Fort Victoria was begun in the late 1820s and became the citadel of the defences of St George’s Island.  The fort survived until the early 1970s, when it was incorporated into the building of a hotel, though much of value and interest remains.
The hexagonal fort was erected on Retreat Hill and a plan from 1831 shows fixed bridges connecting to drawbridges in the middle of each of the four axis, two ravelin towers, with three guns each, and reverse fires with secondary ditches in the four corners of the main ditch.

Fort Victoria cross section

Albert Fitz, an American secret agent reporting on Bermuda’s defences in 1842, calculated the armaments of the eastern forts and noted the use of native prickly pear thickly planted around Fort Victoria as anti-personnel deterrent. According to Fitz, Fort Victoria was a complete bomb proof work, of great strength, mounting eighteen thirty-two pounders, and two 32-pounder carronades.
By the 1850s Fort Victoria was the most elaborate fortification in Bermuda with a commanding position about 52 feet above Fort Albert, sweeping the tongue of land forming the eastern end of St. George’s Island. Its guns were all mounted on iron traversing platforms bearing in every direction, there were ravelins (protective triangular outer works) on its north and south faces and it contained a bombproof barracks for six officers and 194 men.

Fort Victoria Plan 1852

In the 1870s Fort Victoria was altered for the emplacement of rifled muzzle loader guns and the main area to be covered by the fort was Murray’s Anchorage and the land approaches to Fort St. Catherine and Retreat Hill. The south ravelin made redundant and became a testing laboratory for gunpowder. One of the 25-ton rifle muzzle-loading guns was found in the 1980s partly buried in the western run of the ditch and was moved to Fort St. Catherine in the early 1990s.

Fort Victoria 1895 BMA

Artillery technology advanced quickly after Bermuda had been rearmed with RMLs in the 1870s, and the island was refortified in the early 1900s, with breech-loader guns. The range of the BL guns at Fort Victoria meant modifications to Fort George to the west, while Forts St. Catherine and Albert to the east were not needed. The guns remained in use for several decades, however by 1935 the remaining gun, though emplaced, was not considered as part of the Bermuda armaments. During the Second World War, two U. S. railway guns were cut into the hillside on the slope between Fort Albert and Fort Victoria, later replaced by two fixed 6-inch rifles and a magazine.

Fort Victoria 1940s

In the 1960s a tract of land including Forts Victoria and Albert was leased to a hotel chain, and new works in 1984 led to the destruction of the southern emplacement of the fixed position: it is not known whether the northern emplacement survives under a road. Following the closure of the hotel in the 1990s, 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 2022.

Fort Victoria Ravelin
Fort Victoria 1970s
Fort Victoria 2022

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