Fort Albert

At the end of the American War of Independence the Royal Navy lost all of its significant bases and harbours on the eastern seaboard of the new United States of America. The revised British strategic plan formed a line from the northern base in Halifax, Canada, to the southern bases at Antigua, Jamaica and St. Lucia.  Bermuda became the centre of the line in the mid-Atlantic. St. George’s in the late 1820’s and throughout the 1830’s and early 1840’s, must have been the scene of great activity with the works in progress on five new forts.
The purpose of Eastern Redoubt, later known as Fort Albert, is to command the southern approach to Fort St. Catherine, provide collateral assistance to the other works of the position, and add a Battery to strengthen the defence of the Narrows.

All of the forts built during the first half of the 1800s on St. George’s Island were built of the local soft stone; only, for example, in the cheeks of the howitzer embrasures at Fort Albert does the Bermuda hard-stone appear. The soft stone was mostly obtained from each site, for it can be easily sawn by hand into blocks. The excavation of the ditches would have produced much of the stone and rubble necessary for each work.
Fort Albert was about half the size of Fort Victoria and was surrounded by a dry ditch. A drawbridge on the western side of the fort was the only entrance.  The small Keep had two storeys; from the lower, a single tunnel led to the three counterscarp galleries. The roof of the Keep was formed by the parapet into a well with firing steps for riflemen. The Keep accommodated one officer and 34 men and had a tank and stores in its basement.

The renovation of Fort Albert for the rifled muzzle loader phase of armaments began in April 1865 and took eleven years to complete. The estimate for the job was £7,000 and the actual work was calculated at £6,996. The old 32-pounders were removed (or used as pivots for the new guns) and replaced by four 10-inch RMLs of 18 tons. These were mounted on pedestals of concrete, with local hard stone forming the base for the iron racer track for the slide and carriage.
The features at the rear of the fort, namely, the Keep, the howitzer platforms, ancillary buildings and the drawbridge remained intact. In the centre of the Fort, however, excavations were made several storeys deep, the upper part becoming shell hoists below each gun. These connected through ammunition shafts to a new magazine complex below.

Prior to the outbreack of World War II the value of Bermuda to a British and American war effort was recognised, as was the inability of the Crown, over-extended in the defence of its empire, to assure the protection of Bermuda, and the mantle passed to the American Forces on 3 September 1939.
In the early 1960’s all of the RMLs were still in position at Fort Albert, but were moved to Fort St. Catherine when it was opened to the public as a visitor attraction.  In the 1960s a tract of land including Forts Victoria and Albert was leased to a hotel chain and incorporated into the hotel property. Following the closure of the hotel in the 1990’s, Fort Albert slowly disappeared under a forest of invasives and was used as a dumping site. The St. George’s Foundation began restoration and remediation of the fort in 2023.

Today Fort Albert is part of the property leased to St. Regis Bermuda.