page_title: St David's Battery
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St David's Battery / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The building at St. David's Battery, on St. David's Island, Bermuda, that had housed the battery's range finder.
context_page_description: St. David's Battery, also known during wartime as the "Examination Battery", was a fixed battery of rifled breech-loader artillery guns, built and manned by the Royal Garrison Artillery and the Royal Engineers, and their part-time reserves, the Bermuda Militia Artillery and the Bermuda Volunteer Engineers, part of the Bermuda Garrison of the British Army.
context_section_description: One of the last of a large number of forts and fortified gun batteries built by the British Army primarily during the course of the 19th Century (many others had been built by the militia during the preceding centuries) to protect the British colony of Bermuda, and its Royal Naval Dockyard, the battery was completed in 1910.
  Whereas the batteries and forts built prior to this, all of which housed coastal artillery, were originally designed to be equipped with cannon, or rifled muzzle-loading guns (although some were later redesigned to house RBL guns), St. David's Battery was the first designed specifically for rifled breech loaders.
  The battery is equipped with two 9.2 inch Mk. X and two BL 6 inch Mk VII guns, on Central Pivot Mk II mount, all with 360 degrees of traverse, and all built by Vickers. The battery is sited on top of Great Head (the larger of the two heads that together make up St. David's Head), at the East end of the Island of St. David's, itself at the East end of the archipelago of Bermuda. Bermuda sits just inside the southern perimeter of a circular barrier reef (the rim of the caldera of a submarine volcano). The reef parallels the South Shore at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile. To the North, it extends up to 18 miles from shore. There are no usable harbours on the South Shore, but large sheltered ones accessible from the lagoon within the reef to the North. This lagoon, however, can only be accessed by large vessels via a channel through the reefs which brings them near to the Eastern coast of St. David's Island. Passing St. David's, vessels can either enter into St. George's Harbour, or continue Northward, rounding the East end of St. George's Island, following through another channel that leads to the West, into the waters of the lagoon, from where they can reach the Great Sound, Hamilton Harbour, the Royal Naval Dockyard, and Murray's Anchorage.
  Following US independence, the Royal Navy had built up a large naval base in Bermuda, including the dockyard, an Admiralty House, and various subsidiary facilities. This became the headquarters of the North America and West Indies Squadron, and the primary Royal Naval base in the Western Atlantic (although a base in Brazil served South Atlantic waters). Protecting this base was the primary reason for the British Army's large garrison in Bermuda, with its numerous forts and batteries. Of all of these, St. David's Head occupied the most decisive position, watching over the bottle-neck through which any force large enough to conceivably seize the archipelago would have to travel (although smaller vessels might pick through the reefs to land raiding parties or saboteurs elsewhere).
  During both world wars, St. David's Battery was designated as the "examination battery" for Bermuda.  An officer of the Royal Navy Examination Service was taken out to meet ships arriving off Bermuda, along with the pilot who would steer the vessel through the reef. The ships were stopped under the watchful eyes of the gunners at St. David's Head. In that position, the naval officer had the task of examining the vessel and its documents before it was allowed to proceed inwards to the lagoon, or any of the harbours.
  It would not be long before the battery fired its first shot during the Great War. The British competitor for the 1914 America's Cup, Shamrock IV, was crossing the Atlantic with the steam yacht Erin, destined for Bermuda, when Britain declared war on Germany on 5 August 1914. Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, sent his own yacht, named Vagrant, from Rhode Island to Bermuda to meet them and escort them to the US. The British crews had received word of the declaration by radio. Among the first things done in Bermuda on the declaration was to remove all maritime navigational aids. Vagrant arrived on the 8th. Having no radio, the crew were unaware of the declaration of war. Finding all of the buoys and other navigational aids missing, they attempted to pick their own way in through the Narrows, the channel that threads through th
caption: The Search Light Direction Station, built into the cliff face at St. David's Battery, communicated with the Search Light Emplacement to direct the beam of the Defence Electric Light
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