1821 map of the heavily fortified city of Valletta, Malta and its two harbours (Grand Harbour and Marsamxett), an important Royal Navy base in the 19th and 20th centuries

Imperial fortress was the designation given in the British Empire to four colonies that were located in strategic positions from each of which Royal Navy squadrons could control the surrounding regions and,^[1] between them, much of the planet.^[2]

History

The Imperial fortresses provided not only safe harbours and (with the advent of steam propulsion) coal stores within the area of operation, but also Royal Naval Dockyards where ships of the squadrons could be repaired or maintained without requiring their return to a dockyard in the British Isles.^[3][4]

The Imperial fortresses were also locations where military stores were stockpiled and numbers of soldiers sufficient not only for local defence, but also to provide expeditionary forces to work with the Royal Navy in amphibious campaigns and raids on coasts throughout the regions, could be garrisoned.^[5][6]

These Imperial fortresses originally included:^[7][8]

• Halifax, in Nova Scotia
• Bermuda
• Gibraltar
• Malta

They were the lynch pins in Britain's domination of the oceans and the Mediterranean and Caribbean seas, including its ability to deny safe passage to enemy naval and merchant vessels while protecting its own merchant trade, as well as to its projection of superior naval and military force anywhere on the planet. Their strategic importance made Imperial fortresses somewhat immune to the British Government's usual policy of pinching pennies on defence, often by lumbering local governments and taxpayers with the cost of local defence though this was an area of governance not delegated to local government's control. As recorded by the Canadian Director of the Naval Historical Section G. N. Tucker (in "The Naval Service of Canada: its Official History")^[9] in 1952:

The conference sat in London from April 4 until May 9, 1887 — the year of the Queen's first jubilee. In his opening address Lord Salisbury disavowed any wish to raise at that conference the question of imperial federation. The British Government reiterated its earlier-established position that land defences, generally speaking, were the responsibility of the colony concerned. Nearly half the meetings of the conference were devoted to the subject of naval defence, especially that of the Australian colonies. The British Government postulated a strong navy, free to operate anywhere. In order that the Royal Navy might in practice be ubiquitous, it was essential that certain bases and coaling stations should be provided with shore defences. "In addition to the Imperial fortresses Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Halifax, it would seem necessary to defend on an adequate scale, Cape Town and Simon's Bay, St. Helena, Sierra Leone, Port Louis (Mauritius), Aden, Colombo (Ceylon), Singapore, Hong Kong, Port Royal (Jamaica), Port Castries (St. Lucia), and Esquimalt, in addition to minor coaling stations . . ." The imperial fortresses would remain a responsibility of the United Kingdom; but in the case of certain colonies in which local as well as imperial interests seemed to require that naval bases be maintained, the government of the United Kingdom thought that the cost should be shared, and to this arrangement the governments of Hong Kong, Mauritius, Singapore, and Ceylon, had already agreed. The British Government also announced that arrangements had been made to facilitate the employment of British officers by the various colonial governments.

Map of the cruises of the Bermuda-based HMS York on the America & West Indies Station, 1936-1939

Halifax and Bermuda controlled the transatlantic sea lanes between North America and Europe, and were placed to dominate the Atlantic seaboard of the United States (as demonstrated during the American War of 1812 when the squadron of the Royal Navy's North America Station maintained a blockade of the Atlantic coast of the United States and launched the Chesapeake Campaign from Bermuda, defeating American forces at Bladensburg, burning Washington, DC, and raiding Alexandria, Virginia, before ultimately being defeated at Baltimore and forced to withdrawn back to Bermuda),^{[10][11][12][13][14]} as well as to control the western Atlantic Ocean from the Arctic to the West Indies (in the twentieth century, the Bermuda-based North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy, as the North America Station had been re-named after absorbing the Jamaica Station in 1830, would become the 'America and West Indies Station', its area growing to include the western South Atlantic and the Atlantic coast of South America, as well the Pacific coast from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic). In 1828,^[15] Royal Navy Purser Richard Otter (or Cotter) wrote of Bermuda:

The possession of Bermuda, as the key of all our Western Colonies, is of the first importance to England, for if a foe of any maritime strength had possession of it, our trade would be exposed to much annoyance, if not total destruction.

Gibraltar controlled passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and Malta, aside from supporting operations in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, served as a base for naval and military forces that would be able to deploy relatively quickly to the Indian and Pacific Oceans once the Suez Canal was completed in 1869.

Halifax ceased to be an Imperial fortress in stages. With the 1867 confederation of the Dominion of Canada (under which all of the colonies of the British Empire's administrative region of British North America, except Bermuda and Newfoundland, were "federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom ..."),^[16][17] military defence of Canada would be transferred to the militia of the dominion government, and the British Army withdrew most of its establishment from the continent, leaving small military garrisons to defend the Royal Naval Dockyard at Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard in British Columbia. These garrisons were withdrawn along with the Royal Navy establishments when the two Canadian dockyards were closed in 1905, then sold to the government of the dominion.

