Elizabeth 2 andSS Canberra, like naval battleships and aircraft carriers, had anchored at Grassy Bay), and theGovernment of Bermuda has consequently built a wharf on the outer, Grassy Bay, side of the northern breakwater. This wharf, which has proved vulnerable to storms, has been titledKing's Wharf. The presence of most of Bermuda's tourism visitors there has turned the Royal Naval Dockyard into a busy pleasure town, albeit few people actually reside on Ireland Island. A number of buildings around the dockyard have been taken down since the 1990s, and a new prison was constructed on the western side of Ireland Island North (west of the South Yard north of the Moresby Plain athletic field, and below and south of the Casemates Naval Barracks (which had previously been pressed into use as a prison after being taken over from the Admiralty by the colonial government).
WEDCO has allowed many the naval residences there to fall into dereliction, with Victoria Row (terraced married quarters) demolished in 2016, and the protected status of Albert Row in the process of being removed in 2020 to enable the same fate.[1] The naval chaplain's residence, restored in the 1980s byEdward C. Harris of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, was taken over by WEDCO in the 1990s. The ruin of the single Mechanics' Quarters on Maria Hill have been swallowed by a forest of invasive species. Other buildings on Ireland Island South had been destroyed before WEDCO's creation, including the Royal Naval Hospital (although the adjacent isolation hospital for infectious diseases survives).[2]
32°19′31″N64°50′09″W / 32.32528°N 64.83583°W /32.32528; -64.83583
