![]() ![]() All this engineering served its purpose: in almost 100 years of active use, the fort was never taken. State-of-the-art features included a 16-meter-wide moat, earthworks to meld the fort with the landscape, bastions at each of the five corners, wells for drinking water, barracks, a hospital, and 188 bronze and 124 iron cannons jutting out atop the ramparts. ![]() With its bomb-proof walls and pentagonal, Vauban-style design, the fortress sprawled over 70,000 square meters-the largest Spanish military installation on American soil. Manso de Velasco’s new citadel aimed to halt these depredations. In 1624, a fleet of 11 Dutch yachts under buccaneer Jacques l’Hermite blockaded Callao’s harbor for three months, setting fire to galleons in the bay and sending limeños scurrying for the hills. They had set their sights on the massive silver shipments flowing through the port from mines like Cerro Rico, in present-day Bolivia. Starting in the 1500s, El Callao, on the Pacific coast of Peru, found itself menaced by privateers from England, France, and the Low Countries. Commissioned in 1747 by Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco, the fort was the Spanish crown’s response to one of the chief irritants to its overseas empire: pirates. The colonial garrison has certainly had time to accumulate them. ![]() The Fortaleza del Real Felipe, in Lima’s seedy port district of El Callao, has never lacked for resident haunts. Children, giggling demonically as they flit down passageways. Skeletal women with wind-whipped hair, half-seen atop the ramparts in the wee hours. ![]()
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