The Bermuda Gunpowder Plot occurred on 14 August 1775 when the Bermudian merchant Henry Tucker, in league with Benjamin Franklin and the American Patriots, organized the theft and smuggling to America of a hundred barrels of gunpowder from the British Army magazine at St. George's amid the American Revolutionary War.
Background[]
On the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress enacted an embargo against Great Britain and her colonies. The island of Bermuda, which depended on food imports from America, was threatened with starvation by the embargo. The Bermudian merchant Henry Tucker, hoping to rescue his business, noted that the American embargo still allowed ships to trade with the colonies if they delivered munitions, and Benjamin Franklin agreed to allow him to resume his profitable trade with the Thirteen Colonies if he could procure Bermuda's sizeable gunpowder supply for George Washington's army amid the Siege of Boston.
History[]
Bermuda was a hotbed of Whig sympathies during the American Revolution due to its close economic ties to the colonies, so Tucker had little trouble finding men willing to take part in his conspiracy. On the night of 14 August 1775, conspirators broke into the armory on a hill overlooking St. George's, may have subdued a single guard if he was present, and captured 126 kegs of gunpowder. The Patriots walked the kegs down to Tobacco Bay, where they were loaded onto the American ship Lady Catherine. Governor James Bruere spotted the American ship leaving with the gunpowder as he woke up early the next morning, and the customs ship he dispatched in pursuit failed to catch up. Though Bruere commissioned Loyalist privateers to raid American shipping from 1778 until his death in 1780, most Bermudians were quietly supportive of the raid, which reopened American ports to Bermudian shipping. Washington's army quadrupled its gunpowder stores with Tucker's help, and Boston surrendered in March 1776. Bermudian gunpowder also helped defend Charleston from the British at the June 1776 Battle of Sullivan's Island.
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