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Bermuda
Quick Overview:
The mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda holds a great many unique distinctions. Some 60,000 inhabitants live on less than 35 square kilometres of dry land (actually comprising about 360 mostly small coral islands) situated 1,600 kilometres north of the Caribbean and 1,000 kilometres east of the North Carolina coast. This places it just seven air hours from London, and only one and a half hours from New York.Bermuda is now the oldest self-governing British dependent territory, with a history dating back to the beginning of the 17th century. In addition to its historic maritime importance, Bermuda has long held an enviable reputation as an elite vacation resort, blessed with a mild, semi-tropical climate and a gentle seasonal cycle. Over the past 50 years or so, it has become equally famous - and strategically important - as an international financial centre. Royal bank of Canada joined the Bermudan financial community in 1993 with the establishment of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Royal Trust (Bermuda) Limited. Bermuda effectively invented the concept of the international financial jurisdiction back in the 1930s. There are now approximately 1500 captive insurance companies in Bermuda. Success in this area led somewhat later to the creation of a favourable environment for trusts, followed by mutual funds and international business companies. Bermuda has been a leader in international business activity since the 1950s. Legislation governing Bermuda's international financial industry is based on English Common Law, specially adapted to the evolving needs of the international financial community. Statutes and regulations were developed progressively in close consultation with the private sector, and this consultative relationship continues today. The resulting legal framework achieves the desired flexibility while maintaining very high international operating standards. The financial sector is overseen by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), a body which is independent of the island's government. In the three decades of its existence, the BMA has consistently maintained high standards of both integrity and efficiency. A key element in maintaining high standards is a selective policy that allows only certain reputable institutions to conduct business in Bermuda.The absence of the scandals and crises that have occurred in some other international jurisdictions attests to the success of the BMA's prudent policies and regulatory vigilance. Bermuda's unblemished record has earned the island a solid reputation within the international financial community.
Geography:
Coughed from the belly of the Atlantic a hundred millennia ago, this fishhook-shaped coral archipelago perched at the summit of an extinct submarine volcano was once avoided like the plague. Discovered in 1503 by Spaniard Juan Bermudez, a mariner from Palos, Spain, the islands were throughout the sixteenth century believed to be inhabited by demons. This superstition had a simple origin. The trills of hundreds of thousands of cahows (also known as the Bermuda Petrel), floating on the wind to the ears of passing seafarers, were oddly interpreted as the cries of devils. Appearing early in the century on many manuscripts and printed maps as Las Bermudas, Bermuda was quickly dubbed Ya de Demonios by Spanish mariners. And yet, despite its unalluring reputation, some historians believe a small number of French privateers became familiar with the safe passages through the surrounding treacherous reefs and occasionally used the island as a base. French explorer Samuel de Champlain, returning from the West Indies in 1600, described this "Isle of Devils" as a place where, "It almost always rains, and thunder is so frequent that it seems as if heaven and earth must come together. The sea is very tempestuous about the said island and the waves as high as mountains." Nine years later, heaven and earth did come together violently, conspiring in a scenario that led to near death, and subsequent habitation. By 1609, Jamestown, founded two years earlier on the banks of the James River in Virginia, was slipping into oblivion. Backed by a syndicate of influential London merchants operating as the Virginia Company, the young settlement was decimated by disease, starvation and Indian raids. During trade development with the lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the East Indies, company stakeholders had gained considerable experience in financing far-flung commercial enterprises. Moving quickly to save their Virginian investment, in June 1609 they dispatched Admiral Sir George Somers as commander of a fleet of nine ships. The mission set off from Plymouth, England, to rescue settlers who were still many weeks and an ocean away. All went well until the fleet neared the dreaded Las Bermudas. The ships were within seven or eight days of making Cape Henry on the Virginia coast when they sailed bow first into disaster. "A dreadful storme and hideous began to blow from out the Northeast, swelling and roaring as it were by fits and at length did beate all the light from Heaven; which, like an hell of darkenesse turned blacke upon us," wrote Silvanus Jourdan and William Strachey, passengers on board Somers's 300-ton flagship Sea Venture. The ship was battered for a day and a half by hurricane winds and pounding seas that broke open the seams of its hull. "Windes and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them," Jourdan and Strachey wrote. As water rushed in, the passengers and crew threw weapons and chests overboard to lighten the load. And just as it seemed that passengers' prayers would go unanswered, the ship was edged between reefs at the eastern end of the islands and wrecked within sight and striking distance of shore. Fortuitously, there was no loss of life as the exhausted settlers struggled ashore. Somers promptly claimed the land for England, and Bermuda's opening chapter of permanent settlement had begun, not with a placid landfall but with a preface of howling winds, angry seas, and personal possessions hurled into a summer maelstrom. The 150 men and women found a chain of islands heavily forested with cedars and palmettos and populated with birds and wild hogs. But while the tiny isles proved more hospitable than the haunted lands of seafarers' superstitious tales, Jamestown was not forgotten. The settlers there were still expecting the cavalry. In little more than nine months, two new ships, Deliverance and Patience, were built from local cedars and salvaged Sea Venture timbers. However, even as the new vessels took shape during those months of sojourn, this island that would inspire Shakespeare to pen The Tempest was the setting for one murder, an execution, five deaths from natural causes, a marriage, two births and three mutinies. When the admiral and the ships finally departed a land that, though it had proved challenging, was essentially tranquil, they left two men behind. One of them, Christopher Carter, was Bermuda's first permanent inhabitant, remaining here until he died. News of the shipwreck intrigued the Virginia Company. In 1612 a subsidiary known as the Bermuda Company was formed to finance and manage colonization. That same year the first wave of 60 white settlers, led by company-appointed Governor Richard Moore, a carpenter, left England for Bermuda. On July 11 the pioneers arrived in St. George's Harbour, eager to carve a prosperous life from an isolated wilderness.
Related Links:
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News Nr.1 News Resources Bermuda Gazette |
Offical Sites Government of Bermuda Bermuda Tourism |
Country Guides Bermuda.com KeyGuide Bermuda |
Education Ministry of Education |