The lack of such an Imperial fortress in the region of Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean was always to be a weakness throughout the nineteenth century (the British Government, ever unwilling to increase, or even maintain,^[18][19] its defence expenditure, relied on there being few nations outside of the Atlantic and its connected seas that possessed fleets capable of threatening British trade or territories, though the nascent United States of America were multiplying towards the Pacific coast of North America, and the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire both had ports on the Pacific and were keen to build large, modern fleets).

America and West Indies Station 1st Division (HMS Dragon, HMS Danae and HMS Despatch) off Admiralty House in 1931 as they depart their base at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda to exercise on the open North Atlantic

As Britain had no base comparable to an Imperial fortress in East Africa, Mauritius, India, Ceylon, Malaysia, Hong Kong, British Columbia or Australasia, after the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal Britain relied on Malta in the Mediterranean Sea to project power over this vast expanse. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, Britain was able to rely on amity and common interests between herself and the United States during and after the First World War, to also use Bermuda, from which cruisers could patrol the Pacific coasts of North, Central, and South America. Finally the rising power and increasing belligerence of the Japanese empire after the First World War (The Imperial Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy) would result in the construction of the Singapore Naval Base, which was completed in 1938, less than four years before hostilities with Japan commenced during the Second World War.

The need to protect these bases of operation, as well as to prevent, via their captures, their becoming bases of similar utility to an enemy (with ownership of land by foreigners, at least in Bermuda, barred in order to deny a pretext for invasion),^[20] each was heavily defended, making fortress an apt designation. "Fortress" was often included when giving the names of these colonies, e.g. "Fortress Bermuda".^[21] Bermuda, protected by an almost impassable barrier reef and unconnected to any continent, required the least defences, but was heavily garrisoned and armed with coastal artillery batteries.^[22][23][24] Defence of Bermuda, and of the region, was greatly weakened by the economic austerity that followed the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the American War of 1812, which resulted in drastic reductions to the regular forces and to Reserve Forces in the British Isles (Militia, Volunteer Force, and Fencibles), and in Bermuda (Militia and volunteer artillery), being allowed to lapse. Bermuda's garrison would slowly increase, with the threat of invasion by the United States during and after the American Civil War resulting in further strengthening of the defences. Bermuda's importance to Imperial defence was only increasing, however, and the parlous state of its own defence was commented upon by Sir Henry Hardinge in the House of Commons on the 22 March 1839:

Such were some of the reasons why it appeared to him, that her Majesty's forces should be increased. He might go to other stations Bermuda for instance. All who were conversant with the interests of our West Indian and North American possessions must know that Bermuda was one of our most important posts—a station where the navy could be refitted with the greatest ease, where during the last war we had about 2,000,000l. value in stores, where our ships (such was the safety of the anchorage) could at all times take refuge. This island had been fortified at very great expense; for some years 5,000 convicts had been engaged on the works, and it was most important in every point of view that this island should be maintained in a state of perfect security. For a long time even after the determination of the sympathisers in the United States to attack us had been known, the force at Bermuda was never greater than a small battalion of 480 or 500 men, perfectly inadequate to do the duties of the station. Considering that this post was one of great consequence, that immense sums had been expended upon it, and that the efficiency of the navy in those seas was chiefly to be secured by means of it, it was indispensable, that it should be in safe keeping. To what quarter were they to look for further reinforcements, should they be needed, to increase our army in America, in the event of the dispute between New Brunswick and Maine becoming more serious? Not to the West Indies, from which two battalions had already been withdrawn. Not to the Canadas, for communication between these provinces and New Brunswick was impracticable, separated as they were by a wilderness of 400 or 500 miles. In the other colonies every man was required. From the Ionian Islands not one could be spared, from Malta not one. From Gibraltar, perhaps, one battalion more could be squeezed, if they could bring themselves to inflict great additional hardship on the troops now in garrison there, It really appeared to him absolutely necessary, that Government should look to the state of the army—should fairly consider the amount of work done by it, and apply themselves to the question, whether it was their duty to increase the military force.

^[25]

Halifax was much more vulnerable to attack than Bermuda, which might come over land or water from the United States, Gibraltar was vulnerable to overland attack by Spain (which remains anxious to recover it) and by Napoleonic France, and both Gibraltar and Malta were much more vulnerable to the navies of the Mediterranean (notably those of Spain, France, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire),^[26] and were even more heavily defended.

Naval and military establishments of the imperial fortresses

See also

• Military of Bermuda
• Military of Gibraltar
• Malta Command
• Military history of Nova Scotia

References