page_title: Bermuda
section_title: 20th and 21st centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Bermuda / History / 20th and 21st centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: The S.S. Queen of Bermuda in Bermuda harbour, late 1952 or very early 1953 from a slide photo that was developed in January 1953 so could not have been later, or very much earlier as Dad took lots of slides and got film developed every few weeks and was in Bermuda from 1952-1954 the exact date mentioned below 31 Dec 1952 is only a guess but cannot be far off
context_page_description: Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is approximately 1,035 km east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; 1,236 km south of Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia; 1,759 km northeast of Cuba, and 1,538 km due north of the British Virgin Islands. Though it is typically referred to in the singular, Bermuda consists of 181 islands; the largest of these islands is known as Main Island. The capital city of Bermuda is Hamilton. Bermuda is internally self-governing, with its own constitution and cabinet of ministers selected from the elected Members of the lower house of a Parliament that enacts local laws. As the national government, the Government of the United Kingdom is ultimately responsible for ensuring good governance within British Overseas Territories, and retains responsibility for defence and foreign relations. As of July 2018, it has a population of 71,176, making it the most populous of the British overseas territories. Bermuda's largest economic sectors are offshore insurance, reinsurance, and tourism. Bermuda had one of the world's highest GDP per capita for most of the 20th century.
context_section_description: In the early 20th century, as modern transport and communication systems developed, Bermuda became a popular destination for American, Canadian and British tourists arriving by sea. The United States Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which enacted protectionist trade tariffs on goods imported into the US, led to the demise of Bermuda's once-thriving agricultural export trade to America and encouraged the development of tourism as an alternative source of income. The island was one of the centres for illegal alcohol smuggling during the era of Prohibition in the United States (1920-1933).
  In 1930, after several failed attempts, a Stinson Detroiter seaplane flew to Bermuda from New York City, the first aeroplane ever to reach the islands. The flight was not without incident, as the aircraft had to land twice in the ocean, once because of darkness and again when it needed to refuel. Navigation and weather forecasting improved in 1933 when the Royal Air Force (then responsible for providing equipment and personnel for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm) established a station at the Royal Naval Dockyard to repair float planes (and supply replacements) for the fleet. In 1936, Luft Hansa began to experiment with seaplane flights from Berlin via the Azores with continuation flights to New York City.
  In 1937, Imperial Airways and Pan American Airways began operating scheduled flying boat airline services from New York and Baltimore to Darrell's Island, Bermuda. In 1948, a regularly scheduled commercial airline service began to operate, using land-based aeroplanes landing at Kindley Field (now L.F. Wade International Airport), helping tourism to reach its peak in the 1960s–1970s. By the end of the 1970s, however, international business had supplanted tourism as the dominant sector of Bermuda's economy.
  The Royal Naval Dockyard, and the attendant military garrison, continued to be important to Bermuda's economy until the mid-20th century. In addition to considerable building work, the armed forces needed to source food and other materials from local vendors. Beginning in World War II, US military installations were also located in Bermuda, including a naval air station and submarine base along with US Army air, anti-aircraft, and coast artillery forces. The Army forces were under the Bermuda Base Command during the war, with some shifting and renaming of bases between the US Army, Navy, and Air Force postwar. The American military presence lasted until 1995.
  Universal adult suffrage and the development of a two-party political system took place in the 1960s. Universal suffrage was adopted as part of Bermuda's Constitution in 1967; voting had previously been dependent on a certain level of property ownership.
  On 10 March 1973, the governor of Bermuda, Richard Sharples, was assassinated by local Black Power militants during a period of civil unrest. Some moves were made towards possible independence for the islands, however this was decisively rejected in a referendum in 1995.
caption: The SS Queen of Bermuda in Hamilton Harbour, c. Dec 1952 / Jan 1953
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