Your guide to Martello Towers in the UK and throughout the world.

Martello Towers in Bermuda

There is one Martello Tower in Bermuda.

Blue Line

There is a Martello tower located at Ferry Reach in St George's Parish. The tower is the third fortification on the site. Major Thomas Blanshard built it of Bermuda limestone between 1822–1823.

The tower shows the effect of thirty years of evolution on the design of coastal fortifications, between the 1790s and 1822. The earlier Ferry Island Fort nearby had multiple guns arrayed to cover the water westward, while the Martello tower used a single gun with 360° traverse to cover all of the surrounding area.

Bermuda Martello Tower
Martello Tower in Bermuda

Like its predecessors in the UK, it has an ovoid footprint with the thickness of its walls ranging from nine to 11 feet. It is surrounded by a dry moat. The tower's purpose was to defend the Ferry Reach Channel and so impede any attack on St. George's Island from the main island of Bermuda, and attacking vessels from slipping through Castle Harbour and the channel between Ferry Reach and Coney Island. The main channel by which vessels reach most parts of Bermuda west of St. George's, including the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland, the Great Sound, Hamilton Harbour, The Flatts, Murray's Anchorage, and other important sites, carries them around the east ends of St. David's and St. George's Islands, where the coastal artillery was always most heavily concentrated. Two more Martello towers to protect the Dockyard were planned, but never built.

The tower was restored in 2008 and an 18-pounder cannon brought from Fort St. Catherine was mounted on top.