Bermuda and Hail to Bermuda

We're diving deep into the vibrant history and cultural tapestry of Bermuda, a picturesque island nation that sits at the heart of a historical narrative that's both complex and surprisingly rich. At the forefront of our discussion is the anthem, which not only highlights the island's unique identity but also serves as a reflection of its resilient spirit and communal values. As we navigate Bermuda's past, from roots to contemporary challenges, we’ll explore how this small territory has managed to carve out an identity that is distinctly its own while remaining British. We'll also take a moment to appreciate the anthem's creation and the talented Bette Johns' journey, which adds another layer to our understanding of Bermuda's cultural landscape. So, buckle up as we embark on this enlightening journey, filled with intriguing anecdotes and thoughtful insights, about a place that, while seemingly isolated, has an outsized influence on the world stage.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/bermudians-vote-to-stay-british-1596724.html

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign hello and welcome to the Anthems Podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

Today we are in a country that, at 634 miles off the coast of North Carolina, is not the closest, closest island nation to the United States like I thought it was.

It's actually in an irritatingly common distance range away from the last country, which is why I said something different, and is 6,628 miles, which is 10,627 kilometers. And how many times can I creatively describe a distance that is roughly a quarter of the Earth's circumference?

So I'm just gonna ignore it this time and instead say a long time ago this place was part of something that is now a part of the United States and is now still a part of the country that the United States used to be a part of. It's potentially a very confusing situation given that. I will be surprised if you puzzled out the place.

Regardless, we are back in paradise and I'm going to be telling you about Bermuda, officially the overseas British territory of Bermuda.

Today we are in a place that is at the very precipice of a 4,500 foot tall seamount, not because it's one of the vertices of the Bermuda Triangle, even though that would be sort of a cool reason. But we're here because Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame has passed. And it makes me sad.

If you've never heard the Beach Boys music, I recommend that you give it a listen. There's a non 0 chance you'll enjoy it. Bermuda is one of the places where I can almost say colonialism was done right.

Almost is doing some heavy lifting there though, because slavery exists. The country, or rather territory, is another that technically does have God Save the King as the official national anthem.

Because people in Bermuda are in fact British subjects. But like the Falkland Islands, they are a culturally distinct enough place to get an episode. At least that's what I'm going with, and it's my show.

Regardless of my justification, once I started reading about the place, I was definitely going to find a reason to tell you folks about Hail to Bermuda.

s, I think maybe: 1998

On one of a few trips to a restaurant, the man that is my food adventuring inspiration encouraged me to try something called shark Hash. It's minced and spiced shark meat cooked and served on toast and I unfortunately have no memory at all of how it tasted or whether or not I liked it.

But I remember eating it. I guess I gotta buy some shark for now. Use a different sense and enjoy a Regional Anthem.

Speaker B: 00:03:45

Sing out in Glory to the nation. Love this. This is my homeland built on faith and unity. We go from heart to heart and strength to strength, for loyalty is pride and we'll see.

Speaker A: 00:05:22

Musically speaking, I suspect I've surprised some people, possibly all of you that are listening. I like the ukulele because listen to the intro and the outro of the show or reference the three or four that I own and play and talk about sometimes.

Couple that with having a version of the anthem that has the lyrics, has the music plus it's well played and something that sings well and makes it non difficult choice for me, especially because it's either this or literally the only other version out there that meets all my requirements and that sounds like an excerpt from an old movie. Clearly I am a sucker for the uke, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a good version of the song.

I'm going to say it Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico make a well known triangle. Last thing I'll say about the exceedingly deep distraction.

There is too much to say about something like that, but at the same time nothing that definitively tells me stuff about it. In deference to my inner trig nerd, let's decipher how we get to the vertex that we're at.

Bermuda is another difficult country for me to locate, not because I don't know where the stuff near it is, but because it is kind of just not near any stuff. I said in the beginning that the closest mainland place was the state of North Carolina in the United States at 630 miles to the east.

miles, around: 1500

That's just about as good as I can pinpoint this place with no freshwater lakes or rivers on it.

There are a few freshwater ponds on the islands and the odd well here and there, but but most of the available water is brackish and the 65,000 people that call Bermuda home have developed a detailed and actually very cool system of rainwater Catchment requirements and conservation methods. It's one of the first places in the world to have conservation laws. Excellent stuff.

