Graham, Aaron; (2024) Fortification, engineering and empire in mid-eighteenth century Jamaica. In: Luengo, Pedro and Smith, Gene Allen, (eds.) A fortified sea: the defence of the Caribbean in the long eighteenth century. University of Alabama Press: Alabama, US.

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Abstract

In a confidential report submitted to the Board of Trade in 1754 the governor of Jamaica, Edward Trelawney, reported on the poor state of the island’s fortified places, especially the three main fortifications of Fort Augusta, Fort Charles and Rock Fort which protected the town of Kingston on the south coast. ‘The whole art of engineering seems to have been employed in making them as expensive as they are defenceless’, he reported, even though some £60,000 had been spent on them since 1743. After only six years of peace since the conclusion of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, Fort Charles was already in a ruinous condition, ‘so defenceless a work (being very unskilfully designed at first) that it is not worth repairing’, while Fort Augusta was in much the same state. A further report by one of his successors in 1764 repeated these concerns. Fort Charles had over a hundred guns but most were so old and worn that their barrels were distorted, ‘which’, the governor reported, ‘would cause great uncertainty in firing at an object’.2 Fort Augusta had been damaged by the explosion of its powder magazine in 1763, and had not been repaired. Nor had conditions improved by 1781 either. ‘So much remains yet to be done’, noted the governor, ‘notwithstanding the amazing sums laid out by the country on forts and fortifications, that it is almost difficult to determine which place ought to be attended first’.3 The island’s fortifications therefore remained in a poor state, throughout the mid-eighteenth century despite the wealth of the island and the threats it faced from both foreign invasion and internal revolt. This chapter argues that this did not reflect problems of engineering, which were mirrored in French and Spanish islands. Instead, it was a product of the particular political constitution of Jamaica and other British islands, which held back funds for maintenance and construction except in wartime, when prices of labour and materials were highest, reducing the success of construction. Any consideration of the fortification of the Caribbean in this period must therefore take account of the wider context in which it occurred, and the differing political challenges which faced imperial regimes dealing with largely the same problems.

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