Martello tower

Martello towers were inspired by a round fortress, part of a larger Genoese defence system, at Mortella (Myrtle) Point in Corsica.

Since the 15th century, the Corsicans had built similar towers at strategic points around the island to protect coastal villages and shipping from North African pirates.

The towers stood one or two storeys high and measured 12–15 m (39–49 ft) in diameter, with a single doorway five metres off the ground that one could access only via a ladder that the occupants could remove.

Vice-Admiral Lord Hood reported: The Fortitude and Juno were ordered against it, without making the least impression by a continued cannonade of two hours and a half; and the former ship being very much damaged by red-hot shot, both hauled off.

The walls of the Tower were of a prodigious thickness, and the parapet, where there were two eighteen-pounders, was lined with bass junk,[Note 1] five feet from the walls, and filled up with sand; and although it was cannonaded from the Height for two days, within 150 yards, and appeared in a very shattered state, the enemy still held out; but a few hot shot setting fire to the bass, made them call for quarter.

[4]Late in the previous year, the tower's French defenders had abandoned it after HMS Lowestoffe (32 guns) had fired two broadsides at it.

The British removed the guns to arm a small vessel; consequently, the French were easily able to dislodge the garrison of Corsican patriots that had replaced them.

The garrison of 24 men and one officer lived in a casemate on the first floor, which was divided into several rooms and had fireplaces built into the walls for cooking and heating.

The construction of Martello towers abroad continued until as late as the 1870s but was discontinued after it became clear that they could not withstand the new generation of rifled artillery weapons.

The United States government also built a number of Martello towers along the east coast of the US that copied the British design with some modifications.

Consequently, the Martello towers of Great Britain and Ireland can be considered to have been part of a single defensive system, designed to protect the coastlines of the two main islands of the British Isles as a whole.

A total of 103[5] Martello towers were built in England, set at regular intervals along the coast from Seaford, Sussex, to Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Included in the scheme were three much larger circular forts or redoubts that were constructed at Harwich, Dymchurch and Eastbourne; they acted as supply depots for the smaller towers as well as being powerful fortifications in their own right.

On the east coast, concentrated mainly around Dublin Bay, twenty-six towers were in line of sight of each other, providing the ability to communicate with one another, or warn of any incoming attacks.

Joyce shared the tower with Oliver St. John Gogarty, then a medical student but later to become famous in Irish history as a surgeon, politician and writer.

In Ulysses, the fictional character Stephen Dedalus lives in the tower with a medical student, Malachi "Buck" Mulligan, whom Joyce based on Gogarty.

The British built two Martello towers on the Hook Peninsula to protect the fort near Duncannon, County Wexford and the entrance to Waterford Harbour.

There is also an extant Martello tower located near the settlement of Magilligan Point in County Londonderry, built between 1812 and 1871 to defend against a possible French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars; it is now a visitor attraction.

Confusion with the previous fort presumably explains the claims made in Barbudan tourism publications that this was the World's first, and is its oldest, Martello tower, built in 1745.

The main channel by which vessels reach most parts of Bermuda west of St. George's, including the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland, the Great Sound, Hamilton Harbour, The Flatts, Murray's Anchorage, and other important sites, carries them around the east ends of St. David's and St. George's Islands, where the coastal artillery was always most heavily concentrated.

Sherbrooke Martello Tower[38] stood opposite York Redoubt on McNabs Island; it was demolished in 1944 and replaced by a concrete lighthouse at Maughers Beach.

Four Martello towers were built at Kingston, Ontario to defend its harbour and naval shipyards in response to the Oregon Crisis.

[41] Although European in origin, a primitive form of Martello tower had existed in Punjab by the time it was conquered by the East India Company.

In 1709, the Spanish slave agent in Jamaica, James Castillo, built a fort in Harbour View, to guard his home against attack.

The British built eight true Martello towers in Jersey, three between 1808 and 1814, and five between 1834 and 1837, one of which, L'Etacq, the German occupation forces destroyed during World War II.

In 1865, the Mauritius Almanac and Civil Service Register listed "Two Artillery Men, at 1s each per diem", for the towers at Fort George and Grand River.

In 1808, Captain Lord Cochrane, commanding the 38-gun fifth-rate frigate HMS Imperieuse, sent ashore a landing party that destroyed the unarmed tower.

The main one for accommodation, and in this one is the door for ladder of hand, and two spans that, besides serving for ventilation, are arranged to receive small caliber guns ...

Under the lower floor there is a cistern.The later constructions that gave rise to the present fortress of San Julián is still in good condition[54] and is used as a base for telephone aerials and antennas.

[6] The Key West towers, though the locals refer to them as Martellos, were square instead of round and had thin walls with long gun loops.