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TheAmsterdam Battery was the most important of the military installations built by theDutch East India Company to protectTable Bay. It marked the beginning of coastal defense inSouth Africa.
Only a piece of the walls of the battery, the oldest structure in the area, remains. It lies by the entrance to theVictoria & Alfred Waterfront and thePort of Cape Town, behind a shipyard and north-northeast of theCastle of Good Hope. Battery Park lies between Port and Dock Roads and Alfred Street. It was located in a very strategic place and helped provide cover fire for adjacent fortifications.
The battery was built with the help of theFrench vice-admiralPierre André de Suffren (1726–1788) and the architectLouis Michel Thibault from 1781 to 1787. The wall was 17.5 m high witharrowslits and could withstand heavy enemy fire. Canons lay on the top floor.Ammunition andcannonballs were stored in the basement and in thegunpowder magazine behind the battery. The main guns were 12.5 m above sea level. Two hundred soldiers could be housed in the front barracks. However, military operations never needed to be launched from the fortress. When the artillery were first tested, however, two soldiers died and Gov.Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff was wounded. In 1827, the weaponry was removed, and the building was used from then on as a prison.
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Drawings of the Amsterdam Battery can be found in theMuseuMAfricA as well as in the Cape Town Archives Repository.
