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Updated: June 12, 2025
This tower was one of the first things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor. It gave an antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wanted without this. Round stone towers are not so common in this world that we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called a Martello tower, but I could not learn who built it.
These are: The Torreon de Vigia, a martello tower placed on the inlet of San Lazaro opposite La Reina. The old fort called La Fuerza, built three hundred and fifty years ago, near the present Plaza de Armas, and now used for barracks and public offices.
Martello towers were erected along the coast from Harwich to Pevensey Bay, at the points where a landing was easy. Numerous inventors also came forward with plans for destroying the French flotilla, but none was found to be serviceable except the rockets of Colonel Congreve, which inflicted some damage at Boulogne and elsewhere.
The palpitating cloud of their wings soared and stooped over the pinnacles of the rocks, over the rocks slender like spires, squat like martello towers; over the pyramidal heaps like fallen ruins, over the lines of bald bowlders showing like a wall of stones battered to pieces and scorched by lightning with the sleepy, clear glimmer of water in every breach.
We made sail for Corsica, where we found a squadron under Commodore Linzee, engaged in attempting to drive the French from that island. The first expedition in which we took part was to Martello Bay. It was guarded by a strong round tower, to which the same name had been given.
"Commissioning kings, erecting thrones, martello towers, Cambaceres count noses, Austrians, fine dressed, like Pompey's troops." "B. fences with sceptres, his martello towers are thrones, he alone is, France." Another Dissolution of Parliament having taken place this year, he again became a candidate for the city of Westminster.
Not satisfied with these important services, he rendered the Agent's house habitable, and caused the Martello tower to be completed, chiefly by the labour of his own crew, before the 20th of April; and it is to be deeply regretted that the sickness which had begun to make fearful inroads in the crew of his ship, during her stay at the Cape, terminated in the death of no less than forty persons, soon after her return to America.
It really had, when finished, a very imposing appearance, and looked as capable of resisting a foe as one of the Martello towers which guard the coasts of Great Britain. Frank had, in the morning, despatched an invitation to all the boys he knew of in the neighbourhood to come and join in the sport, and by the afternoon a large army was collected.
The lonely martello tower on the opposite sands was pointed out to me, sitting mistress of desolations in the shadow of the rocks of MacGilligan. I was informed of the money's worth of pile work, thousands upon thousands of pounds sterling, on which this ugly and useless tower is sitting. As I walked around the outside of the fort landward and seaward, I think it quite possible to take it.
The brass piece, and two swivels, mounted on travelling carriages, were stationed in the centre, ready to support the post exposed to the heaviest attack: these detached works were to be all joined together by a paling, intended to enclose the whole settlement; meanwhile, the Martello tower was to be carried on with all possible speed; and it was hoped that this, when completed, would almost supersede the necessity of the rest, and form an impregnable barrier to the efforts of any native force; while the tangled brushwood, and newly-felled trees, were to form a formidable and impracticable hedge forest side.
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