Hogge Money proudly displays a feral hog!

The coins were produced by an English mint in 1615 or 1616 for the Sommer Islands, now called Bermuda.

They relieved a shortage of coin to pay for labor required to establish a tobacco crop, pending harvest profits.

Denominations included two, three, six and twelve pence.

These coins were inexpensively made of thin, brassy copper with a trivial silver wash. Regrettably, the silvering fast dissolved in the salty local environment. The intrinsic value of the coins was intentionally less than face value, to prevent them from circulating outside the islands.

None of which explains the "hogge", to use the contemporary English spelling. Was this a colonial manifestation of British wit?

On the contrary, it was… well… a solemn memorial of gratitude for the pigly (?) abundance of these animals on the arrival of Sir George Sommers in 1609.

Sommers and his party were en route to the mainland colony of Virginia, sailing from Plymouth, England in the ship Sea Adventure, when driven off course by a hurricane. When they put into Bermuda, first known as the Hogge Islands, their ensuing exploration was the first since the Spanish discovery a century earlier.

Indeed it was the Spanish who introduced, or more likely, allowed to escape, the first little crowd of pigs. Over the years they multiplied, and provided a source of food for hapless victims of hazardous seas.

And so this winsome little hog, perhaps as a colonial ham sandwich, became a popular item on the menu of history.