It was part of a chain of batteries, redoubts and entrenchments encircling the French positions in Marsamxett and the Grand Harbour.

The battery was built on top of a hill, overlooking the Floriana Lines, Strada San Giuseppe (the main road which led from Valletta to Mdina), Marsa and Corradino.

[1] Men from Tas-Samra managed to demolish all field walls up to the Floriana Lines, to prevent the French from having any cover in the case of a counterattack.

In an act of defiance, the Maltese insurgents removed a large wooden crucifix from the chapel and erected it on the roof, and they flew a black flag.

In another incident, a cannonball fired from Tas-Samra hit St. James Bastion in Valletta, where it decapitated a French soldier manning one of the guns.

[1] Although the battery itself no longer exists, the Chapel of Our Lady of Atocia is still standing, and it is one of the few surviving landmarks of the French blockade in Malta.