Negombo Fort

By Author: Emilia Rakel
Total Articles: 42
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In the conflict between the Portuguese and Dutch over Ceylon there was an Important military door to the island on the central west coast, with Colombo as its handle, Kalutara its lower hinge and Negombo - this issue's destination - its upper hinge.

Negombo's strategic importance was self- evident and it became one of the most fought- over places on the island during the turbulent 17th century.

Negombo also had considerable economic importance, for under the Portuguese but mostly under the Dutch it became a major cinnamon trade control centre. The quality of the Ceylon cinnamon crop was the best in the world, its quantity prodigious. Under the Dutch, three-fifths of the island's quota came from the Kandyan kingdom and the remainder from an area east of Negombo

When the Portuguese decided to construct a fort at Negombo around 1600 they sited it on a peninsula between the sea and the lagoon so that it presented a tactical problem for any attacker. Indeed it provided a check on all the aquatic traffic that sailed through the small islands and sand banks that obstructed the lagoon's entrance. Nevertheless, it ...
... didn't check the Dutch, for during the 1640s they took the fort, although it was quickly retaken by the Portuguese. But the Dutch with almost equal swiftness expelled them thereafter.
R K de Silva reproduces several Dutch writings in Illustrations and Views of Dutch Ceylon 1602-1796

(1988) regarding the fort. For example Johann von de Behr (1644) describes the effects of the second Dutch siege and certain aspects of the captured fort:".,. and the bastions had been most of them shot away by our cannon during the siege (which lasted eight days) and not yet rebuilt; there were built six guard-rooms of coc-trees (coconut trees), which were roof'd with the leaves of the same ... two other small guard-rooms were also built, the one near the Land-gate, the other by the Water¬gate. And into these came 600 men . . . now as regards the Fort ... it is a very strong place, surrounded within by a huge stone wall and well fortified ... with ramparts and bastions."

Georg Andriesz (1676) provides further information: "This fortress ... lies on the mainland, yet it is an island, since the sea washes round most of it, but for a narrow rock, which leads to the fort; so that it can be called a peninsula. Before the castle on the right there are many gardens, with a multitude of coconut palms, which from afar appear as a thick wood. But the Hollanders cut down many trees, since it is thought they might be harmful to the fort if it should perhaps be attacked. The castle has a square figure, with four bastions of good hewn stone ... and has a garrison 200 Dutch soldiers. It was first built by the Portuguese, and taken from them by storm in 1644 by the Hollanders. The Portuguese were all slain, since they would not surrender." However, the plan of the fort was not revealed in detail until Philip Baldaeus (1672), Chaplain to the Dutch forces, published a bird's-eye view. W A Nelson, expert on Sri Lanka's forts, writes in The Dutch Forts of Sri Lanka: The Military Monuments of Ceylon (1984): "It shows that it consisted of a three-part fortification occupying the whole width of a small peninsular, whose shape is still the same today, when allowance is made for silting and sea recession."
Resource: http://www.negombotown.com