However, at 20.5 square miles, which is about 53 square kilometers, this place is less than half the size of the typical range of an adult male cougar. It's a big cat that lives in North America. So there is a finite amount of water that can be collected despite the fact that it rains there a lot.

I read some stuff about it, but I'm not going to bore you with all those numbers. For one though, this does mean that there are so many potential things to read about with this because the topic is real important to Bermuda.

So a bunch of people have done a lot of deep technical thought about this. Cool stuff. It also means, though, that the Bermudan people spend a lot of money importing water.

At least $7 million in the past five years just on bottled water. And I bet a lot of that went into the tourism industry.

It's another fascinating economic topic that I must tear myself away from for our geology moment that is actually responsible for the lack of fresh water in the country. And it was also alluded to in the opening.

The Bermuda pedestal is what scientists think is left of a very large shield volcano from about 40 million years ago. So sort of a result of the Bermuda hotspot and activity in there.

It's another thing that I read about in relation to a different episode, and so it is also sucked up a bunch of my time. Maybe this is what caused it. It also might be the result of the chaos that happened when India collided with Eurasia.

I certainly don't know which of the two it is, and it could possibly be something completely different. I'm not a geologist, but I do know that it's thought to have made at least a thousand meter mountain above sea level when it first formed.

And then it took anywhere between 3 and 10 million years to get weathered down to sea level. And almost literally nothing else happened there. Like literally seriously nothing.

The place ended up with a few plants, animals and birds, but no people and barely any fresh water except for the odd puddle or aquifer, right up until we enter the timeline for this show.

I was excited to start so far back in the local timeline for Burundi, but I didn't know in Bermuda we do actually get to begin the story of when people first arrived. It's actually quite recent. It's so recent that we're going to start like a hundred years before the proper occupation of the place.

erson ever saw bermuda was in: 1503

The guy that was captaining the ship it was first cited from is the namesake and it's apparently his single foothold in history. So I will mention Juan de Bermudez as the Spaniard that discovered it returning from a provisioning trip to Hispaniola.

It is of course entirely possible that someone saw the islands while they were fishing way off the coast of the future United States or they were hopelessly lost at sea. It's fun to think about, but it is pure speculation on my part.

For the rest of the 16th century, Bermuda was a place that humans doing sea travel just tried to avoid because there's a bunch of hurricanes and a bunch of coral reefs there. It took enough ships to develop a bad reputation and the Spanish called it Demenorium in Salam, or the Isle of Devils.

One of the men that wrecked there and escaped was Spanish Captain Diego Ramirez.

He dispelled the rumor that the weather and reefs were protecting actual devils on the island by discovering that the terrifying cries that people heard were were really the Bermuda petrel. It's the second rarest seabird on the planet. The real beginning of the country as it exists today is a pretty good story.

June in: 1609

The flagship got compromised in a storm, it was swept off course and Sir George Summers decided to beach it into a Bermuda reef. I thought that it sounded like kind of a terrible idea, but he actually saved 150 people and a dog by doing that.

The written account of two of the men there for posterity. They are named William Strachey and Sylvester Jordain is almost certainly the inspiration for William Shakespeare's play the Tempest.

I did say it was a pretty good story and I'm a fan of the coincidence and, and the tie in because I think anybody that speaks or reads English should read Shakespeare at some point, or at least a contemporary translation. These folks were stuck there for nine or ten months depending on the source.

And they were living on palm trees, berries, birds, and luckily feral pigs that had taken hold after past shipwrecks there. Eventually they managed to craft a couple of smaller vessels and complete the journey to Jamestown.

Actually probably saved the colony with all the Bermuda and pork they brought along. Not everybody lived though. People were buried on the islands and lost at sea, including a girl named Bermuda Rolfe in wild historical tie ins.

She was the daughter of John Rolfe and his first wife.

Because the guy whose second wife was the actual Pocahontas was on the sea venture when it left for Jamestown and survived the ordeal on Bermuda to become the first for profit tobacco farmer in the colonies after his wife Pocahontas died at 21. All the way in England. What a web of weirdness history can be.

fficially acquired Bermuda in: 1612

Because farming is hard, I guess. I didn't really read about it, I'm sorry. But they did found St. George, the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.

