Historical Re-Enactment & Walking Tour

This morning was Chocolate morning in the Great Gatsby dining room. In October I had a delicious piece of moist chocolate bread, so I ordered it again

Chocolate bread

and I had

Chocolate waffle

This time the bread was dry - although since it was chocolate it was still OK.

I had intended to go back to the National Museum (formerly the Martime Museum) but I saw on the internet (while I was looking for something else) that there was a free re-enactment walk of the Dockyard area at 9:30. So we got off and I went looking for where this would start. I scootered off the dock, and asked at the taxi drivers area and they didn't know so I went to the Visitor's Center (which I think is primarily to arrange tours) and they pointed out where the tour was to start - by the Moon gate.

A real watergate

We got there just in time. There was a lady in costume waiting there and she started out by saying that her husband had gone off without his breakfast so she was going to look for him and we could come along.

Our guide

Then we met a man in the red coat uniform with the big bearskin hat - he was a hoot. He explained about the fort and showed us the arrows which marked the fort as British property (he said prisoners all had the same arrow on their arms). He said WD stood for War Department.

Explaining the Arrow and WD 40

They said that after the end of the Revolution, the British needed someplace in the Atlantic that they could re supply war ships so that they could still control the seas. Bermuda lacked two things that the ships needed - salt (to preserve food) and alcohol (to preserve water as water in a cask will go bad after about a week). Although they are surrounded by salt water they couldn't just get salt from the ocean because it was too humid and the water wouldn't evaporate out of it. It would just be a nasty brine.

Bermuda is not tropical so they couldn't grow the sugar cane and had to import the rum from the West Indies - and they also imported slaves from there. The Africans in Bermuda didn't come direct from Africa.

Following the footprints

Originally the dockyard area, which is on Ireland Island, was a farm owned by a man named John Ireland. So not named after the country of Ireland. It was hilly, and they had to level it off to make the Dockyard. Some of the walls of the fort are the original limestone - they cut down to get to level land, but rather than leveling everything off and then building a wall, they just left enough of the stone to serve as the bottom of the wall.

Looking at the fort walls

British officer

In order to build the dockyard they needed labor. So they had indentured servants who were to serve a term of 7 years. But there were too many servants and not enough masters, so they extended the indentured term to 99 years. They also used convicts who were imported from England - England didn't have enough of them, so they made a bunch of new rules so as to get more convicts (like anyone that complained about the Irish potato famine had committed treason). The convicts were housed on old ships and they wore leg irons all the time. A lot of them died of course. England asked Bermuda did they want to keep the convicts and Bermuda said they did not want to be a penal colony, so all the convicts that survived were shipped back to England and may have ended up in Australia.

Old lady from the past

He's making a face

She told us to the Victualling Yard which was where they slaughtered the animals and salted the meat. (She said it did not smell good) There was an old lady re-enacter there and she had some interchanges with the British officer guy.

Then we met a Cooper.

Cooper

He explained why barrels had a belly (that is they are bigger in the middle than on the ends). It is so you can roll them and steer even around a corner. He explained how they made the barrels and said there were three kinds. Dry vented (so that things inside could get some air), Dry Tight and Wet Tight.

Barracks/prison

Our guide pointed out a big building on the hill and she said that was the barracks for the soldiers in the fort. She said it had a very thick roof - from the top of the second story windows to the top of the roof - that what appeared to be a third story set of windows was just for decoration. There are really only two ways in past the reefs. One was the way the cruise ships come in, and that way was protected by the Dockyard fort. But there was another smaller way on the other side of the island - the barracks protected that side - that's why the barracks are so far from the fort. She said the workers could walk along the wall from the barracks to the fort.

The building was then used as a prison, but the conditions were too bad even for prisoners so they built a max-security prison and the building is now being renovated for archeology interns and people like that to use.

At some point we were interrupted by a big travel lift that was bringing a boat out of the water, so we moved all the way over to the clocktower mall.

Clock tower mall

She said that originally the mechanism to run the hands of the clock was too weak to actually run the clock but that the America's cup people fixed the clock so that it actually runs now. And I noticed that the tide clock also appeared to be operational.

Tide clock

She explained that there had been actual people like the British officer and her husband Thomas. Thomas was the dockyard artist. Since they didn't have cameras, you would have someone draw an item so you would have a record of what it looked like. But the little old lady and the cooper were nat based on actual individuals but were just a representation of people that would have been there at the time.

At the end of the tour I went into the Clocktower Mall just to see what was there - I did not really intend to buy anything. But I saw some little pink sand lockets that were kind of cute so I bought one for my granddaughter so she could see how pink the sand was up close. And Bob bought some rum cake as gifts for Lynde and Jean (the cat sitter)

Shop in the clocktower mall

Our daughter's family did the National Museum, and the others did the Hidden Highlights tour which involved cliff jumping and some other fun activities. They mistakenly thought (due to the tour write-up) that there was no snorkeling so they failed to bring their snorkeling gear. Which was too bad because they had brought the gear with them.

We went back to the ship and had to eat in the Windjammer as the main dining room was not open. I had a couple of hot dogs - I always want hot dogs at home, and we never have them so I figured I should eat them where I could find them on the buffet.

The ship left at 2. We went to Trivia and we missed the first planet to be discovered with a telescope and we missed the name of the country that meant Lion Mountain (Sierra Leone) and the Star Wars actor that was in American Graffiti. There were two questions that they did not understand or hear the question correctly. They all thought the country with the longest monarchy was England because they mistakenly thought that it was the longest ruling monarch (which would probably have been Victoria) I knew it was Japan but they would not listen to me. There was also a question which asked what Great Lakes state you were in if you were in Hell, and they totally missed that it had to be one of the Great Lakes states and said Mississippi when I knew it was probably Michigan. (and it was)

After trivia was dinner. We had a long table which was not very satisfactory. I had the

Caprese salad

and I am not sure what else I ate. My son had the extra price lobster. Bob and I went back to the room where we had a towel animal and a note to put our clocks forward.

Towel animal

I think the rest of them went to Conference Room B (which I told my daughter about) and played dominos.