 Without the assistance or funds of the colonial government, the Governor (who was also military Commander-in-Chief) and the Bermuda Garrison of the British Army employed many (mostly short-lived) schemes during the intervening decades to recruit Bermudians into the regular army and the Board of Ordnance Military Corps for part-time, local-service, to reinforce the regular soldiers.Most of the volunteers were blacks.The relatively lower volunteering rate of whites was to be a recurring phenomenon as late as the First World War (when the first of the black-recruited BMA's two contingents sent to France numbered 201 officers and other ranks, more than the two First World War and the two Second World War overseas contingents of the all-white BVRC combined...although many white Bermudians also served in the British "Home Forces", from which non-whites were generally barred).