Bermuda was a popular subject for playwrights, authors and poets in England during the early years of its colonisation, given the drama of its unintended settlement through the wreck of the Sea Venture and its being by far the more successful of the Virginia Company's two settlements until the 1620s. However, as Virginia developed and new colonies were established in the West Indies, Bermuda slipped from the view of writers and the public in England (nearly a century after its settlement, Bermuda, along with the rest of the Kingdom of England, united with the Kingdom of Scotland to become the Kingdom of Great Britain). Although rarely mentioned in histories or other reference books between the latter 17th Century and the 19th Century, Bermuda's designation as Britain's primary naval and military base in the region of North America and West Indies following US Independence, and the emergence of the tourism industry in the latter Nineteenth Century, brought many erudite visitors and short-term residents, some already published authors, and more comprehensive ethnographic information on the people of Bermuda was included in many subsequently published recollections, travel guides, and magazine articles, such as the book "BERMUDA; A COLONY, A FORTRESS AND A PRISON; OR, Eighteen Months in the Somers Islands", published anonymously (the author, Ferdinand Whittingham, was identified only as "A FIELD OFFICER" who had served in the Bermuda Garrison) in 1857, though the authors observations often gave more reliable insight into the assumptions and nature of their own societies and classes.