Fort Denison - Sydney, Australia
S 33° 51.378 E 151° 12.947
56H E 334944 N 6252344
Fort Denison, a former penal site and defensive facility, occupies a small island located in Sydney Harbour in New South Wales, Australia.
Waymark Code: WM5Z73
Location: New South Wales, Australia
Date Posted: 03/05/2009
Views: 90
The drawing was made and the posted coordinates were taken from the harbour side of the Sydney Opera House looking out toward Fort Denison in the Sydney Harbour.
From
Wikipedia:
The fortress features a distinctive Martello tower, the only one ever built in Australia and the last one ever constructed in the British Empire. Construction used 8,000 tonnes of sandstone from nearby Kurraba Point, Neutral Bay. The tower's walls are between 3.3 metres and 6.7 metres thick at the base and 2.7 metres thick at the top. However, developments in artillery rendered the fort largely obsolete by the time it was completed. The tower itself had quarters for a garrison of 24 soldiers and one officer. Fort Denison's armament included three 8-inch (200 mm) muzzle loaders in the tower, two 10-inch (25-cm) guns, one on a 360-degree traverse on the top of the tower and one in a bastion at the other end of the island, and twelve 32-pounder (15-kg) cannons in a battery between the base of the tower and the flanking bastion.
Eventually all the guns were removed, except for the three 8-inch (200 mm) muzzle loading cannons in the gun room in the tower, which were installed before construction was complete. The width of passages within the tower are too narrow to permit these to be removed. However, from the beginning the three cannons were of limited utility, for two reasons:
- The embrasures for the cannons were too small to use the guns effectively. By the time the cannon was loaded the ship would have sailed past.
- The recoil was too powerful for the small room.