Never has so small an island played such an instrumental role in international affairs as Bermuda.
Filmmaker Lucinda Spurling's does our fascinating 400-year history complete justice in her epic documentary series The Lion and the Mouse released later this month.
The three-part docu-drama debuted at the BIOS Station this weekend to sponsors, those involved in making the film as well as Governor Sir Richard Gozney and Lady Gozney, Minister Dale Butler and U.S. Consul General Gregory Slayton.
It maps out Bermuda's various historical periods in seven "acts" charting how we moved from an agricultural community to leading a thriving maritime economy and playing a crucial military role before the end of war gave way to tourism and finally a series of raging hurricanes on the east coast of America paved the way for Bermuda to become a major global player in the reinsurance industry and a hotbed of international business.
Meticulous
You would have to be a pretty thorough historian to know all the details in this meticulously researched three-hour series. The film opens with Aesop's fable about a lion who catches a mouse. The mouse pleads for his freedom telling the lion that one day he could help him. Amused by the mouse's speech the lion releases him and just a couple of days later finds himself ensnared in a net. Remembering his promise the mouse gnaws away at the netting and sets the lion free.
The story reflects Bermuda's relationship with America over the centuries. It stretches back from the very beginning when the crew of the Sea Venture, led by Sir George Somers, crashed on these reefs while taking supplies to British colonies in Jamestown, Virginia where "death and pestilence reigned".
What's less known about is the mutiny led by a Henry Payne against Thomas Gates who was to be governor in Virginia. Payne disrupted work on The Deliverance which Gates had ordered to be built to continue the mission across the Atlantic. The film revealed, much to the audience's amusement, that when he was found out Payne told Gates to kiss his ass. He was sentenced to death for treason and the mission was resumed.
With beautifully shot footage of ancient ships crossing the ocean we are transported to Jamestown where the crew were met with utter desolation. Ms. Spurling doesn't hold back on the gory details. One interviewee revealed that things had gotten so bad in Jamestown that people were digging up graves and eating the bodies while one man was jailed for salting his wife and eating her.
What isn't really mentioned in this part of the documentary is the misfortune of the native American Indians after the ships returned to take the land. The focus is rather on the glory of a nation being born. Historian and author William Soars Zuill describes the mission as having "saved the infant United States from strangulation at birth."
The Bermuda Company was abolished in 1684 after losing a legal battle to restrict Bermudians from moving abroad. Bermudians were then free to use the Atlantic and the maritime economy was born. We shifted to the sea at the right time - blacks were navigators of the sea and the sky and became famous for it - most slaves elsewhere were enslaved into agriculture. We were became a nation privateers and pirates.
Star Spangled Banner
One fascinating moment of the documentary recalled when the British attacked Washington and ran President Madison out of office during The War of 1812. The British had besieged Baltimore and took a prisoner of war Francis Scott Key. It was on a Royal Navy battleship from Bermuda watching Baltimore burn that Key wrote the words for the American National anthem the Star Spangled Banner.
We were taken right through the American Revolution when the Tuckers aided our American friends by smuggling gunpowder out to them. We travelled through the Civil War over slavery, and Bermuda's role in slavery's abolition as well as Bermuda's crucial roles in the first and second world wars.
Espionage war
One story tells of Nadya Gardner who helped uncover a major German spy ring during the first world war when she worked as a "censorette" from the Hamilton Princess. It was also fascinating to hear that the Soviets had viewed Bermuda as a frontline for the U.S. and if any war heads had been launched this island would have been would be gone in a heart beat.
For the most part Ms. Spurling's interviews were with historians, professors and authors of Bermuda's history books and their contributions are cleverly weaved together to make and engaging story. We switch from one narrator to the next, even in mid sentence at times but it is almost seamless in its transition.
William Zuill was an excellent choice of subject to interview as he has a talent for story-telling. Andrew Bermingham spoke with much passion when he told the sinking of a Nazi U-Boat and Cheryl Packwood delivered calm and measured recollections.
The series could have benefited from more interviews with local characters, the ancestors of those who lived through the events. Those used by Ms. Spurling were among the most colourful parts of the documentary and bringing it to life. Jazz veteran Earl Robinson Darrell gave an animated account of what it was like going to war for the first time. He told how he just thought he was just "going to see some other country not thinking I was going to be killed."
He imitated the fighter planes he saw and asked poignantly: "What is war? War is killing, it is blood all you can see is blood, innocent people suffer in war. Why?"
The accounts of modern day history, where Bermuda excelled in tourism and business, seemed a little brief compared to the rest of the documentary and only warranted seven minutes. A cynic might say it was because Ms. Spurling probably ran out of time at the end of teh editing process. My guess is that the most recent decades just haven't delievered the epic tales and that make up Bermuda's rich and adventurous history.
Mr. Zuill summarizes Bermuda's relationship with America and all the favours that had been exchanged between the two nations: "So in these ways, in our very small, weak ways, we have been of help to the mighty king of the beasts.
"Little friends may be able to help big friends-yes."
Posted: Sunday, January 24, 2010
Comment by:
John Decker
Under the subtitle _Espionage War_ Nadya Gardner_ helped uncover a major German spy ring during the _Second_ world war [not the first world war] when she worked as a censor from the Hamilton Princess hotel. [see New York Times, Feb, 18, 1942,page13]
Note: I am doing historical research on espionage during the Second World War and would like to communicate with historians or local people that are familiar with the Imperial Censorship Station in Bermuda during the Second World War.
I am particularly interested in how postal correspondence was tested for secret writing and the number and names of chemists that were in Bermuda during the Second World War that did the actual chemical testing. Who was in charge of the laboratory section for the chemical testing of suspect mail?
Any help in this endeavor would be appreciated
