Martello tower
Martello Tower is the name given to 164 small round fortifications that the British Empire primarily built between 1796 and 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars . The last Martello Towers were built in Mauritius from 1829 to 1834 .
Surname
The name "Martello Tower" goes back to a Genoese tower at Cape Mortella (Pointe Mortella) on Corsica , which is named after the myrtle growing there (cors .: la mortella). Martello is a corruption of the word "mortella". The British needed three days of bombardment from sea in February 1794 before the 38-man crew of the tower at Mortella surrendered after an assault from land. This impressed the military leadership so much that they decided to also build defense towers to protect against a possible invasion of Napoleon .
Another thesis assumes that the "Torre da Martello" are the namesake of the Martello towers. In these round towers on the Italian coasts (Sardinia, Sicily) the alarm was sounded with a hammer (Italian: martello) and a bell when pirates were sighted.
description
The construction principle of the Martello Towers in Menorca and the majority of the towers in Ireland go back to two Spanish coastal towers built on Menorca from 1785 to 1787, which the British copied and further developed in 1798 after their occupation of the island - the Torre d'Alcalfar and the Torre de Son Ganxo . The towers on the English coast followed the blueprint of Spanish defense towers on the Canary Islands .
The shape and thickness of the walls protected against cannon fire from attacking ships. The English Martello towers, made of smooth plastered brickwork, taper slightly in height. They are around 10 meters high, with a diameter of 19 meters at the base and 12 meters on the upper platform.
The towers have two levels: the storage level for storing ammunition and food supplies and the district level with resting areas for the crew. Both levels were windowless and were ventilated through the roof. Rainwater was also drained into a cistern via pipes running through the masonry and stored as drinking water. Some towers were built over springs.
Their crew consisted of about two dozen soldiers. The tower was entered via a wooden staircase that led to a narrow door on the land side at the level of the upper level. The upper platform of the tower, on which a pivoting cannon was mounted, usually a 32 pounder with 14.5 kg bullets, could be reached via stairs in the thicker, seaward wall or ladders.
Martellos stood side by side so that they had overlapping fields of fire so that any attack from the sea could be covered.
distribution
Martello towers stand on the southern, southeastern and western coasts of the British Isles , Menorca, Australia and along the British trade routes to Saint Helena , Sierra Leone , South Africa , Sri Lanka , Mauritius, Tobago , Bermuda and the then North American colonies, the present-day United States or Canada , as well as in India .
British Islands
On Guernsey and Jersey , the construction of round towers (e.g. the Portelet Tower ) for defense was started in 1778 by the Governor General Conway. The first four (of more than 30 of which 14 have survived), the oldest of which is still standing in the Bay of Grève de Lecq, were finished after just eight months.
The Martello tower in Leith was the only one that was erected on a small rock island in the middle of the harbor entrance. "Tally Too'er", as it was called by the locals, is half carved into the rock and the other half is built up above the waterline. In the course of the port reconstruction between 1936 and 1943, it was connected to a pier so that it is now on the mainland.
The two Martello Towers erected on Hoy mark a turning point in 19th century British naval policy . When the Navy was looking for a new, well-secured base on the Atlantic, the choice fell on the Bay of Longhope , a meeting point for naval units known since the Viking days. This is where the towers of Crockness and Hackness were built.
The Martello Tower in Sandycove , Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown , in Ireland achieved literary fame through James Joyce , who stayed here for a week with Oliver St. John Gogarty and wrote about it at Ulysses . Today the Joyce Museum is housed here. In the Martello Tower in Rathmullan , County Donegal , the Flight of the Earls Center with a permanent exhibition on the so-called " Escape of the Counts " can be visited.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jason Bolton: Martello Towers Research Project (PDF; 1.7 MB), 2008, p. 25 ff.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
