Now banned in Bermuda

ST. GEORGE, Bermuda – "When was the Confederate Museum name changed to the hardly complimentary name of 'Rogues and Runners'?," I asked.

"It was the Confederate Museum until 1996," replied museum guide Judith Perry. "There was a lot of fuss about Confederate flags, and the Executive Committee ordered the change."

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"Did they explain why?"

"They never explain why!," replied museum guide Perry – who, earlier on the phone, termed the change as "possibly PC (politically correct)."

"Was the name change widely reported?"

"I recall no coverage at all," she answered.

Inside this renamed but attractively designed museum there are a number of panels with photographs and historical information, including the following:

• "Most Bermudians supported the Southern cause."

• Bermuda's still-leading daily newspaper, the Royal Gazette, editorialized on Feb. 12, 1863: "We have ever regarded the Federal's cause as hopeless and wrong. … The Confederates have as much right to have a government as we have."

• Edward Walsh, a ship's carpenter who was black, served on blockade-runners that successfully eluded Union Navy ships 16 times. He was rescued from two more runners that were sunk, while two more on which he served were captured.

• "Experience Bermuda," published by the Fairmont Southampton Hotel, notes the following:

  "The English ships (whose troops) attacked Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812, sailed from Bermuda's Royal Navy Dockyards. During the U.S. Civil War, Bermuda played once again a pivotal role. Bermuda, like other English colonies, abolished slavery in 1834. But because of its proximity to Virginia and North Carolina, Bermuda found itself allied with Confederate merchants. During the war, Bermudians made a fortune running blockades for the Confederacy."

• In July of 1864, United States Consul to Bermuda Charles Allen – who had been repeatedly threatened with death and was twice physically assaulted – reported the following:

  "There are a very large number of natives and sympathizers with the Southern States of America now resident on Bermuda. … There are a great many blockade-runners here now – more than ever before; three or four a day sometimes, but few get caught. They are making a great deal of money."

In Bermuda's first capital of St. George, the Globe Hotel became the headquarters of the Confederate States' representation in Bermuda.

This building, on King's Square, is now a museum of the Bermuda National Trust, whose pamphlet notes the following:

"In 1952, the Globe Hotel was acquired by the Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust, which opened it as the Confederate Museum in April 1961, exactly 100 years after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter. … In 1996, the entire building was restored and the new exhibit, which tells the story of these turbulent years from a distinctly Bermudian perspective, was installed."

Why on earth is it a "Bermudian perspective" to change the name of the Confederate Museum to "Rogues and Runners"?

Since the blockade-runners were Confederates (as well as a number of retired veterans of the Royal Navy) who were the rogues – rather than almost all Bermudians, who profited enormously?

There was a considerable difference between the Confederate Navy's blockade-runners and what might be called its blockade-busters.

The most famed – and deadliest from the standpoint of Union merchant and warships sunk – was the U.S.S. Alabama, captained by Raphael Semmes of Maryland.

Finally, in an extensive battle off Cherbourg, France, in June of 1864, the U.S. Navy ship Kearsarge was able to sink the Alabama, although Semmes was rescued.

Another blockade-buster, the C.S.S. Florida, sunk 32 U.S. ships and captured four more, which it held until ransomed.

Early in 1862, Confederate Army veteran Norman Walker of Virginia was sent to Europe with $2 million in cotton bonds to purchase blockade-runners. This was not long after the time when the Union Navy, with fewer than 50 warships, was trying to blockade the 3,500 miles from the Chesapeake Bay to Corpus Christi, Texas.

Gradually and incessantly, this Union Navy blockade grew to be far more numerous in warships.

The blockade-runners were especially designed for speed as well as to avoid detection. They set sail always late at night and when there was no moonlight.

To dissuade detection and to increase speed, their masts were shortened and their hulls above water were painted a dull grey. They had smokestacks that, if needed, could be collapsed during runs between, or around, the end of a line of Union Navy ships.

They used only anthracite coal, which exuded little visible smoke. And there were fittings that enabled steam to be discharged underwater.

Blockade-runners were almost always disguised by display of British flags – which sometimes deterred Union Navy pursuit, ever since the late 1861 Trent Affair.