The archipelago was in turn granted to the Summers Island Company. And so far this actually sounds like colonialism done kind of right, doesn't it? Empty place.

re trying to make IT work. By: 1619

Because by then there were also probably at least 100 or more enslaved people in the country. And the British were doing so well, they were, as one might expect, a, a bunch of enslaved people that were angry that they were enslaved.

And they revolted in: 1656

It had slavery as a feature right up until then, and sadly, probably functionally past that point. But they did eventually get rid of slavery, and they did it before a lot of other Western outfits did.

And they did not steal this land from people that live there for any amount of time. So I guess they get a plus one for a couple things here with Bermuda.

Its tiny size and its very strategic spot gave it a historically outsized spot on the map for Britain. As such, it's.

It's very easy for me to get lost in all the pivotal things here rather than the point of what I'm talking about, because this place has so many wild connections involved with it. Like something that I'll sketch out another time where Bermuda has a direct effect on the national anthem of the United States.

nce early on in history, like: 1620

Early on it also became a serious point of contention between the American military and the Royal Navy for obvious reasons.

There were attacks launched on the US from Bermuda in every British American conflict that exists, because why wouldn't they use the closest place they have as a military base?

time jump not quite as far as: 1995

Betty Marie Johns was born in: 1918

y from the Times colonists in: 2008

Predeceased by her husband, Air Vice Marshal Charles Frederick Johns, loving sister to Helen, deceased John, deceased and Francis. Betty was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and moved to Toronto early in her career to work at CBC Radio.

Years later Betty took a holiday to Bermuda and stayed for more than 30 years working at ZBM Radio and Television. And later she joined the Bermuda government to work for the Board of Tourism.

. Betty returned to Canada in: 1993

an say that Betty was born in: 1919

she did at CBC Radio, but in: 1963

Her husband is a person that I can't find anything about without attempting to dig into Royal Air Force records, so there's no need for that here.

I think my assumption is that he went with her when she moved to the island, but maybe not because he was carrying a pretty high rank and may have commanded an operational unit or had a key staff appointment. By the time our songwriter started working at zbm, it was a CBS affiliate, one of the few US affiliates outside of a US territory.

So, fun fact, if you're into obscure radio and television trivia, I have been unable to find out what Ms. Johns did at the station or the tourism board. The Pink Ladies, though, can mean a variety of things depending on where in the world we are and which hospital you are in.

But it is almost always a group of women who volunteer at a hospital. And according to some sources, they're one of the things that make a well working medical facility work so well.

They just kind of walk around and offer their help. Sometimes they are all older women in the 90s and up, and sometimes it is women of all ages.

At 74 years old, Betty returned to Canada, probably in Victoria, British Columbia, because that's where the Times Colonialist is located. My guess is that it's because Canada is nothing like the United States when you retire.

t has never happened, back to: 1503

warmest recorded Temp was in: 1989

I think this is at the top of the list of spots that I'd like to go on vacation just because of the temperature range. No wonder Betty did not want to leave despite the hurricanes.

It makes it make sense that one of the entries in the contest for the national anthem or regional anthem for the place was made by the very lady that we're talking about. Unfortunately, this is where I have to stop saying that I know things for sure about her.

A source says that this was a: 1984

Other countries have done that. I'm not sure if I read it about Bermuda, though.

As usual, though, we do know who won the competition, regardless of the specifics of why and how, and the contest itself.

,: 2008

And with that we have the anthem, and I can go on to discuss the song itself. This time we don't have a revolution or a slow build to independence or a war.

% voter turnout in: 1995

To be clear, I would definitely have voted for that too if I live there, for complex adult reasons that other adults understand, hence the 74% yes vote. There was an initially slow to adopt situation with the song because of the lack of musical arrangements available for composition.

An American arranger named Paul Christensen stepped in and answered the government's call to provide music, and he chose to do it for free, provided that the professionals were paid for their work. Now we will really go on to the song. Musically speaking, we've got something that is a walk and not a march.

If I was gonna state a cadence about it, it's gentle ish and ceremonial. Instead of something that's militaristic, it's a piece that is straightforwardly strophic. In a past episode, I learned that that's the same music.

For each verse. It's played in C or G major, depending on the arrangement. There's a stepwise melody which makes it singable.

