Bermuda

Bermuda is a self-governing British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic, its colonial history shown on the map among the earliest of any English colony. In 1612 the English began settlement of the archipelago, officially named Virgineola, with the arrival of the ship the Plough; New London — renamed St George's Town — was settled that year and designated as the colony's first capital, and it remains the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World. In 1615 the colony, renamed the Somers Isles in commemoration of Sir George Somers, was passed on to the Somers Isles Company; early acts of 1616 and 1620 banning the hunting of certain birds may be the earliest conservation laws in the New World. Bermudians went on to help settle the Carolina Colony and other English colonies in the Americas. St George's served as the seat of government until the capital moved to Hamilton in the nineteenth century. Through the 1500–1945 window shown on the map Bermuda remained in British hands continuously, its fortified dockyard guarding the western Atlantic; today it is the oldest of Britain's remaining overseas territories, with Hamilton as its capital.