From 1615 to 1684 the Bermuda Company operated England’s smallest and second-oldest colony, although not without a great deal of tension between London shareholders and Bermuda colonists.
The Bermuda Company began as the result of a shipwreck. In 1609 Sir George Somers, admiral of the Virginia Company, led a relief fleet of eight ships bound to assist settlers in Jamestown, Virginia. A storm scattered his fleet, and later a hurricane struck the Sea Venture, Somers’s flagship. Close to sinking, Somers’s vessel wrecked upon one of Bermuda’s coral reefs, and its passengers were not only able to gain the safety of land but found something of an earthly paradise. After a nine-month stay, Somers and his men built a new ship, the Deliverance, from the remains of the Sea Venture and crossed the Gulf Stream to Jamestown. Somers found the settlers at Jamestown ragged and starving, so he returned to Bermuda to procure food, particularly the turtles, wild hogs (introduced in the 1500s by
Spanish sailors), and fish that populated the island. As tales of the natural abundance of Bermuda spread, the Virginia Company extended its charter to include the Bermuda Islands. However, running two companies under one charter proved to be an inefficient means of organization, so in June 1615 King James I chartered an offshoot of the Virginia Company variously called the Bermuda Company or Somers Island Company.
The Somers Island Company supervised Bermuda from its offices in London for 69 years, choosing its governors, sending it ships loaded with supplies, and asking in return the export of pearls, whale oil, tobacco, silk, and ambergris, the intestinal by-product of sperm whales coveted by perfume manufacturers. The early Bermuda planters became strong Puritans and created a legislative assembly. The chief source of company profit came from the export of tobacco. Slaves (see slavery) performed much of the labor needed to procure salable goods. Most slaves in Bermuda were purchased from slave plantations in the West Indies, although American Indian slaves and some white slaves were among the 6,000 to 8,000 people who populated the island in the mid-1600s. Despite the natural abundance of the island, the economic potential of Bermuda proved to be limited. Bermuda tobacco could not compete in quality or quantity with tobacco grown in Virginia. The excessive harvesting of turtles led to their rapid decrease, so much so that in 1620 Bermuda’s first Parliament passed an act “against the killing of over young tortoises” due to the danger of “an utter destroyinge and losse of them.” Likewise, the harvesting of cedar trees had to be forbidden, for the islands were practically denuded. Stockholders had to content themselves with a small, if safe, return on their investment.
As London stockholders realized the limited nature of Bermuda’s economy, interest in the company declined. Although much stock in the company passed into the hands of the Bermuda colonists, the company charter fixed its headquarters in London, and a small group of stockholders controlled company policy. Company agents living and working in Bermuda retained a stubborn independence that troubled their London bosses. They chafed, for example, under the policy that demanded they trade solely with company ships, which gave the company a monopoly. On the other hand, stockholders in London became increasingly unsatisfied with the meager monetary returns from the Bermuda Company and the apparently arbitrary economic decisions made by company employees in Bermuda. The majority stockholder, a London merchant named Perient Trott, attempted to persuade his fellow stockholders to permanently reorganize the company. After those efforts failed, Trott petitioned the government to seize the Bermuda Company. Trott’s efforts put into place a legal process that in 1684 resulted (years after Trott’s death) in the forfeiture to the Crown under Charles II of the company’s charter. It outlived the Virginia Company by 60 years.
Further reading: Richard S. Dunn, “The Downfall of the Bermuda Company: A Restoration Farce,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4 (October 1963): 487-512; Jean Kennedy, Isle of Devils: Bermuda under the Somers Island Company, 1609-1685 (London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1971); Terry Tucker, Bermuda: Today and Yesterday L503-1980s (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1983).
—Kevin C. Armitage
World History