It has no big jumps, and it rides a classic 1, 4, 51 progression. It's like she listened to me rattle off my checklist of things for an anthem more than one time.

Overall, we are greeted with another, not wildly complicated piece of music. This time it's one that shares the unhurried dignity of a place that sits in an unlikely paradise.

Lyrically, it's another pretty uncomplicated thing that is at the same time a chaotic piece of writing. If you're trying to look at it in strict structural terms.

Certainly it's not a bad song, and it's something that works really well, but it is very informally written. It might be one of the reasons that it's a good ukulele song. There is an irregular meter the lines have varying lengths.

There's no regularity to the rhyme scheme. So it's written more like a pop tune than a ballad or a psalm or something that we would typically hear in anthem territory.

Another surprising tune crafted by somebody that certainly had musical talent and possibly training. But again, I can't say anything about that for sure. The song is written in the King's English and not my native American English.

I mention that because sometimes it does actually matter, because English does wild stuff like that. Recall that we are less than 450 years from Shakespeare's the Tempest, and that is a very difficult book to understand without doing some work.

Luckily, the words in Hail to Bermuda line up pretty well.

be upset about bermuda in the: 1980

As far as I can tell, inflation was a little bit high there because they were completing a shift to a tourism based economy, but that was nothing that needed bold political statements.

So the lyrics presence in this anthem make Bermuda seem not like a nation starving to be free of colonial masters or a fractious past, but just kind of a nice place. That doesn't mean it's just another bit of the British Isles, though.

And the song paints a brief but satisfying picture of a place that stands on its own in. In emotional and cultural terms.

Lines like we've grown from heart to heart and strength to strength make it feel more like a nation growing into itself than one that's struggled. In Hail to Bermuda, we don't get pride from rupture or rapture or rebellion or violence or craziness, but from continuity and community.

It's rooted in the lived experience of people there who see themselves as belonging there first, even. Even while being citizens of something larger.

That framing is echoed in the repeated line, because this island's mine which should be read as a declaration of identity rather than of sovereignty. If I were to try and pull a list of values from this anthem, generally they seem communal.

You know, things like faith, unity and loyalty are the kind of civic virtues that underpin stable societies. Even loyalty is prime. It's not an appeal to loyalty to the crown or faith in religion, but it is an appeal to each other or shared ideals.

So while the lyrics carry the markers of patriotism, they manage to do it without aggressive nationalism and the understanding that the little nation is part of something greater. It's a song written for a small place that knows exactly who it is.

They're not trying to prove a point, they're just affirming something that is already understood at home Hail to Bermuda has given us a refreshing stop on this chaotic trip around the world with something that maybe I shouldn't be thinking so hard about. It gave me a chance to do a lot of reading and learning about a place that occupies a seemingly unique spot sorta in the middle of nowhere.

It's a country that I needed because the next few and the last few have had some substantially heavier historical workload for me to parse out in my very specific way.

I hope that you found this iteration of that interesting and a refreshing story about a place that's at least a little bit different than anywhere else. The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music. The song was used with my permission.

Unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play are free to play. This time I played something different and refreshing because a brass band just wouldn't work for me in Bermuda.

This was arranged and played by Dawn Cassia. She is an artist out of Bermuda that you can find by searching TikTok or Instagram for Love Day 11 that is L O V E underscore Dae11.

My sources are in the show notes and they live@anthemspodcast.com I can be found on Facebook and WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast I post about the show, but mostly I'm depending on word of mouth for getting this onto speakers and into ears. That means I am asking you to help me by using the hashtag anthemspod.

It would be cool if you shared this content and there is a chance it helps Bermudans gain some foothold in the relentless fight for a reasonable cost of living. Which is maybe something we should all be fighting for.

mspodmail.com call or text at: 1203

This is canned credentialed content, and that means that you can report harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-494-55 or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org you can even go there and volunteer your time and join up as a creator.

Maybe you have had three or four tumultuous days in a row, spoiling an otherwise drama free run of several months, and it inspires you to go up on a roof and scream. While up there, in a twist of artful and shameless promotion for me, you choose to yell out things that you learned from this very episode.

Or perhaps you just go and grab one out of the back catalog for the commute. Either way, you're still super cool to the next country.

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