Sitting like a tired dinosaur on top of Fort Rinella, limits of Kalkara, is the world's largest cannon - a 100-ton Armstrong gun - originally built by the British in Malta to safeguard that part of the coast and to protect naval shipping in the area from the newest generation of Italian battleships of the time.
Luckily, it was never fired in anger, but an amusing legend about its first test still does the rounds much to the chagrin of military experts and local conservationists who have done a wonderful job restoring and up-keeping both the cannon and the fort.
The persistent legend says that when the gun was first fired, the 2000-pound shell fell just a few metres down into the nearby sea. If told, Queen Victoria cannot have been amused. Because a single shell cost, in those days, as much as the daily wage of 2,600 soldiers. In fact, so costly was it that the gun was only fired twice a year for practice.
The cannon and the fort that has housed it for so many decades are certainly worth a visit. When installed, the massive cannon was state-of-the-art, equipped with a steam powered hydraulic system that traversed, elevated and depressed the gun. Fort Rinella, sometimes also referred to as Rinella Battery, was built between 1878 and 1886, standing above the shore east of the mouth of Grand Harbour, between Fort Ricasoli and Fort St Rocco, in the same region of the island.
The fort, which is quite modest in size, was designed to operate and protect the single large gun, together with its associated gun squad, magazines, support machinery, bunkers and the troops that were stationed within the fort to defend the installation.
The fort was designed to engage enemy warships at ranges up to 7,000 yards. The low profile of the fort and the deeply buried machinery rooms and magazines were intended to enable it to survive counter-fire from Italian and Nazi capital warships.
The fort has no secondary armament; its fortifications, simply ditches, caponiers, a counter-scarp gallery and various firing points were mostly intended for small arms fire and grenade launching.
Today you can visit the museum and even attend, on the 5th of May of every year, the firing of the gun by volunteers. They use black powder only, of course, so you can't really prove or disprove the legend.
Every afternoon the same dedicated volunteers, dressed as 19th Century British soldiers, provide a tour of the fort that combines lectures, demonstrations and live re-enactments. A Victorian-era muzzle-loading fieldpiece is fired, again without shot, but sorry, there is no legend about that...
Fort Rinella is one of the most fascinating things you will see in Malta with its authentic re-enactments and quite spectacular cannon. To get there by car you need to head in the general direction of the three cities and then follow the signs to Rinella. By bus you need to be catching the bus in the direction of Kalkara - the number 4.
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Word Count Appx. : 502 | Article Views 563 Published 20-03-2010