Bermuda under George III – King of Britain: 25 October 1760 – 29 January 1820 1793 Copper Penny
30.7mm (13.16 grams) Reference: KM# 5 | Engraver: Jean-Pierre Droz GEORGIVS III·D·G·REX· DROZ.F, King George III facing right. BERMUDA 1793, Sailing ship with land on the right horizon and Bermuda across the top. Line behind third mast is actually a die clashing and is the King’s neckline from the obverse die smashing into the reverse die. Most specimens have this, suggesting the clash happened very early on in production.
Coin Notes: During the main production run, these dies got worn out extensively. You can see the die clash behind the third mast. The edge of the dies became increasingly cracked resulting in the flat areas on the edging. By the end of the dies lifespan, they were re-tooled by hand, resulting in a change of lettering to what is termed as “Fancy Lettering” by Mark Sportack. They were then struck for a while longer resulting in a set of these production coins having this changed lettering.
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George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. He was concurrently Duke and prince-elector of Brunswick-L?eburg (“Hanover”) in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover, but unlike his two predecessors, he was born in England, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.
His life and with it his reign, which were longer than those of any of his predecessors, were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years’ War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain’s American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
In the later part of his life, George III had recurrent, and eventually permanent, mental illness. Although it has since been suggested that he had the blood disease porphyria, the cause of his illness remains unknown. After a final relapse in 1810, a regency was established, and George III’s eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent. On George III’s death, the Prince Regent succeeded his father as George IV.
Historical analysis of George III’s life has gone through a “kaleidoscope of changing views” that have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them. Until it was reassessed in the second half of the 20th century, his reputation in the United States was one of a tyrant; and in Britain he became “the scapegoat for the failure of imperialism”.
Bermuda, also referred to in legal documents as, fully, “the Bermudas or Somers Isles“, is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, located off the east coast of North America . Its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras , United States , about 1,030 kilometres (640 mi) to the west-northwest. It is about 1,239 kilometres (770 mi) south of Cape Sable Island , Canada , and 1,538 kilometres (956 mi) north of Puerto Rico . Its capital city is Hamilton .
The first known European explorer to reach Bermuda was Spanish sea captain Juan de Bermúdez in 1503, after whom the islands are named. He claimed the apparently uninhabited islands for the Spanish Empire . Paying two visits to the archipelago, Bermúdez never landed on the islands, but did create a recognisable map of the archipelago. Shipwrecked Portuguese mariners are now thought to have been responsible for the 1543 inscription in Portuguese Rock (previously called Spanish Rock). Subsequent Spanish or other European parties are believed to have released pigs there, which had become feral and abundant on the island by the time European settlement began. In 1609, the English Virginia Company , which had established Jamestown in Virginia (a term originally applied to all of the North American continent) two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of the Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent its sinking, then landed ashore.
The island was administered as an extension of Virginia by the Company until 1614. Its spin-off , the Somers Isles Company , took over in 1615 and managed the colony until 1684. At that time, the company’s charter was revoked, and the English Crown took over administration. The islands became a British colony following the 1707 unification of the parliaments of Scotland and England, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain . After 1949, when Newfoundland became part of Canada, Bermuda was automatically ranked as the oldest remaining British Overseas Territory. Since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, it is the most populous Territory. Its first capital, St. George’s , was established in 1612 and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.
Bermuda’s economy is based on offshore insurance and reinsurance , and tourism , the two largest economic sectors . Bermuda had one of the world’s highest GDP per capita for most of the 20th century and several years beyond. Recently, its economic status has been affected by the global recession. It has a subtropical climate. Bermuda is the northernmost point of the Bermuda Triangle , a region of sea in which, according to legend , a number of aircraft and surface vessels have disappeared under supposedly unexplained or mysterious circumstances. The island is in the hurricane belt and prone to severe weather. However, it is somewhat protected from the full force of a hurricane by the coral reef that surrounds the island.
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