'A View of Fort Apolonia [Appollonia] & the canoe landing the officer thro' the Surf, March 75' [Bray album]

No. 45 of 74 (PAJ1976 - PAJ2049) [Updated September 2012].

Titled and dated as above on a backing sheet, and with a damaged signature, lower right, which was probably originally 'AVprGB' (to the life by Gabriel Bray). It shows a scene in West Africa, on Bray's first 'Pallas' voyage. Having first called at the River Senegal and River Gambia, the 'Pallas' was instructed to to call at Cape Appolonia (spelt this way in the ship's log) where the Africa Company had been constructing this fort, 'consequent to an Act of Parliament', before continuing to Cape Coast Castle. The 'Pallas' in fact only only sent a boat with an officer ashore here as they passed on 17 March 1775, while the ship stayed in the offing. The fort - protecting local British interests including, though not exclusively, the slave trade - is in the centre, flanked on either side by stockades enclosing African huts under the shade of palm trees. The view is from the ship, showing the boat - a local canoe - carrying the officer ashore with a waving figure on the bow and others waving from the shore.

The British fort was built between 1768 and 1773, with some later addition, on a stretch of solid sandy foreshore close to Beyin, Ghana, and near both the Ankobra river estuary to the east and the Ivory Coast frontier. The name Appollonia was that conferred by the place's Portuguese discoverer, who had sighted it on St Appollonia's day. The fort, unique on the coast in being made almost entirely of local limestone, is described by the 20th-century authority on the subject, A. W. Lawrence, as 'The most ingenious and truly original design in tropical Africa'. It was constructed - using local slave labour- to support exploitation of mainly the rich timber resources of the coast, but also had a good overland link to the River Tano for canoe traffic into the interior. Its condition was reported as good in 1774, though 'very indifferent' two years later, but it remained a hive of activity until the abolition of the slave trade led to economic decline. The English abandoned it shortly before 1820, then briefly reoccupied but left in 1828. It was still usable by the Dutch, 1868-72, under an agreement, but was damaged a year or so later by a British gunboat bombarding Beyin, which had allied with the Ashanti. Used as a quarry to build the local chief's house in the 1930s it nonethless still exists as a substantial and impressive ruin. Lawrence notes that the name 'Cape Appollonia' is often found in early references 'because rising ground on a perfectly straight piece of coastline was mistaken for a promontory' (see his 'Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa', 1963, pp.356-60)

This is one of 73 drawings by Bray (plus one signed 'NF 1782') preserved in a 19th-century album that was purchased for the Museum by the Macpherson Fund of the Society for Nautical Research in April 1991. They have now been separately remounted. Bray (1750-1823), was second lieutenant of the 44-gun ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819) – later a well-known admiral - on two voyages (1774-77) to report on British interests in West Africa, including the slave trade. The dated drawings refer only to the first of these, from December 1774 to September 1775, though a few may be from the second. Others comprise country views, some of Deal, Kent (where Bray may have come from), and others of social-history interest. For further details see PAJ1976.