![]() On Retreat Hill to its rear, Fort Victoria and Fort Albert were built in the 1840s. John Smith's 1624 map of Bermudian forts, with Rich's Mount at right (P) Between them, the three guarded Hurd's Channel and the Northern Lagoon from navigation by an enemy. ![]() To the rear of these three forts, a pair of identical forts were built in the 1650s on hilltops on either side of St. George's Town: Fort George was built at Mount Hill, on the western side of the town (the site of a succession of earlier defence works, beginning with a watchtower in 1612, rebuilt with the addition of a signal gun in 1619, to which the name Riche's Mount (or Rich's Mount) was originally applied). The first proper fort was built on the site in the 1790s, but this was replaced with the current fort the Western Redoubt (originally intended to be named ‘’Fort William’’) was built on another hilltop on the northern side of the town, between Government Hill (from which Government House had moved to Mount Langton in Pembroke Parish with the move of the Parliament of Bermuda and the colonial capital from St. George's Town to the then Town of Hamilton in 1815) and Barrack Hill, the site of the Royal Barracks of St. The southern RML 11 inch 25 ton gun at Fort George.įort George was completed and armed, and later re-armed with more modern weapons, while Fort William was completed but never armed as it was deemed by then to be excess to need. Instead, named the Western Redoubt, it was converted into a magazine, which would have been subsidiary to the Ordnance depot on Ordnance Island.įort George was not one of those re-armed with modern muzzle loading rifles at the end of the Nineteenth Century. During the First World War, the it was used by the Pilot Service and the Royal Naval Examination Service, who operated a steamer from the harbour to meet arriving ships at Five Fathom Hole for inspection, before piloting them to harbour.
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