Bermuda

Bermuda was uninhabited when the English claimed it. In 1609 the Sea Venture, flagship of a fleet bound for Jamestown, was wrecked on the reefs during a hurricane; the survivors built new ships and most sailed on, but the islands were formally settled from 1612 by the Virginia Company and then the Somers Isles Company. The wreck and the "still-vexed Bermoothes" are usually taken as an inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest. St George, founded in 1612, is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.

The early economy rested on shipbuilding from Bermuda cedar, salt raked in the Turks Islands, maritime trade, and privateering, worked increasingly by enslaved Africans and some enslaved Native Americans. Slavery was abolished across the British Empire in 1834. After the loss of the American colonies, Britain built the Royal Naval Dockyard at the western end as its principal Atlantic base, and the garrison and dockyard shaped the islands for a century and a half.

Tourism from the United States grew from the late nineteenth century and boomed after the Second World War. Racial segregation persisted until a 1959 boycott desegregated the cinemas and hotels, and universal suffrage came in 1963. Bermuda gained internal self-government in 1968; a 1995 referendum rejected independence. From the 1980s the economy pivoted decisively to international business, especially insurance and reinsurance, making Bermuda one of the highest-income jurisdictions in the world while tourism declined in relative importance.

Bermudian culture blends British institutions with a majority Black population of West Indian and African descent and a long-established Portuguese-speaking community from the Azores. The Anglican and African Methodist Episcopal churches are both strong, and society is generally conservative and church-going.

The Gombey dancers — masked, caped troupes with drums, whistles, and a tradition rooted in enslaved communities — perform on holidays and at Christmas. Cricket is the national passion, above all the two-day Cup Match between the east and west ends, played over a public holiday that also marks Emancipation. Sailing, fitted-dinghy racing, and golf are woven into island life.

Formality lingers in unexpected ways: Bermuda shorts, worn with knee socks, a jacket, and a tie, are acceptable business dress in Hamilton. Pastel-painted cottages with white stepped roofs are the signature architecture — the roofs are designed to catch rainwater, the islands' only fresh-water supply.

About 64,000 people live on roughly 54 square kilometres, making Bermuda one of the most densely populated territories in the world. Most residents live between Hamilton, the small capital and business centre, and the parishes along the main island chain, linked by causeway and bridge.

Incomes are high but so is the cost of living, and housing is expensive and tight. The economy runs on international insurance and financial services, with tourism and construction behind it; there is no income tax, and government revenue comes from payroll tax, customs duties, and company fees. Work permits tie most foreign professionals' residence to their employer, and the balance between international business and Bermudian opportunity is a constant political theme, along with the cost of living and the perennial, unresolved question of independence.

With no rivers or lakes, every building collects rain from its roof into a tank, and water conservation is a normal household habit.

Bermudian cooking is Anglo-Caribbean with a strong Portuguese thread. The national dish is fish chowder, dark with tomato and stock and finished at the table with black rum and sherry-pepper sauce. Sunday breakfast is traditionally salt cod with potatoes, egg, onion, and banana or avocado.

Other staples include Bermuda fish sandwiches on raisin bread, mussel pie, cassava pie at Christmas, Portuguese red-bean soup and malasadas, and hoppin' John and peas and rice as sides. Local wahoo, rockfish, and spiny lobster (in season, September to March) appear on menus, and the Bermuda onion was once a famous export.

The islands' drinks are their best-known export of all: the Dark 'n' Stormy, Gosling's Black Seal rum topped with ginger beer, and the rum swizzle, both closely associated with Bermuda.

The south-shore beaches are the main draw — Horseshoe Bay with its pink sand and rock coves, and the quieter linked coves of Warwick Long Bay, Jobson's Cove, and Church Bay, good for snorkelling. The reefs offshore, the northernmost coral reefs in the Atlantic, are ringed with shipwrecks that make Bermuda a noted dive destination.

St George, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves narrow lanes, the unfinished church, and St Peter's, the oldest continuously used Anglican church outside the British Isles, along with the surrounding forts. At the other end of the island, the Royal Naval Dockyard has been redeveloped with the National Museum of Bermuda, shops, and the cruise-ship pier.

Inland sights include the Crystal and Fantasy Caves near Hamilton Parish, with their clear pools and stalactites; the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo; the Botanical Gardens; and Nonsuch Island, where the cahow, or Bermuda petrel — long thought extinct — has been brought back through decades of conservation. The Railway Trail, on the bed of the old island railway, runs much of Bermuda's length for walking and cycling.