Fort Oranje

Fort Oranje, situated above the bay

Fort Oranje

This Island is the strongest, as to situation, of all the Caribbies, for there is but one good descent which may be easily defended; so that a few men might keep off a great Army: But besides this natural Fortification, there is in it a Strong Fort which commands the best Haven, the Guns of it carrying a good distance into the Sea (De Rochefort).

During the 17th century, Statia's main defensive concern was attack from privateers and pirates. The fort surrendered without a fight to English privateers under Thomas Morgan in July 1665, who, though pirates, were pilaging under the legal protection of the English, who were then at war with Holland. Twenty cannon and 131 small arms on hand at the fort when this takeover was accomplished, but apparently, none were ever fired.

A surrender to the French followed in 1666, with Ft. Oranje being returned to the Dutch in 1667. It lowered its colours to the English yet again in 1672, and was then razed along with the Upper Town by the Dutch themselves in 1673 while attacking teh English. The English rebuilt Oranje and parts of the town that same year. The new Fort Oranje would remain out of Dutch hands until 1678.

The fort was again refurbished in April 1689, due to an impending French attack. The attack came, and the result was, as usual, the fort fell to the invaders. During the French occupation of 1689-1690, the Fort was again repaired and upgraded. At this time a dry moat and palisade were constructed, in accordance with fortification principles espoused by the French fortification master Sebastien Vauban.

A new commander on the island, Isaac Lamont, inspected Oranje in 1701 and found it in poor condition once again. The walls were ready to collapse. The four bastions were improperly made, with earthen floors, and the deteriorated cannon were constantly getting stuck in the mud. Lamont petitioned the West India Company to renovate Oranje, but he was replaced in 1704 without the renovation being undertaken. Lamont returned as commander of the fort in 1709, and was then blamed for its loss to the French on November 25 of that year. A letter to the West India Company from Jan Simonsz Doncker, though perhaps embellished (or even fabricated) for political reasons, claimed that Lamont himself had gone into the Fort early that morning, smoking a pipe and still dressed in his night-clothes, and left the gate open, allowing a suprise French attack. The fort was destroyed once more.

The next major phase of Fort Oranje began in 1737. The commander, Isaac Faesch, had another dry moat dug around the Fort in 1738. The cisterns were repaired in 1740, and in 1741 a new bridge and palisade were built, bringing the Fort back into a respectable, and formidable, appearance.

Rising tensions in Europe led to another inspection of the defenses on February 8, 1755. Once again, the fort had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Jan de Windt, the commander of that period, observed that the bastions were so bad that they threatened to collapse at any moment. By 1765, a map shows that two bastion's had in fact fallen, vastly changing the looks of the fort's plan.

With the hostilities in the New World between England and her colonies, the island was again surveyed. An inventory of 1775 listed six 12 pounders, two 9 pounders, two 8 pounders, fourteen 6 pounders, and three 3 pounders with serviceable carriages. Another group of two 12 pounders, six 6 pounders, two 3 pounders, and one 8 pounder sat useless, without a gun-carriage. A partial listing of the ammunition inventoried includes 500 "Blinde" cartridges (blanks for salutes), 500 ball cartridges, 350 pounds of fuse, 34 flintlocks (12 out of service), 3,000 musket balls, and 3,000 pounds of gun-powder.

By 1776, however, the Commander's secretary, Alexander le Jeune, found the situation at the fort as poor as ever. Weapons were left lying about. Gunpowder was stored in a damp cellar. All the buildings were deteriorated, and several cannon were in a similar condition. The following year, 1777, a witness observed an open barrel of gunpowder near a door. Whenever the cannons were to be fired the doors had to be left open so the dampness inside the magazine could dissapate, and cartrdiges became usless after about a week in such conditions.

The problem of dampness in the powder magazine also extended to other equipment. An inventory of Commandant Ravene reveals that the old cast iron guns (those used in the Andrew Doria salute), had to be replaced by bronze guns in 1778. (Although several of the iron guns are still to be found below the fort, and in the bay).

Another visitor surveyed the defenses in 1780, C. de Jong. He found the artillery situation worse than before. His inventory reported that of 25 cannon present at Fort Oranje, under five were in a good working order, and the garrison consisted of about 50 of the seediest men to be found in the service of the West India Company.

While there may have been changes in the garrison, records from 1775 list five soliders from St. Eustatius, two from the Netherlands, and the remaining 38 from Germany, Austria, Denmark, England, France, Scotland, the Southern Netherlands (Belgium), Sweden, and Switzerland. Among the garrison was the Commander, one sergeant, one constable (gunner), four corporals, two constable mates (gunner's mates), twenty-three soldiers, and two drummers. The position and rank of the remainder were unstated.

Throughout the American Revolution, Statia continued to supply the colonies with contraband goods. This brought about the wrath of the British forces, which captured St. Eustatius 1781. Fort Oranje again surrendered without a fight and was rechristened Fort George. The new garrison, 650 British troops, served under Lieutenant Colonel Cockburne and Lieutenant Colonel Stafford. Admiral G.B. Rodney and General Vaughn were their superiors in the overall occupation. Admiral Rodney wrote after the arrival of his fleet in February of 1781:  "The Upper Town is upon a steep clift, at least seventy foot perpendicular. You ascend to it by a zig zag road, very difficult, steep & must have cost the Expense of much Blood, had the enemy defended it. In the whole island they had about 82 pieces of Cannon Mounted, but as Trade had totally engrossed their Minds, their Fortifications had been Neglected. Though the revenue belonging to their West India Company was upwards of seventy thousand pounds a year, neat, they could not be induced to afford any part of it towards fortifying their Island". The slave trail, seen in this photo, is a steep cobbled pathway from the Lower Town and beach, to the Upper Town

During court marshall proceedings of Lt. Col. Cockburne, (for the loss of the island) it was revealed that the fort had major structural problems upon the arrival of the British. On one occasion, during a morning gun drill and firing, part of the parapet crumbled and fell over the side of the cliff. Before its loss to the French, the British did little to repair the tactically flawed fort. They preferred to rely upon sea power for protection, but then the navy left, and the French came right in.

St. Eustatius was returned to the Dutch after the war, and an inventory was taken on March 4, 1785. It concluded the walls could no longer support large caliber guns, as too often the shock of their recoil sent pieces of the parapet to the beach below. Accordingly, around 1786, 3 pounder iron guns replaced the larger cannon in the Fort, and survive there to today.

Fort Oranje continued its decline throughout the 19th century, and by 1829 the garrison was reduced to 21 men of the Jaegers Battalion. A limited renovation was undertaken in 1834, but Fort Oranje was abandoned as a military post in 1846.