Fort Ricasoli
The Fort Ricasoli is during the reign of the Order of St. John , built from 1670 to 1693 fort on Malta . Apart from minor changes and destruction during the Second World War , the fort has been preserved in its original configuration.
prehistory
Fort Ricasoli is located on a headland east of Grand Harbor that separates Rinella Creek from the open sea. Access to the Grand Harbor can be controlled from here. Despite the exposed location, the peninsula initially remained unsurfaced even after Malta was transferred to the Order of St. John. In 1629 a tower was built on the peninsula, but its task was less to ward off external enemies than to prevent the escape of the galley slaves held captive on the archipelago.
Giovanni de Medici proposed the construction of a fortress on the headland in April 1640. Although the Council of the Order of St. John approved the construction, the plans were not implemented.
Construction of the fort
In 1670, the Italian architect Count Antonio Maurizio Valperga, who u. a. worked for Cardinal Jules Mazarin , the Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner (1608–1680) a new proposal for fortifying the headland. The fort, in cooperation with Fort St Elmo, was supposed to secure access to the Grand Harbor. At the same time, it had to be able to withstand a direct attack from the land side. This time construction began immediately, so that work on the fort was completed in 1693. The financier was the knight Fra (Fra for Fratello / brother) Giovanni Ricasoli from a noble family from Florence. The fort has an irregular layout and follows the coastline of the headland. On the land side, the fort is closed with a central bastion and two half bastions. A dry ditch is in front of the bastions and the curtains that connect them . Beyond the trench there are two ravelins and a covered path with trusses and weapon stations.
Like most of the Order's forts built during this period, Fort Ricasoli was also criticized. Generally regarded as too small and cramped, the fort was actually nothing more than a hornwork . Since the headland did not allow a spatial expansion, other ways had to be used to strengthen the fort.
Carlos de Grunenberg , a Flemish engineer called to Malta by Grand Master Gregorio Carafa in 1681 , suggested building a battery at the head of the headland. In his designs, Grunenberg preferred low-lying battery positions just above the surface of the water. According to his ideas, a circular battery was built below the hornwork at the tip of the headland in 1687; this battery was completely destroyed during the great storm of 1827.
In September 1715, the French engineer Jacob de Tigné submitted further suggestions for improving the fort. His ideas for securing the covered paths with trusses were implemented, as was the construction of counter mine tunnels under the glacis . His suggestion for a retrenchment , which was to stretch across the headland roughly in the middle of the fort , was not realized . De Tigné also proposed a crescent-shaped battery that would enclose Grunenberg's battery and be in front of the Tenaille at the tip of the headland. This proposal was also not implemented.
In the following time, the construction work was limited to repair and maintenance work. Minor improvements were made to the northern half-bastion to reinforce it and close the gap between it and the sea.
At the end of the 18th century, seven heavy cannons were erected in the fort's casemates . The casemates were open to the rear and had additional ventilation openings in the ceilings. This allowed a high cadence of the guns because the powder smoke withdrew quickly. In addition, numerous other cannons were set up on the bastions and ramparts of the fort.
British colonial times
After the islands were occupied by British troops and converted into a British colony, the fort was initially used largely unchanged. Since the fort's powder magazine was destroyed in an explosion in 1807 during a mutiny by the Turkish, Albanian and Greek troops stationed in the fort, new magazines were built from October 1831, which were completed two years later. The cost was £ 1,429. In 1844, General Francis Pym Harding assumed that 500 soldiers were sufficient to man the fort. He estimated the strength of the forces necessary for the defense of Malta at a total of 6,000 men.
In 1859, considerations were made to embrace all the forts and coastal fortifications. These considerations were due to the technical progress that had led to an increase in the performance of the artillery. The existing smooth-barreled cannons were increasingly replaced by guns with trains . William George Armstrong had developed a ready-to-use breech-loading cannon in Great Britain as early as 1854 . The guns developed on the basis of this design were introduced by both the Royal Navy and the British Army as the RBL 20 pounder Armstrong gun (caliber 3.75 inch - 95.3 mm) and RBL 40 pounder Armstrong gun (caliber 120 mm). RBL stands for Rifle Breech Loading , i.e. drawn pipe - loading by closure . In practical use, however, these weapons could not convince. The ballistic performance was not higher than that of the muzzle-loaders customary at the time, and with a well-rehearsed crew, the muzzle-loaders achieved the same rate as Armstrong's designs, but production was much more complex and therefore more expensive. Therefore, after an appraisal by the Ordnance Select Committee, the further development and procurement of breech loaders was initially stopped from 1864. In the United Kingdom, it went back to the development and procurement of muzzle-loaders for the time being. The cannons procured in several hundred pieces ( RBL 20 pounder 412 pieces, RBL 40 pounder 1013 pieces) remained in the armament. The guns developed and procured from 1864 onwards suffered from some conceptual problems. Although the use of drawn pipes was also adopted here, the weapon was loaded from the front over the muzzle. This is also expressed in the name of the weapon, which begins with RML , where RML stands for Rifle Muzzle Loading . So that the projectiles could be introduced into the barrel with fields and trains at all, they had wart-shaped elevations that slid in the rifles of the weapon. Problems with sealing the projectiles to the tube reduced range and precision. Since slowly burning propellant charges were not available at that time, high gas pressures occurred in the tube. This limited the length of the tubes - which again limited penetration performance and range - and required very thick and heavy weapons with the state of the art at the time. The only way to upgrade ballistic weapons at that time was to increase the caliber, and in fact the caliber grew from 6.3 "for the RML 64 pounder 64 cwt gun in 1865 to 17.72" for the RML 17.72 "gun a year 1874, but the effective range of the latter cannons was only about 6,000 m.
