Who, on this Atlantic island archipelago (128 islands) of Bermuda, unique in the world for its history and how it helped colonise the USA, its nearest neighbour, writes, updates, owns and publishes this Bermuda Archives website, presently advertising-free?
Some websites hide who owns them, as users of WHOIS will discover. This one has no need to.
Keith A. Forbes, whose family crest is shown here, may be familiar to some of you as an author. He was also the originator, researcher, writer and administrator, updater and webmaster of the 160-plus separate web files in the huge Bermuda website bermuda-online.org (BOL). It focused on hundreds of aspects of Bermuda and became a key resource for Bermudians, researchers, working newcomers from abroad attracted by Bermuda’s reputation as an international offshore business centre, and visiting tourists.
He started BOL from scratch in 1990 and sold it to Bermuda’s Royal Gazette newspaper in 1992. Thereafter, he was not an employee of the Royal Gazette but an independent contractor for it to continue his authorship, research, creation. design and webmaster his texts and photographs for the website. He did so for 29 years and was paid a modest monthly fee. He was happily married for 34 years to his wife Lois, an American Bermudian from New England, until her death on 3 January 2023 from stage 4 metastatic lung cancer, in England. His disability and her rapidly worsening condition had made their medical expenses unaffordable in Bermuda. They relocated to the United Kingdom with its kindly and comprehensive National Health Service, most recently in Eastbourne, England. Later, her condition got so severe that it made Keith resign his position as Editor of BOL in 2022 in order to care full-time for her.
Unfortunately, in Keith’s absence, BOL suffered from lack of attention and updating. Now, no longer for BOL, widower Keith is again able to write about Bermuda, this time exclusively for this new Bermuda Archives website, with new files he has researched including many from British resources that referred to Bermuda.
In keeping with the title and theme of this website (with AI illustrations by his son Ian), these new files to be published here will include details, perhaps of particular interest to NATO members, of the former British Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Canadian and United States military bases in Bermuda. Also to come will be new historical files, some of which have previously unrevealed facts. Unlike other Bermuda websites, Bermudaarchives.com will not focus on matters already contained en masse in many tourism-relevant Bermuda websites. Instead, this is a source of accurate, factual and reliable historical and current information from a Bermudian insider with no axe to grind, no business to promote and no promotional incentive from any Bermuda hotel or place to stay. However, it will refer to them with a free link if/when reciprocated.
This historical first files in this work are not intended to be a new history of Bermuda. Instead they try to plug a few holes in Bermuda’s uniquely fascinating early history. It was from 1515 when first noticed by Spanish and Portuguese seafarers – and still today albeit no longer lonely – a lone outpost in the midst of the wide North Atlantic. It had then – and still does- the odd distinction of of not being American or European or Caribbean but an ancient British colony that has somehow has escaped the attention of most colonial historians, likely solely because of its small size – only 21 square miles or 56 square kilometres – and remote North Atlantic location. But both in one way became a huge advantage. When the age of sail was the only way to travel, it was less than a century after Bermuda was founded in 1609 by accident and not 1612 by design that small but fast Bermudian ships, built of Bermuda cedar, became hugely sought after, traded through the world and even became small Royal Navy ships of war. It was hardly surprising. Tiny Bermuda became, after it was colonised in 1612, although it did not know it and the British never capitalised on it, the most central location in England’s – before it became Britain’s – American empire. It was equidistant from all the New World colonies in a broad thousand-mile arc from Newfoundland to Antigua. Its isolation became an asset, not a liability.
Keith is a former member of Bermuda’s Broadcasting Commission, Consumer Affairs Board, Board of Education, Junior Chamber International, Reserve Constabulary, Bermuda Regiment, Kiwanis and more. Keith has two sons, Ian in Bermuda, whose IT expertise relating to this website has been immense, and Timothy in the US Army.
Visitors to this site can view its contents with confidence. It does not sell anything about Bermuda, instead gives now and will be adding more historical and military and other good information about Bermuda that does not appear in the Bermuda Government archival records. It makes no offers, suggestions or recommendations. It just tries to give information about Bermuda accurately and Impartially to help careful researchers.
Updated 5 March 2025, Eastbourne, England. 6:20 pm GMT.