During the Boer War, the British POW camps in South Africa were at bursting point, and Britain began to use its colonies for housing surplus prisoners. In 1901, 4,619 Boer prisoners of war were shipped to Bermuda to be incarcerated on the islands of the Great Sound. This cedar bugle was carved by a POW detained on Burts Island, which was reserved for the “Irreconcilables”— the prisoners who protested most ardently against British rule in South Africa.

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