Editing History of Bermuda (section)

===Bermuda and the American War of Independence===
On the eve of the [[American Revolution|American independence]], Bermuda faced competition with its maritime economy. Bermudian emigrants to Virginia helped expand the growth of its merchant fleet, enabling it to exceed Bermuda's by 1762. By the 1770s, Virginia was launching more vessels than Bermuda. Only able to grow enough food to feed the population of 11,000 a few months out of the year, Bermudians relied on food imports from North America, and the consequent higher costs. Many Bermudians had emigrated to Belize to harvest mahogany, or to Georgia, East Florida and the Bahamas islands.<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|376–385}} Bermudians continued to fish the Grand Banks until forbidden by the Palliser's Act.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/lawfoundation/essay/part5-1.html|title=Palliser's Act, 1775: The Statutory Counter-Offensive|website=www.heritage.nf.ca}}</ref>

Politically, issues causing protest elsewhere little affected the island, lacking newspapers and an effective local government, which refused to raise public revenue, the island had long relied on smuggling and the circumventing of customs officers. Lacking a permanent garrison made the island immune to the [[Quartering Acts]]. Finally, the island had long been ambivalent to events in New England, whom the Bermudians considered their maritime rivals.<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|383–385}}

Bermuda's ambivalence changed in September 1774, when the [[Continental Congress]] resolved to ban trade with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies after 10 September 1775. Such an embargo would mean the collapse of their intercolonial commerce, famine and civil unrest. Lacking political channels with Great Britain, [[Henry Tucker (President of the Council of Bermuda)|the Tucker Family]] met in May 1775 with eight other parishioners, and resolved to send delegates to the Continental Congress in July, with the goal of an exemption from the ban. Henry Tucker noted a clause in the ban which allowed the exchange of American goods for military supplies. The clause was confirmed by [[Benjamin Franklin]] when Tucker met with the Pennsylvania [[Committees of safety (American Revolution)|Committee of Safety]]. Independently, Tucker's sons St. George and Thomas Tudor confirmed this business arrangement with [[Peyton Randolph]] and the Charlestown Committee of Safety, while another Bermudian, Harris, did so with [[George Washington]].<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|385–389}}

Three American vessels, independently operating from Charlestown, Philadelphia and Newport, sailed to Bermuda, and on 14 August 100 barrels of gunpowder were taken from the Bermudian magazine, while the loyalist Governor [[George James Bruere]] slept, and loaded onto these vessels. As a consequence, on 2 October the Continental Congress exempted Bermuda from their trade ban, and Bermuda thus acquired a reputation for disloyalty. In late 1775, the British Parliament passed the [[Prohibitory Act]] to prohibit trade with the American rebelling colonies, and sent HMS ''Scorpion'' to keep watch over the island. The island's forts were stripped of cannon, such that by the end of 1775, all of Bermuda's forts were without cannon, shot and powder. Yet, wartime trade of contraband continued along well established family connections. With 120 vessels by 1775, Bermuda continued to trade with [[St. Eustatius]] through 1781, and provided salt to North American ports, despite the presence of hundreds of loyal privateers.<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|389–415}}

In June 1776, HMS ''Nautilus'' secured the island, followed by {{HMS|Galatea|1776|6}} in September. Yet, the two British captains seemed more intent on capturing prize money, causing a severe food shortage on the island until the departure of ''Nautilus'' in October. After France's entry into the war in 1778, [[Henry Clinton (British Army officer, born 1730)|Sir Henry Clinton]] refortified and garrisoned the island under the command of Major [[William Sutherland (British Army officer)|William Sutherland]]. As a result, 91 French and American ships were captured in the winter of 1778–1779, bringing the population once again to the brink of starvation. Bermudian trade was severely hampered by the combination of the Royal Navy, the British garrison and [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|loyalist privateers]], such that famine struck the island in 1779.<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|416–427}}

The death of George Bruere in 1780, turned the governorship over to his son, [[George Bruere Jr.]], an active loyalist. Under his leadership, smuggling was stopped, and the Bermudian colonial government populated with like-minded loyalists. Even Henry Tucker abandoned trading with the United States, because of the presence of many privateers. Loyalist privateers based in Bermuda captured 114 prizes between 1777 and 1781, while 130 were captured in 1782.<ref name=Jarvis/>{{rp|428–433}}

The fallout of the war was that Britain lost all of its continental naval bases between the [[Maritimes]] and Spanish [[Florida]], ultimately the West Indies. This launched Bermuda into a new prominence with the London Government, as its location, near the halfway point from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean, and off the US Atlantic Seaboard, allowed the Royal Navy to operate fully in the area, protecting British trade routes, and potentially commanding the American Atlantic coast in the event of war. The value of Bermuda in the hands of, or serving as a base for, enemies of the United States was shown by the roles it played in the [[American War of 1812]] and the [[American Civil War]]. The blockade of the Atlantic ports by the Royal Navy throughout the first war (described in the US as the ''Second War of Independence'') was orchestrated from Bermuda, and the task force that [[Burning of Washington|burned Washington DC]] in 1814 was launched from the colony. During the latter war, [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] [[blockade runners]] delivered European munitions into Southern harbours from Bermuda, smuggling cotton in the reverse direction.

Consequently, the very features that made Bermuda such a prized base for the Royal Navy (its headquarters in the North Atlantic and West Indies until after the [[Second World War]]), also meant it was perpetually threatened by US invasion, as the US would have liked to both deny the base to an enemy, and use it as a way to extend its defences hundreds of miles out to sea, which would not happen until the Second World War.

As a result of the large regular army garrison established to protect the naval facilities, Bermuda's parliament allowed the Bermudian militia to become defunct after the end of the American war in 1815. More profound changes took place, however. The post American independence buildup of Royal Navy facilities in Bermuda meant the Admiralty placed less reliance on Bermudian privateers in the area. Combined with the effects of the American lawsuits, this meant the activity died out in Bermuda until a brief resurgence during the American War of 1812. With the American continental ports having become foreign territory, the Bermudian merchant shipping trade was seriously injured. During the course of American War of 1812, the Americans had developed other sources for salt, and Bermudians salt trade fell upon hard times. Control of the [[Turks Islands]] ultimately passed into the hands of Bermuda's sworn enemy, the [[Bahamas]], in 1819. The shipbuilding industry had caused the deforestation of Bermuda's [[Bermuda cedar|cedar]] by the start of the 19th century. As ships became larger, increasingly were built from metal, and with the advent of steam power, and with the vastly reduced opportunities Bermudians found for commerce due to US independence and the greater control exerted over their economies by developing territories, Bermuda's shipbuilding industry and maritime trades were slowly strangled.

The chief leg of the Bermudian economy became defence infrastructure. Even after tourism began in the later 19th century, Bermuda remained, in the eyes of London, a base more than a colony, and this led to a change in the political dynamics within Bermuda as its political and economic ties to Britain were strengthened, and its independence on the world stage was diminished. By the end of the 19th century, except for the presence of the naval and military facilities, Bermuda was thought of by non-Bermudians and Bermudians alike as a quiet, rustic backwater, completely at odds with the role it had played in the development of the English-speaking Atlantic world, a change that had begun with American independence.