A British Royal mail steamer, the Trent, was stopped by Capt. Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto. He captured Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell who were accredited and on their way to England. They were taken by Capt. Wilkes and imprisoned in Boston. But when Great Britain heard of this seizure, there was not only the strongest protest, but British troops in Canada were put on alert – and there was a considerable possibility of President Lincoln's government being at war with the world's greatest military and naval power – as well as the Confederates, who had so massively defeated them at First Manassas, or Bull Run.

But under Lincoln's order, Secretary of State William Seward arranged the release of Mason and Slidell, who sailed for England via Bermuda.

Bermuda's Royal Gazette reported in March 1863 there were in Britain and Scotland over 50 vessels on the stocks being built for the Confederates.

By the following year, out of the 71 blockade-runners that had stopped in Bermuda, the Union Navy had captured, sunk or forced the beaching of 43 of the 71.

Not until 1865 was the principle port of CSA blockade-runners, Wilmington, North Carolina, taken by the Union Army.

Three runners – loaded with munitions and other equipment, plus medicine and sedatives for military surgery – learned of the closure and canceled scheduled sailings.

One of the more classic runner escapes after the Union blockade was so vastly strengthened was by the Mary Celestia.

When hotly pursued by a Union Navy warship (runners were not equipped to fight, since armaments increased weight), the Mary Celestia, which was loaded with cotton, threw 100 cotton bails overboard.

This cotton not only clogged the Union ships propellers, but that ship stopped pursuit to gather in all the rest of the valuable cotton.

Perhaps the best-known of all blockade-runners was fictional – and played by Clark Gable in the movie classic, "Gone With the Wind."

One of the more desperately needed commodities brought in by blockade-runners was medicine, including such sedatives as opium, which was used to sedate the wounded from the agonizing experience of amputation.

The performance of actor Harry Davenport as Dr. Meade, in that Atlanta church converted to a military hospital, should forever be borne in mind, as he had to order and conduct amputations without any of the sedatives that had been previously delivered by the blockade-runners, which were, in the 1860s so strongly and widely supported by Bermudians and their Royal Gazette – but whose modern-day, and politically correct, Bermuda National Trust has changed from the Confederate Museum to the incredibly disparaging Rogues and Runners.

Today, Bermuda is, indeed, an island paradise.

The December weather was balmy – with swimmers on the pale pink sandy beaches and quite possibly the most beautiful aquamarine water I have ever seen in 40 countries I have visited.

Rarely can you find such a towering percentage of enthusiastically congenial people than almost every one of those we met or encountered.

For a nation – actually the first of the British Crown Colonies – on a cluster of islands with no lakes or reservoirs – the foliage is gorgeously green with palm trees as only part of those trees that cover all Bermuda.

The abundant water supply must be collected carefully on roof cisterns that feed into a tank – with all houses and other buildings having their own tanks.

These tourist-specializing hotels, like the Fairmont Southampton, where we stayed, are sumptuous.

They are staffed by wonderfully affable and well-informed people, with males wearing those distinctive Bermuda Shorts.

The exchange rate between Bermudian dollars and U.S. dollars is one-for-one. And it is necessary to bring a great many of the latter, because nothing is inexpensive in this paradise in the Atlantic, some 600 miles off South Carolina.

One miracle is Bermuda's bus drivers. I have never – in 40 countries I have visited – seen roads that were so narrow and maneuvered with such amazing dexterity by those bus drivers – who are motorized magicians.

On a number of occasions, I heard the bus swish against tree leaves extending over stone walls, which our bus seemed to clear by no more than two feet.

There are no rental cars available anywhere in Bermuda – and understandably. First, there are those narrow roads, and secondly, the steering wheels are on the English side of the car.

There are also legions of motorbikes, many of whose owners – or renters – seem to love roaring their engines as they zoom along those narrow roads.

We bussed the entire length of Bermuda's clearly adjoined islands – from the Royal Navy Dockyards – with Bermuda's Maritime Museum (which does not include the blockade-runners of the U.S. Civil War) – to the first capital of Bermuda, St. George (and its renamed museum Rogues and Runners!)

With air flight time from New York, and from Atlanta, at less than two hours, Bermuda is surely a trip that should be saved up for – and is more than worth the extensive price.

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