As Bermuda's maritime economy began to falter during the 19th Century, Bermudians would turn some of the woodland over to growing export crops, but most of the farming (or "gardening", as it is known in Bermuda) would be carried out by imported labour, beginning with immigration from Portuguese Atlantic islands in the 1840s. Later in the Nineteenth Century, large-scale West Indian immigration began (initially, also to provide labourers for the new export agriculture industry, then greatly increased at the turn of the century during the expansion of the Royal Naval Dockyard). The Black West Indians, unlike the Portuguese immigrants, were British citizens and not obliged to leave Bermuda, as many Portuguese were, at the end of a contracted period, although they were effectively indentured to the firm contracted by the Admiralty to carry out the construction work, and due to delays in construction, many found themselves in financial hardship.