Bermuda's porous limestone did not allow for a conventional drydock, a series of floating dry docks were also moored to the wharf inside the cambers from the 1860s. With control of the western North Atlantic ceded to the allied United States Navy during the Second World War (when a United States Naval Operating Base, serving ships and flyingboats, was built on the Great sound, and United States Army Air Forces airbase Kindley Field at the East End) and subsequently under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Royal Naval Dockyard was reduced to a base in 1951 (with the ships based there required to return to Portsmouth for repairs). Most of Ireland Island, and the other Admiralty and War Office landholdings in Bermuda, were transferred to the colonial government in 1957, but the South Yard and adjacent areas continued to operate as a naval base titled HMS Malabar until the 1980s, when the last vessels based there were withdrawn and HMS Malabar became a supply station. The frigate designated as West Indies Guardship would visit on its way to the West Indies, and again on returning to Britain. Otherwise, HMS Malabar served as a supply station and berthing area for Royal Navy and NATO vessels transiting or exercising in the area until closing in 1995). The Commissioner's House at the highest point atop The Keep (a fortress within the fortified North Yard) on the northern point of the island was home to a Royal Navy Wireless Station from 1939 to 1949 (another had been located since the First World War at Daniel's Head on Somerset Island, and was taken over by the Royal Canadian Navy from the 1960s 'til 1995 as CFS Bermuda, a transmitter location). Since the 1970s, the Bermuda Maritime Museum has occupied the Keep, including the Commissioner's House (and, following the end of the Millennium, also took possession of the Casemates Naval Barracks to expand into the national museum of the British Overseas Territory). Other than HMS Malabar and the maritime museum, Ireland Island was largely deserted after the 1950s, and many of the former naval buildings were becoming derelict by the 1980s when the colonial government formed a quango named the West End Development Company to attempt to draw businesses and visitors to the area. Fortunately for Ireland Island (and less fortunately for St. George's town and the City of Hamilton), the steady increase in size