page_title: Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site / History / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Marine Artillery Esquimalt Garrison Christmas card, 1897.
context_page_description: Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site is a 19th-century coastal artillery fort on the Colwood, British Columbia side of Esquimalt Harbour. The site is adjacent to Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site, the first lighthouse on the west coast of Canada. Both the fort and lighthouse are managed and presented to the public by Parks Canada.
context_section_description: The Canadian and British governments did not reach a defence agreement on the matter until 1893.  During this time, the old guns and emplacements were still Victoria and Esquimalt's only fixed defences against attack.  The 1893 agreement boiled down to this:
  The British government would supply:
  guns, equipment, stores, and submarine mining buildings, to a total of £53,080;
  half the estimated cost of the defence works (£30,000);
  half the cost of annual maintenance (£500);
  and a garrison of 75 Royal Marine Artillerymen.
  The Dominion of Canada would provide:
  all the land and buildings (save the submarine mining establishment);
  £10,000 towards the maintenance of the Royal Marine Artillery garrison; half the estimated cost of the defences (£30,000);
  half the cost of annual maintenance (£500);
  and maintain and expand the local militia.
  The Royal Marine Artillery garrison, composed of specialists with two years' training, arrived in 1894. They were joined by officers and men of the Royal Engineers, to oversee construction of the permanent defences. The original plan called for Chinese labour to be used in construction, but local newspapers lobbied against this, and more expensive European (i.e., "white") day labourers were employed.
  Between February 1894 and October 1897, two separate forts were constructed: one at Macaulay Point (site of earlier earthwork batteries), and an entirely new location at Rodd Hill, a bluff of rock overlooking the western side of the narrow entrance to Esquimalt harbour.  Both forts would each mount three 6-inch disappearing guns (Mk VI barrels on a Mk IV mounting). Because of limitations of space in Rodd Hill, two of these guns were mounted with a common magazine in "Lower Battery", while the third required a separate battery (along with an underground magazine, loopholed wall, water supply, guardhouse, etc.) on another, higher hill some 200 meters away, named, logically, "Upper Battery."
  These guns were sited in concrete emplacements ten feet thick, which were in turn protected by the rock massif of the hillside into which they were sunk.  The barrels were normally kept down in the loading position, within the protection of the concrete emplacement (which also had an overhead metal shield). Using a central Observation Post and remote electric dial system to pass target information, the guns would be loaded and aimed while in the "down" position. Only when actually about to fire, would the large hydro-pneumatic system raise the 5-tonne barrel up over the parapet.
  The strength of the system was that the barrel was exposed to the enemy for a minimal amount of time, and with naval guns of the time firing on a flat trajectory, it was virtually impossible for an enemy ship to drop a shell on the emplacement, with its sloping rock glacis in front. Disadvantages of the system included a slow rate of fire (perhaps one shot every two minutes), and a propensity for the complicated hydro-pneumatic system to leak.
  The 6-inch guns used "non-fixed ammunition", that is, the explosive cartridge that propelled the shell was stored and loaded separately from the shell or shot. Cartridges were made of raw silk, and stored in wooden crates in a special high-security section of the underground magazine. There were five types of shell on the Fort Rodd manifest in 1897: High Explosive (Lyddite), Armour-piercing, Common Pointed (for non-armoured maritime targets), and Shrapnel. The other class of projectile (and the one most often fired) was a solid steel shot (without any cavity for explosives or fuses, it was cheapest to produce). The shells and shot all had the same service weight of 94 pounds (to simplify calculation of elevation and depression) and diameter of 6 inches (150 mm); therefore, lengths of the various types varied.
  In addition to these medium guns (intended to fend off an attack by up to six enemy light cruisers), smaller quick-firing guns were sited, in order to deal with the potential threat of fast, unarmoured torpedo boats. At Fort Rodd, a separate emplacement, called Belmont Battery was constructed to 
caption: Group image of Royal Marine Artillerymen garrisoned at Fort Rodd Hill, 1897.
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