Bermuda Volunteer Engineers

The Bermuda Volunteer Engineers
Cap Badge of the Corps of Royal Engineers (this is the post-1953 version, with the Queen's crown).
Country	Bermuda (United Kingdom overseas territory)
Branch	British Army
Type	Military engineering

The Bermuda Volunteer Engineers was a part-time unit created between the two world wars to replace the Regular Royal Engineers detachment, which was withdrawn from the Bermuda Garrison in 1928.

From 1895 to 1931, the only Bermudian units within the garrison were part-time infantry and artillery soldiers, the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps and the Bermuda Militia Artillery, respectively. Each unit had been created under a separate Act of the colonial parliament, at the prompting of the Secretary of State for War, in London. A third act had also been passed authorising the creation of a militia engineering unit of sappers and miners. This would have followed in the pattern of The Submarine Mining Militia formed in Britain in 1878 and tasked with defending major ports. They received a minimum of fifty-five days training per year, and were recruited from experienced boatmen. In Bermuda, the unit was intended to operate boat from the Royal Army Service Corps docks in Hamilton and St. George's, tending to the underwater mine defences, but the unit was never raised. Instead, the Royal Engineers 27th Company (Submarine Mining) which had been permanently reassigned from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Bermuda in 1888 (part of the company had been split off to create the new 40th Company, which remained in Halifax), continued to maintain the mine defences unaided. This unit was not raised. Unit codes were assigned to all three legislated units for marking the stock disks of the Martini-Henry rifle: M./BER. A. for the Bermuda Militia Artillery; V./BER. for the Bermuda Volunteers Rifle Corps; M./BER. S.M. for the Bermuda Submarine Miners.

Submarine mine defence was only one of many activities the Royal Engineers were involved in within Bermuda, which particularly included building forts and infrastructure. In 1900 the Royal Engineers Submarine Mining Companies also assumed responsibility for operating electric searchlights defending harbours.