For Fort Ricasoli, the plan drawings made by Lieutenant Lewis in 1864 specify the equipment with four RBL 7 inch Armstrong guns as the main armament. The cannons with a caliber of 178 mm had a maximum range of 3,200 m. They fired grenades with a projectile weight of 40 to 50 kg. There were also twenty-three 68-pounder guns , one 10-inch gun , twenty-four 8-inch guns , six 32-pounders , ten 24-pounders, twenty-four 24-pounder carronades, and six mortars . A total of 104 heavy weapons were stationed in the fort. The crew amounted to fifteen officers, 676 NCOs and men and four horses.
By 1878 these guns were outdated. The fort's armament was replaced by muzzle-loaders with rifled barrel (RML), which were placed in the casemates behind protective shields. A RML 12.5 inch 38 ton gun , two RML 12 inch 25t gun , two RML 10 inch 18 ton gun and two RML 9 inch 12 ton gun were set up . The maximum range of the RML 12.5 inch 38 ton gun was 5,500 m. With a caliber of 318 mm, the gun fired shells weighing between 363 and 367 kg. In 1885 the works committee proposed the removal of all older guns from the fort, only ten carronades should be set up as trophy guns without ammunition. In the meantime, the fort's inner courtyard had become the main deficiency of the fort. It was too high, and there were no protected paths between the individual positions. However, the creation of such paths was rejected because of the effort and the associated costs.
Generals Lothian Nicholson and William Howley Goodenough proposed in 1888 that the fort be extensively renovated. Only the RML 12.5 inch 38 ton gun and the two RML 10 inch 18 ton gun were to remain in the fort. In their opinion, the towering fort was a clear target for enemy ships and was easy to destroy. Nicholson and Goodenough therefore also opposed equipping the fort with modern breech-loading cannons. For use in the artillery positions, two mobile artillery trains were set up, which were stationed in Fort Ricasoli. These movable siege trains were equipped with 5- and 6.6-inch howitzers, 13- and 15-pounder field cannons and machine guns from Maxim and Gatling revolver cannons. Originally, the trains should only be used in positions in front of the Victoria Lines, later a service along the east coast of the main island was also planned.
Contrary to the suggestions of Nicholson and Goodenough, the fort was equipped with modern breech-loading cannons. By 1906 a total of four BL 6 inch Mk VII naval guns had been set up. The construction of the gun emplacements involved considerable effort. The construction of the Bastion no. 2 , which started a gun, was £ 3,308. The position was built from 1901 to September 1902. In 1906 it was proposed to replace one of the BL 6 inch with four QF 12 pounder 12 cwt naval guns . These guns had a shorter range, but a higher cadence, which made them particularly suitable for use against fast-moving sea targets. The main task of the batteries was to prevent enemy forces from breaking through into Grand Harbor and to prevent the port entrance from being blocked. A searchlight was installed in the fort in May 1889 so that the fight could also be carried out at night. In 1906, the battlefield lighting was supplemented by additional spotlights.
During this period, a station for Brennan torpedoes was also built in the fort . These were wire-guided torpedoes that were launched from fixed runways on land and launched into the target. With a limited range and speed, they were used to defend narrow port entrances. Their advantage was that if they hit the ship they hit the ship below the waterline, which inevitably led to the loss of the ship in battleships up to the King Edward VII class . The station was built on the south side of the fort, so the torpedoes were shot in the area of the Grand Harbor. As early as 1904, the facility was deemed superfluous. Three motors for generating electrical energy for the searchlights were installed in the rooms of the station.
Use during the Second World War
Immediately before the beginning of the Second World War , the fort was equipped with three QF 12 pounders and three QF 6 pounders in armored turrets. Positions 2, 3 and 4 for the larger calibers had towering fire control stations made of reinforced concrete. The trench was partially filled in and the entrances were widened to allow larger vehicles to enter the fort. Due to its proximity to the docking facilities of Grand Harbor, the fort was constantly exposed to air raids during the war. One of these attacks in April 1942 destroyed the main portal and the governor's palace.
Use after the Second World War
Immediately after the war ended, the fort was used as accommodation for members of the Royal Navy . The main gate was restored under pressure from the local population, but significant deviations from the original were accepted. The governor's palace was not rebuilt mainly for financial reasons. After the withdrawal of British troops from Malta, the fort was not used and was left to decay. Efforts to reconstruct or safeguard the complex in terms of monument preservation were unsuccessful.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Quentin Hughes: Malta. A guide to the fortifications , pp. 169ff
- ^ Ray Cachia Zammit (editor): The Victoria Lines
- ^ A b c Hermann Bonnici: Fort Ricasoli in ARX - Online Journal of Military Architecture and Fortifications , Issue 1-4 2004-2007, p. 33ff
literature
- Quentin Hughes : Malta. A guide to the fortifications , Said International, 1993. ISBN 9990 943 07 9 (English)
- Stephen C. Spiteri : The Knight's Fortifications: an Illustrated Guide of the Fortifications built by the Knights of St. John in Malta , Book distributors limited, 2001. ISBN 9789990972061 (English)
- Charles Stephenson: The Fortifications of Malta 1530 - 1945 , Osprey Publishing Limited, 2004, ISBN 1-84176-836-7 (English)
- Hermann Bonnici: Fort Ricasoli in ARX - Online Journal of Military Architecture and Fortifications , Issue 1–4 2004–2007 (English)
- Ray Cachia Zammit (Editor): The Victoria Lines , Progress Co Ltd, Malta, 1996. ISBN 99909-3-047-3 (English)
Coordinates: 35 ° 53 ′ 47.7 " N , 14 ° 31 ′ 38.4" E